Easy Sex Change

In Real Life, the process of transition for transgender people is often a long, complicated process, which may or may not involve numerous different procedures including psychological counseling, hormone replacement therapy, and a variety of plastic surgeries, spread out over several years. The exact path the transition takes is different for every individual, and so are the results.

In fiction, this process is frequently boiled down to one quick and easy procedure. Most commonly, it consists of a single readily-available surgery which takes a few hours at most, allowing a character to waltz into a hospital and leave the same day looking like their new gender. Less commonly, they may only need to take hormones, which will take effect impossibly quickly and have much more dramatic effects on both their mind and body than in real life.

Either way, the result will almost always be an Attractive Bent-Gender, possibly played by a different actor or actress. Surgical scars are rarely seen. Exceptions to this will usually be from works by less trans-supportive creators who want to portray the results of the surgery as unconvincing, ugly, and/or frightening.

Sex change surgery that is reversed is another common signifier of the Easy Sex Change. In stories with easily-undone sex changes, even characters who aren't transgender may choose to have one in order to hide their identity, treating it as simply the next level of being Disguised in Drag.

This trope is also common in video games with Character Customization. If a game allows you to change your character's gender, the process will rarely be more complicated than talking to a certain NPC and paying a small fee. Sometimes, it may even be as simple as opening the "edit appearance" menu.

This is usually a form of Magic Plastic Surgery. Often followed by Old Friend, New Gender. Not to be confused with Gender Bender, which involves sex changes that (usually) are even easier, and driven by magic or Applied Phlebotinum. This trope is more about idealized (occasionally highly idealized) versions of Real Life SRS.

Contrast Trans Tribulations, which can include a more realistic portrayal of the difficulties of transitioning.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Back Street Girls: The entire premise is about three Yakuza men being forced to undergo reassignment surgery to become pop idols. This happens over the course of a quick trip to Thailand, followed by a year's worth of idol training. By the end, the three are indistinguishable from any other woman, with enough good looks to sell plenty of merchandise.
• Franken Fran has Fran switch the sex of a boyfriend and girlfriend at her high school - literally swapping their torsos and genitalia - because the girlfriend was attacked once and is now afraid of men. Possibly justified by Fran quite frankly being crazy enough to do it, especially since she performs any surgery she thinks is warranted regardless of later psychological issues and believes "alive but in unimaginable, incurable psychological torment" to be preferable to "dead". Oddly enough, it's one of the few "happy" endings (though the couple in question is later revealed to have broken up after cheating on each other).
• In Hes Dedicated To Roses, the main heroine briefly (but seriously) contemplates getting a sex change operation seeing how her crush is in love with her cross-dressing alter-ego and she doesn't want to hurt him by letting him know she's actually a girl. This idea is quickly shot down and isn't brought up again.
• In The Vision of Escaflowne, it is revealed that Dilandau used to be an innocent little girl, and Allen Schezar's little sister at that. Although it's implied that there was a long, drawn-out process of some type required involving Emperor Dornkirk's "Fate Changing" experiments, which possibly involved some kind of probability-manipulating, extra-dimensional/quantum physics weirdness, but at the end, Dilandau reverts back to Celina and it's implied that she stays that way. This is not addressed in either the movie or the manga; in the movie, Dilandau is biologically male the entire time, and in the manga, the character is female and stays that way the whole time.
• Subverted in Kyou Kara Yonshimai. Kashiwa comes back from college specifically to save money on dorming due to her transitioning. One of her sisters even elaborates how expensive it is. Kashiwa's sisters at first think she had already gotten "the surgery" but she tells them she wouldn't do that without coming out to them first.
• It's vague exactly how Yukari and Sora from Family Compo transitioned. It's implied they're both non-op and likely are not on hormones (Sora still menstruates and they have some Unsettling Gender-Reveal moments involving their genitalia and chests) but are able to pass perfectly nevertheless. It's to such an extent that, when Masahiko requests them to dress as their assigned genders during his university welcoming, everyone assumes they're transvestites because Sora and Yukari look so masculine and feminine, respectively, compared to when they show up later in their preferred clothing and the same crowd is none the wiser.

Comic Books

• In Judge Dredd, this happens to one of the judging panel members of a TV Talent Contest by the application of a particular drug, changing the individual from a frail woman to a hulking, muscular man in a matter of minutes. However, the shock of the transition kills the individual several minutes later.

