Packs of screaming girls and young fans asking for pictures are now an everyday occurrence for Blake Kerwin.
The 17-year-old is a Justin Bieber look-a-like and these moments do more than just provide the college student with a taste of what life is like for his idol.
For Blake the recognition provides him with hope and a lightness that has been missing from his life - for the teenager was actually born a girl named Rebecca.
His decision to switch gender and live his life as a boy has seen him on and off the police protection list for five years due to a campaign of abuse that has seen him beaten unconscious and his house pelted with rocks, snowballs and metal poles. He has even attempted to kill himself in a bid to escape his tormentors.
But Blake said yesterday he finds comfort in impersonating Bieber, 20, and that the Canadian pop star’s music has given him the confidence to be himself.
It is believed Blake is Britain’s first transgender Bieber look-a-like.
A person is transgender if they believe the body they were born with does not match how they feel as an individual. Blake said he has known he was a boy from a very young age and has now decided to undergo surgery and hormone treatment to change his body from that of a girl to that of a boy.
He said: ‘I was born a boy but my body reflects differently because I’ve not had the op yet. I knew at quite a young age because I was always copying my brother and doing what he was doing and I just didn’t feel right.’
His mother Sharon, 52, also noticed early on that something didn’t seem right. She said: ‘I knew there was something because I would try and dress him up, not thinking and doing his hair with girly things.
He would say I don’t like this and I would tell him it looks good and he would go along with it but he was never really happy. I knew there was something but I could never put my finger on it. Even then he would come home and take the girl clothes off and put on football, Manchester United, stuff.’
After coming across Bieber on YouTube when he was 12, Blake, who lives with Sharon and his older brother Bradley in Wigan, said he felt an immediate connection with the singer and his lyrics.
He picked out the song Believe as summing up how Bieber inspires him, highlighting the words ‘It didn’t matter how many times I got knocked on the floor’ because: ‘I’ve had physical abuse and hate but Justin’s words bring me back up again’.
If anything though, this is good because it will raise a little bit of awareness about the transgender community, so slay . I hope he gets the body he wants soon and that his transitioning won't be too hard.
and the face looks photoshopped onto the body in all these pics 
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. I hope he gets the body he wants soon and that his transitioning won't be too hard.
