Cheri Ripley, a longtime employee of the American Samoan Community College in the college bookstore. Cheri is a fa'afafine but having access to hormones and plastic surgery, most of American Samoan fa'afafine are able to have gender reassignment if they so choose unlike their counterparts in Samoa. The Samoan word fa'afafine translates as 'in the manner of woman'. In many Samoan families when parents think that their sons act like girls, they raise them as females and they may take on the third gender identity, fa'afafine. In Samoan culture fa'afafine are generally accepted and not stigmatised and it's not uncommon for some parents to decide to raise a boy as a girl, even if the boy does not behave in a feminine manner.