Fan Works

• In the Linkin Park fanfiction Does it Really Matter?, "Chessi" Bennoda becomes a completely passing young woman with the help of a makeover in one day. The fic is loaded with pretty offensive misconceptions about being transgender. Hilariously enough, the writer is a trans man that wrote it before he identified as such.
• In This World and the Next: Gender reassignment surgery is performed on an unconscious Ron without his knowledge and he wakes up a woman.

Film

• A subversion of this trope is central to the premise of the off-Broadway play and movie Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Hedwig's surgery is done with little preparation by a shady East German doctor, leaving Hedwig with the "Angry Inch" of the title.
• Invoked in the Adam Sandler version of The Longest Yard. Adam's team, the underdogs of the movie, replace someone on the guards' team's steroids with female hormone pills. Not more than two days later, said guy is bawling and weeping, supposedly acting feminine because of the hormone. To make a long story short, hormones do not work that way. A more likely outcome from suddenly taking a huge dose of estrogen would simply be getting very sick, in various "normal" ways (headache, nausea, etc.) Emotional side effects are possible, but would probably require testosterone-blocking medication to be taken at the same time.
• In Myra Breckinridge, the character Myron Breckinridge has sex reassignment surgery that works so well that his new persona as Myra completely convinces everyone that she's been female all along... which she should, being played by Raquel Welch (with Rex Reed as Myron who tags along as Myra's more-or-less imaginary friend). Justified, as it turns out the whole movie is a dream the closeted Myron is having.
• While not as "easy" for the patient as most examples, a dark take in The Skin I Live In is similarly unrealistic, as a surgeon does an involuntary sex change on the guy who raped his daughter. He also keeps him/her in isolation and uses him/her as a guinea pig for developing artificial skin.
• Subverted in Bad Education (2004). Ignacio is prevented from having one because he doesn't have enough money. All he manages to get are breast implants, and he still looks like a man in spite of that.
• The Assignment (2016): It's unclear just how long, but within very little time Jane performs a full set of sex reassignment surgeries on Frank, altering his cheeks, throat, nose, and genitals. This isn't possible, willing or not, as he'd need time for recovery from each one. There's no indication that he was held very long, however. Of course, since he's played by Michelle Rodriguez, he comes out with her appearance (which is also quite implausible).
• In the Italian comedy Le Comiche 2 the two main characters cause the main recurring chew toy character to undergo an undesired breast augmentation first and a sexual reassignment surgery later. The movie completely glosses over the psychological implications and trauma of an undesired sex change. After the breast augmentation, the character is shown behaving and living as male, embarrassingly hiding the fact he has breasts and wearing a bra due to circumstances. Once his male genitals are removed, they are completely accepting to be a woman.
• A retroactive example in Alien: the character Lambert is identified as transgender in a text profile that appears in the background of a scene in the sequel Aliens. In an example justified by future medical technology, the profile states that she was identified as transgender and underwent sex reassignment at birth.

