On this page you can find information about Vidal's works and projects other than shows.

"You Shouldn't Be"
A photo exhibition by Christine Kacz Ruse, Caroline Hedin and Vidal Rousso.

Behind the exhibition  by Vidal

I'm a man with a female body. I know that it sounds way out of the habitual, especially since I avoid using the term "transsexual"; for we are obsessed with the body. Male body makes you male, female - female, there is nothing in between like a man in female body, and to move between the legitimate two you have to modify your body not to jump outside the frame.
I have been through that phase, when I was around 24. Depressions and suicidal thoughts included, and the fact that I was living in Latvia wasn't making it any easier, since there the general attitude of the society against transsexuals is very negative and in the best case they are percepted as mentally ill. Everything in my life was circulating around getting a surgery, but in Latvia you had to pay for it yourself, all of the sum, so it was out of the question. Thanks god for that, in my case.
When I had gotten out of a very dark phase of possibly the worst of my depressions, things began to change. I had read a lot and thought a lot; step by step I decided to fuck the aspirations to turn myself into something I wasn't really. American FTMs (female-to-male transsexuals) I had online contact with, decided I'm mad growing my hair when everybody was cutting theirs and proclaimed I will end up looking like a girl. People didnt really understand what I was doing, because it was not what an FTM was supposed to do. You have got manuals how to cut your hair, how to pack your crotch and tie your boobs down and what pants to wear. I couldn't continue with that, since it was messing with my life and I was sick of forever looking like a little boy, never anything like a grown man. So I went for the androgynous look. I know that part time I'm considered a guy, part time a girl, and part time people get confused, but since I dont care so much anymore what bypassers think, I dont get as hurt as I used to.

But now I also see a lot of unnecessary pain, suffering and shame in the lives of transsexuals, which is all artificially created and completely unneeded if people could just open their minds and see the simple humanity in each other, past the norms, labels and rules.
As one of the causes I dare to name SRS - sex reassignment surgery. After my own experience I must say that it is ultimately important to understand whether it is the need to pass, to be accepted as male, which drives a person to have the SRS, or is it the true necessity to have a dick or a pussy and tits. Only the second case is the one when I fully stand for the SRS.
One reason for this is that one can't completely change the biological sex. It's science fiction. One day, maybe, it will come true - but in any foreseeable future a FTM can't father a child with his sperm or even ejaculate, and a MTF can't give birth to her baby. So SRS in terms of surgery is a painful form of make-up for the society. Or even worse, the society's sanction for a person to belong to his or her gender. Let me give an example: in Sweden a FTM can change the gender of the passport only if the person's ovaries have been removed.
So, in my case, if I'd do SRS, I would be lying to myself that I'm more male - just because the society would see me as more male and I would pass better as male, - but my body would function worse, and I would be just the same much man as before.
Therefore among models of dealing with transsexuality I prefer the model of traditional cultures - Native American, for example. In many of these cultures transsexuals could live their lives like the ones belonging to the opposite gender - so a MTF could simulate menstruation and childbirth, and it would be within the behavioral norms. Transsexuals were given a place in the society, their choices were accepted to the far greater degree than it happens in the modern culture, and they didn't have the same need to modify their bodies. One proof for that is the missing gender condition related self-mutilation.
But in the Western society there is no place for transsexuals, only for men or women. And Western transsexuals, me included, do not wish to have an alternative but a male or a female status - Western culture has nurtured them to be that way consciously or, even more likely, subconsciously. And as the next step comes the body modification as the only way out to have their gender accepted. And who's there to blame? Who wouldn't want to have his correct gender stated in his passport?
Therefore the model of traditional cultures might not look especially appealing to modern transsexuals either - for there a transsexual - an MTF for instance - instead of a status of a "woman" could obtain only a status of a "woman-like". On the other side, it could also be just calling the things their real names. Since transsexuals don't become men or women, not even in the modern world. For one, the chromosomal sex doesn't change. All their lives they must use hormone preparates. They even call themselves post-op transsexuals; they are and during their lives stay in an alternative gender status.

And that's where I am. And therefore I prefer my brain, my strength and my imagination to take care of the job which otherwise would be done by surgeon. My brain: I know I am a man; my strength: I know that even when other people try to prove the opposite; my imagination: I have no problem to perceive my body as belonging to a man. Yeap, as long as I know who I am, I don't hate my body. Body is not primary. Besides, have you heard the joke "What would happen if a man would wake up with a pussy? - He would go shopping for cucumbers?" - that's me. Well, joking, but there is some truth in most of the jokes. And would I be able to cross-dress if it was different? Yes, cross-dressing, that is also a sensitive question. Norms, rules, religions grow together with the consciousness of people, but in the area of treatment of transsexuals it is still medieval black and white. An FTM can't be more feminine than a Texas cowboy or his gender is automatically questioned. Try and put on a dress.

I guess, very simply put, I had to pick from two bad possibilities in life and I picked the one which would let me have more of my life, and then learned how to befriend it. I don't want to live waiting to be made, waiting for when I will live. I want to live the way I would have lived if I was born in a male body, and I think I manage rather well. So why did I write all this - it was because I think everybody should have the chance to live as one belonging to his or her gender without the pressure to cut their guts out or become pill addicts for the rest of their lives.
One day it might become like that.