Literature

• In Eight Worlds, it's very easy to get one's body altered, sometimes dramatically, to the point that the default assumption is that everyone's at tried out another sex at least once, and anyone who spends their life as just one is considered a little weird; population control laws are "one person, one child". Someone can change sex at a tattoo parlor or a beauty shop, so often people will do so just to suit a particular outfit or to facilitate a relationship. The lead of Steel Beach decides that after years of being a man, they want to be a woman again, and has various options to get it done quickly, including accepting pre-set configurations for various features and returning to the way they were born, but instead has a new body custom commissioned so as to be as attractive as possible. At the end of the book, they choose to be feminine-null but keep their custom vagina on file for the next time they want one.
• Vorkosigan Saga: Within A Civil Campaign, the saga of Lady Donna's sex change to Lord Dono shows that sex changes are relatively easy and painless with futuristic genetic technology, although Lord Dono comments that it does take time and his guy parts are still growing in. No mention of therapy is made although the character did go to Beta Colony, a planet known for pervasive (sex) therapy, and in fact, Dono's stated reason for the change (Loophole Abuse in highly patriarchal Barrayar's inheritance laws) is at best highly dubious. It's possible that Dono deliberately avoids mentioning any mandatory therapy since a) he is seeking public office, b) his family is not known for their mental stability, and c) on Barrayar, therapy carries a stigma of presumed violent insanity. The process is also apparently quite possible to reverse, which would lead to some relaxation of the rules.
• The book Trans Sister Radio has Dana (AMAB), a college professor, get their surgery done to become female over the summer so that she can come back in the fall as female. (At the time the book was written, one was supposed to live as the other gender for a year before surgery even gets done, which Dana doesn't do. The effects of her hormone replacement therapy are also much more rapid than in real life.) The author seems to have sped up the process for drama, especially since Dana's girlfriend is a public-school teacher and thus everyone in town objects to them. At one point in the book this trope is played straight, as a doctor discusses another MtF sex change (that he didn't perform) where the man's wife decided she was a lesbian, so he had a sex change to stay with her, only to be then dumped because the wife decided she wasn't a lesbian after all.
• George Alec Effinger's Marîd Audran series takes place in the Budayeen, a Red Light District of a 23rd century Cyberpunk Muslim/Arab city. In this setting, sex changes, while expensive are still easy and commonplace. Also quite effective, though not quite to the point of being a true Gender Bender treatment. Attractive Bent-Gender is the norm, not the exception.
• Discussed heavily in Bangkok 8, where Dr. Surichai brags about his artistry in turning Ussiri into Fatima, who is perfectly feminine, but he admits that a lot of time, money, and effort went into this transformation.
• In Tales of the City, Anna Madrigal went under the knife as soon as the option became available, and by the 1970s, nobody seems to be able to tell that she is a trans woman.
• Because the Igors in the Discworld novels are crazy talented at all kinds of surgery, including plastic, this is taken to its logical extreme in Monstrous Regiment where an Igorina is not only able to pass as an Igor with almost trivial ease, but she is able to physically reconfigure herself between the curvy and beautiful Igorina shape and the ugly and hunchbacked Igor shape in a process that might as well come with Transformers sound effects, all by apparently flexing a few specific groups of muscles.
• In a metaphorical sense, the anti-transgender kids' book Johnny the Walrus is meant to be an allegory for gender transition and the harm it can cause to children, but the process happens so impossibly fast that it makes the story's message fall apart. When Johnny's mom shares videos of him pretending to be a walrus online, she is pressured to take him to a doctor so he can transition into a "real" walrus. A "Woke Doctor" forces Johnny to wear makeup, eat worms (which come in a pill bottle labeled "Wormones"), and even schedules a surgery to amputate his feet, all after a single check-up and without any input from Johnny himself. In reality, the process of medical transition, especially of a minor, would start with a several-months-long psychological evaluation during which it would quickly become evident that Johnny doesn't actually identify as a walrus (as he vocally complains about how much he hates the transition and wants it to stop).
• Warformed Stormweaver: In the second book, Jasper mentions that when she was born, she was identified as the wrong gender due to "a silly thing between my legs." There is no sign she had any trouble transitioning. However, Haruto points out that she had a supportive family and access to the best doctors and medicine money could afford, in a world that is far more medically advanced than our own. The implication being that trans children do still have various problems, she was just privileged enough to be able to avoid them.
• Invoked in Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse. An alien whose species changes from male to female with age finds out that humans don't inherently do this and says it seems stifling. The human she's talking to says actually it's quite simple to use Krakau-standard medical technology to change sexes or mix and match aspects to suit, one of the few strong positives of being the Krakau's Servant Race.

Live-Action TV

• Invoked in an episode of The Love Boat where a woman assumes that a man on the cruise is traveling for a sex change operation because he has a dress in his room (among other misunderstandings) because obviously he would be traveling and living as a man right up until he gets the operation and jumps into womanhood all at once.
• Wonder Showzen: Mother Nature cuts off her own lady parts with a knife, then puts them in a bucket. She dies as a result of attempting surgery on herself. Then another puppet has sex with the bucket of bloody lady parts. It's just that kind of show.
• Nip/Tuck had an episode with an MTF transgender person becoming male again after realizing he really felt more comfortable being a gay male. Christian Troy does the surgery ASAP, without any of the prerequisites. Even assuming that Troy is an unscrupulous and unethical doctor, sexual reassignment surgery still doesn't work that way.
• The Psych episode "Who Ya Gonna Call" has a man with three alternate personalities: a woman who wants to have SRS, a confused normal guy, and a psychopath who had murdered the doctor to prevent his imminent surgery, although he isn't taking hormones or undergoing any other precursors to SRS.
• The sitcom Soap had almost the perfect example of this trope. In an early story arc, Jodie (Billy Crystal) decides to have a sex change to please his boyfriend. Despite no real-life experience (aside from a bit of cross-dressing), no hormonal therapy, no psych evaluation, still looking like what he is (a man), he gets admitted to a hospital to have his outie turned into an innie, and they're apparently quite willing to do it. He does not go through with it.
• In the "Nobody's Perfect" episode of Karen Sisco, Karen hunts fugitive Louis DiNardo. Eventually, it turns out that Louis has had surgery to become "Lois". The timeline is a little vague but certainly not enough time has elapsed for the requirements of ethical SRS medical treatment. While easy, the surgery is also thorough (Lois specifically mentions that she no longer has a penis and that she "doesn't miss it"), and quite successful. While Louis is played by a cisgender male actor, Lois is played by Alexandra Billings, an attractive transgender actress.
• Degrassi: The Next Generation set themselves up to sidestep this whole part of the issue by putting Adam in Grade 11 at age fifteen, meaning he's on schedule to graduate from High School and therefore the show before he turns 18 and can begin physical transitioning. He was retconned into a sophomore in the second half of Season 10 and then killed off while he was still pre-hormones.
• Subverted in an episode of Private Practice, where a patient is told that their procedure will have to be delayed because Sheldon suspects that although the desire for the operation is genuine, there are psychological issues that need to be addressed to ensure everything goes smoothly. He turns out to be right when the patient attempts suicide upon being given this news, and offers to help them get through these issues so she can complete the process of becoming a woman.
• In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Profit and Lace", Quark is forced to pretend to be a woman and conduct a meeting with an important Ferengi businessman (on the subject of women's rights on Ferenginar) while his mother is out of commission. Apparently, 24th-Century technology allows them to perform a complete sex change operation on him in just a few hours and then change him back to a man the following day (presumably they kept his... male parts in bio-stasis or something). The only nod to reality is a quick gag at the very end where his hormones are temporarily out of balance, and it makes him emotional. Granted, this is Star Trek, where plastic surgery to make someone look like a different species is apparently an outpatient procedure.^note This level of technology was demonstrated in the previous DS9 episode "Apocalypse Rising", in which the main characters were surgically altered to look like Klingons, who have pronounced ridges on their foreheads, in addition to noticeably darker skin tones than some of the characters who underwent the procedure.
• In the Torchwood episode "Greeks Bearing Gifts", Jack claims that he started paying closer attention to his co-workers after a male colleague began "acting strange" right before going on several weeks leave and returning as a woman named Vanessa. Since Jack only mentions this in passing, it's possible that sex changes are handled differently in the 51st century, and it's always possible that Jack is just that oblivious.
• In the final season of Glee, Coach Beiste's gender transitioning surgery from Shannon Beiste to Sheldon Beiste took up several episodes, forcing Sam to temporarily coach the football team himself.
• That's what Barbara of Babs' Cabs the lady of The League of Gentlemen, wished to go for and she would have if it wasn't for one small, insignificant detail at the very last minute. She has been for some years into the process ("I've only been on the hormone treatments eighteen months. Me nipples are like bullets.") dressing and presenting herself as a woman, despite leaving many things that pointed to the contrary unchanged such as the voice and the hair. At the first series finale, she is about to make the big step and we last see her lying in the operation bed preparing for the moment only to be informed by the nurse that the surgeon isn't available but his replacement will take over. And then we see that Doctor Chinnery is the replacement and as the drug takes effect, everything fades away including the shears that he gets out.
• In Mendol Ikemen, the manager Saeko apparently had one. But the characters keep referring to her as a man after The Reveal, suggesting she's merely a Creepy Crossdresser (or, perhaps, that the characters are just really insensitive?)
• The Alex-to-Alexis transition in Ugly Betty took quite a long time and involved several episodes featuring Alexis wrapped up in bandages while recovering from the surgery. On the other hand, she did come out looking like Rebecca Romijn, so...
• The Orville: Topa is given female-to-male sex reassignment surgery, then has this reversed later. In both cases it appears to be a very brief, outpatient procedure that can be done in an hour so, as by the show's future this kind of surgery has advanced far beyond the much more involved process that would happen today.
• One episode of Look Around You shows off a sex change machine, which can swap a person's gender in a mere five minutes simply by spraying them with hormones. This doesn't stand out too much from the rest of the show, though, as it's a setting where Reality Is Out to Lunch.

Music

• Played with in the NOFX song "My Vagina", which is sung from the perspective of a trans woman who went through an operation. The singer complains about remembering to put the seat down when she uses the toilet and having to be more thorough in cleaning herself, but considers it worth it to be able to hang out with lesbians.

Professional Wrestling

• In the Japanese promotion FMW, we have the strange case of Gosaku, who underwent a sex change and became Asuza Kudo. Then she decided to get changed back and somehow became the half-spider Bio-monster DNA in the process. Japanese wrestling is weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeird.

Tabletop Games

• In Hc Svnt Dracones GRS is a relatively simple gene therapy procedure, however the perceived ease has made it more difficult for trans individuals who can't afford it like Cassi in the module "Hope" to find acceptance in society.
• Shadowrun: Due to advances in cybertech, biotech, and genetech, sex changes have become relatively cheap, easy to perform procedures. To the point that notable runner Plan 9 has apparently had so many sex change operations that they can't remember which sex they started out as, over the course of just a few years.
• In GURPS Bio-Tech, gender reassignment is so straightforward and thorough by TL10 that it's considered reasonably normal for a married couple who want more than one child to take turns.
• Vampire: The Masquerade: A sex change is one one the many applications of the Tzimisce's signature Viccisitude discipline, also known as fleshcrafting. The catch is that any vampire who knows Viccisitude is more likely to far more than just change a person's sexual equipment.

Video Games

• In BioShock, Dr. Steinman states in an audio diary that Adam makes it easy to change your look, sex, or race.
• Borderlands 3: Discussed. Apparently the physical process of a sex change is as easy as stepping into a Quick-Change Station (the same stations you use to re-spec your skills and change your skins), but Lorelei notes that there's a lot more to it than that. Since she's in the middle of a war, she doesn't have time for all the stuff that would come after and therefore chooses not to get the sex change yet.
• Circuits Edge, the 1989 CRPG based on George Alec Effinger's Marîd Audran series (see Literature, above), likewise features several characters who have had Easy Sex Changes (though it's not an in-game option for the player/Audran himself.)
• Discussed in Dragon Age: Inquisition. Apparently magic makes it fairly easy to physically transform one's sex. The problem is that magic is heavily stigmatized in non-Tevinter nations throughout Thedas, and even many Tevinter citizens are still incredibly wary of magic. Case in point: transgender character Krem (who is Tevinter) admits that he would never let magic go near his body to change "all the way".
• A documentary about Poison's (from Final Fight) gender identity as a trans woman jokes about her being stated to be a new half (the term for pre-op trans women with male genitalia) in Japan but post-op with female genitalia in the USA with a cartoon segment. In said segment, Poison is on a flight from Japan to America, and upon reaching American territories, a doctor rushes up to her with a syringe and surgical tools to change her sex before they land.
• With tongue firmly in cheek, one of the fake radio ads in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas advertises this sort of thing.
  • Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories features Reni Wassulmaier, the Camp Gay film director, who is on his THIRD sex change. In Reni's final mission, he undergoes a fourth sex change operation to become a woman.
• I Was a Teenage Exocolonist: Downplayed. On the one hand, befriending Tangent implies that the setting's gene therapy based process still takes a significant amount of time and spells out that her puberty is milder than that of someone born with a female body. On the other hand, the mere fact that the physical part of the process has been wrapped up by the time she's nine years old indicates that gender-affirming care significantly progressed compared to the present day.
• Adventure in The Sleazy Back Alley of Kingdom of Loathing, and you may run into a clinic where you can get a sex change for 500 Meat and 1 Adventure, and be on your way the same day. Do it often enough, and you become eligible for a trophy. What's the meat for? You don't want to know. ^note Meat is the currency of KoL. It's not used for anything in particular.
• RuneScape: The Makeover Mage will change your character's sex for a small price. One quest has a boss that can't be beaten by a male character and so you are forced to get a sex change to complete it. If you were male at the start of the quest then the quest giver will reimburse you for the sex change and give you a coupon to change you back for free when the quest is finished. The Mage themself frequently swaps their own gender.
• Saints Row: Starting with Saints Row 2, you can get a sex change for just five hundred dollars at the plastic surgeon. And not only is it cheap, but it's also instantaneous! (You can also go from white to black, or black to Hispanic, or white to Asian, green or blue, change from being skinny as a nail to morbidly obese, or anything else you can think of.) In Saints Row: The Third, this is necessary if you play as a female Boss, as one mission requires you to get plastic surgery in order to impersonate Cyrus Temple and infiltrate a ship. The 2022 reboot takes this a step further by making all body customization completely free and available from anywhere, letting you swap between male, female, and anything in-between (the game's customization options are fully gender-neutral) whenever you please
• The Sims:
  • After a patch to The Sims 4, partially or even fully changing a Sim's sex - to the tune of dramatic body and voice changes and adding/removing the ability to become pregnant and impregnate others - can be done at a mirror or dresser by any teenage-or-older Sim at any time.
  • MySims did it by simply not assigning a gender variable.
• This trope is used in a very really bizarre (and squick-inducing) way in the Japanese-exclusive game Han-Seimei Senki Andorogynus for the MSX and PC-88 at the half of the game: After the titular, male-looking, protagonist is fatally wounded, he is "rebuild" as a beautiful woman, which she doesn't look like her previous male form at all. Keep in mind his previous male form was this and her new female form is now this. The squick part came out with the fact we can see almost all of the sex-change surgery in its gory detail (especially in the PC-88 version, when the character had both his face pulled and his brain extracted from his head in order to rebuild his body; the narration also leaves nothing to the imagination).
• World of Warcraft used to charge $15 USD to change a character's gender, as part of a broader appearance change service. In a nod to their trans playerbase, as of the Shadowlands expansion, characters can now change their appearance, which includes character gender, at any in-game barber for a nominal sum of in-game gold.
• Xenoblade Chronicles X allows you to change your character's gender once you complete a side mission. Since your body isn't human but rather a mimeosome, Yardley's machine is easily capable of changing every appearance, including gender.

Webcomics

• Ballerina Mafia has a sex change performed overnight as an April Fool's joke.
• A Running Gag in College Roomies from Hell!!! is the horrifying side businesses of the Hot Dog Man, which include "quick and effective sex-change surgery".
• In Tailsteak's Forward the sociological concept of "gender" is dead^note all humans use the singular "they", while robots are "it", but if you want to change reproductive organs or other sexual characteristics it only takes a month; and the actual surgery takes only an hour. The rest is lead time for growing the replacement parts and healing after the procedure, both of which take two weeks each; still incredibly quick compared to real life.
• Aversion in High Maintenance, a comic centering on a transgender vigilante and her transitioning friend/sidekick. It might help that the writer is transgender.
• One of the many possible modifications offered by GavCorps Diversity Engineering division in Schlock Mercenary. Somewhat justified given the already established medical technology in the 31st century- quite a few characters have had new & different bodies regrown from just their severed heads. When Elf had her legs regrown, she got longer legs than before and a larger chest during the same procedure. The machine in question was military grade, with plans available on the hypernet and "fabbed" onboard. The doctor here tells about how her third pass through "the can" shifted her from male to female, giving a brief synopsis of the process; the change happens on the genetic level as well as higher ones.
• Thinking Too Much to Think Positively: In "Sexchange Student" Xan recounts how stories of gender affirming surgery she heard as a child were exaggerated in this fashion. Child Xan imagines a magical procedure called a "sex change operation" that apparently transforms men into women overnight.
• Comes up a lot, sometimes subverted, sometimes played straight, in Unicorn Jelly and other works by Jennifer Diane Reitz, who is herself transgender. Played straight in To Save Her, thanks to Kaye's Mover containing incredibly advanced medical technology. For a machine that can grant immortality and resurrect a dead human-crystal hybrid after an explosion tore her to pieces, something like a sex change is piece of cake.
• Presented mostly realistic for Venus Envy (by a transgender author). Though Zoe has been on hormone treatment for months she has yet to develop any substantial breasts and wears a padded bra instead. Plus the rest of her "equipment" is still intact, which occasionally causes problems... In fact back when there were jokes, the common gag was for Zoe to be hit with a ball in her new developments and her original equipment, reacting to both with realistic (and comedic) levels of pain.
• Spacetrawler: Chiphu is able to transition to male gender simply by going through the spaceship's medbot. The social and mental aspects of the transition also get passed over, given that there's only two other humans within light-years.
• Downplayed in NEXT!!! Sound of the Future. Body mods are common among the Ridiculously Human Robots of the setting, which includes things like breast modifications, but they still cost money. However, voice modifications are illegal, which means any trans android would have to either risk going to an unlicensed doctor or voice train to alter their voices. Gumiya was able to get surgery to flatten his chest fairly quickly and painlessly, but only once he had saved up enough money for it and convinced the surgeon to actually flatten his chest and not just give him a reduction. His facial structure is also noticeably more masculine in the present, which implies he was able to get other surgeries as well.
• #Killstagram: Considering that Doyeon had previously undergone a botched double-eyelid surgery that ruined her family and reputation, leaving nothing to her name, it's a wonder that she was able to get a sex reassignment that turned her into the very attractive Doha. The English translation removes the depictions of the transition, making it look like Doyeon became Doha through copious use of makeup.

Web Original

• The round robin story H! Flash had this very heavily implied to have happened to a character at the end of one of the chapters. The next writer, however, hated this trope and had "the operation" turn out to simply be exploratory surgery in preparation for the theoretically more realistic reassignment surgery to follow. The author of the previous chapter was not well pleased.
• In their crossover review of Myra Breckinridge, The Cinema Snob and Diamanda Hagan discuss the sex change with (unhappy to be cameoing) trans activist Zinnia Jones, who notes that a) telling Myron right before the surgery that once the penis is gone it's gone for good is rather late to be mentioning that, and b) given that Myron's still presenting as a man (complete with facial stubble) she would have thought Myron was FTM rather than MTF.
• Whateley Universe: Zig-zagged with Grace Goodkind. While the Devisor drug treatment she got was less intrusive and more effective than conventional SRS would have been, it still took several weeks, and included several additional rounds of plastic surgery to bring it to her desired form - which was not so much female but intersexed in any case. Furthermore, it came at the end of several years of gender therapy and secret use of hormone suppressants, and the treatment itself was incredibly dangerous. Grace has stated that the only reason she took such a drastic approach was that she knew how the family would react, and needed to do it as quickly and silently as possible to avoid them stopping her.

Western Animation

• The South Park episode "Mr. Garrison's Fancy New Vagina" doesn't specify how much time passes from the operation to "her" first public outing (after which he went home to Mr. Slave the very same night), but it can't have been very long. As one might expect from such an overnight sex change, Garrison never really looks much like a woman, let alone a supermodel. He does somehow get curvy hips and a pair of breasts as part of his new configuration, even though developing those typically require years on hormones and/or other surgical procedures, and they don't come automatically with GRS.
• In the Futurama episode "Bend Her", Bender becomes a woman to cheat at the Olympics. The procedure involves changing out his male oil for female oil and snipping off his antenna. The operation also involves hitting his body with a hammer until it looks vaguely feminine. To be fair, Professor Farnsworth does give Bender some disclosure, about the danger of Bender's being "trapped forever between the already ill-defined robot sexes." Plus, y'know, he's a robot.
• Aqua Teen Hunger Force
  • In Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters, this happened with Frylock. The fact that he clearly identified as a guy before the movie.
  • Frylock also performed a sex-change operation on Carl (against his will) to prevent him from getting his dick cut off. It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time. Or rather, it didn't. The exact line was something like, "I have an idea, but it's not very good." Ripped off. Ouch. It also hurts for Carl.
• A flashback in the Superjail! episode "Jailbot 2.0" shows that Alice underwent a rather quick hormonal transition to try to become an attractive woman, in hopes of finally getting to date her old warden. However, she then found out that he was a gay man, and once he discovers she changed, he fired her. Subverted a bit in that Alice is still visibly brawny, deep-voiced, and hasn't "gotten it removed" (as she states in the season 2 finale).
• Family Guy: In "Quagmire's Dad", Ida, the titular character, goes in for surgery, and comes out a few (onscreen) minutes later looking like a mannish woman. No time needed to heal, and ready to have sex with an unknowing Brian right away! Just before that, Peter proposes doing a Costume-Test Montage but with different genders instead of outfits, which (had it actually happened) would have involved Ida undergoing multiple sex reassignment surgeries in less than an hour.
• Ugly Americans: Callie gets a sex change to get a job as New York Ambassador to Atlantis. At the end of the episode, just as suddenly as she changed into a man, she's mostly back to normal, but, in bed, Mark mentions her needing "a few more surgeries." From then on out, though, she's back to normal.

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