Top 10 Pop-culture Gender-benders
We’re not going to focus on the negative portrayals of transsexuality, like in PSYCHO and SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and the thankfully cancelled WORK IT television sitcom. And we’re not focusing on the history of transitioning stories that takes us all the way back to the 1930s when an intersexed, Bohemia-born Zdenka Koubkova went from female running/jumping champion to male cabaret performer. Nor are we going to look at transgender issues in the news, like when the Girls Scouts of Colorado let their first transgender girl into the organization last year or when, two years ago, a federal court ruled in favor of a woman who was fired from her job after coming out as trangender. Nope. In honor of TRANSGENERATION coming back to the Sundance Channel, we’re looking at the top ten positively positive, purely pop-culture gender-bending movies, moments and movers & shakers of the past few decades:
10. "Lola" by the Kinks
Considered one of "the greatest 500 songs of all time" by Rolling Stone magazine, 1970's "Lola" dealt with a straight man falling for a transgendered woman without jokes or judgment: "Girls will be boys and boys will be girls / It's a mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world except for Lola / Lo-lo-lo-lo-Lola."
TRANSGENERATION is back on Sundance Channel! Tune in Tuesdays 10p and stay connected with the four transgender college students.9. RuPaul
Perhaps it was RuPaul's loveableness that made 1990s America embrace him with both arms. There's a seamlessness, a naturalness to his drag-queenness that has kept him in the pop culture limelight for twenty-years, with five albums, two hosted TV shows, countless movie and TV appearances, and even a MAC modeling contract under his bedazzled belt.
And he didn't care if you referred to him as he or she. As he wrote in his autobiography: "You can call me he. You can call me she. You can call me Regis and Kathie Lee; I don't care! Just as long as you call me."
Runner-up: Amanda Lepore.
TRANSGENERATION is back on Sundance Channel! Tune in Tuesdays 10p and stay connected with the four transgender college students.
Author: Em & Lo8. The movie BOYS DON'T CRY
There are a ton of decent movies which involve issues of transsexuality -- probably a lot more than you think, but frankly still not enough. Many of them involve men in drag and focus on the straight characters' points of view, which unfortunately keeps the transgendered person squarely in the detached and alienated category of "other."
One of the most successful, almost mainstream movies to really get inside the head (and body) of its transgendered character was 1999's BOYS DON'T CRY, based on the real life of Brandon Teena, an intersexed teen who identified and lived as a man until he was beaten, raped and killed by male acquaintances after they learned of Teena's female anatomy. The film got critical acclaim, won 43 awards (including Oscar's Best Actress for Hilary Swank's portrayal of Teena), and was nominated for 27 others (including Oscar's Best Supporting Actress for Choe Sevigny's portrayal of Teena's girlfriend).
By telling a heartfelt star-crossed love story that people related to on a human level, it made a convincing case for wider acceptance and tolerance of sexual diversity -- in an intimate way no film had before.
Runner-up: The Crying Game (stay tuned for our Top 10 list of Transgender Films)7. Ellen DeGeneres
It's not just that she's a successful lesbian celebrity. It's that she's America's sweetheart and she runs a media empire that almost rivals Oprah and she's legally married to a typically femininely gorgeous Hollywood actress and she dresses in androgynous clothing with extremely sensible shoes (this last point being the most significant and impressive).
TRANSGENERATION is back on Sundance Channel! Tune in Tuesdays 10p and stay connected with the four transgender college students.
Author: Em & Lo6. Buck Angel
You know a cultural issue has become accepted and mainstream (or at least is on its way to becoming accepted and mainstream) when it gets its own successful porn star. Buck Angel, a.k.a. "The Man with the Pussy," is a transsexual adult film producer and performer, the only FTM one who's ever won AVN's Transsexual Performer of the Year Award.
TRANSGENERATION is back on Sundance Channel! Tune in Tuesdays 10p and stay connected with the four transgender college students.
Author: Em & Lo5. Gender-bending super models
Maybe it was inevitable that the fashion industry would be a safe haven for gender-benders, since 90-pound female models are inescapably androgynous (look ma, no boobs!) Recent and notable models include the androgynous Andrej Pejic, the transsexual Lea T, and the lesbian Jenny Shimizu (who's had relationships with Madonna, Angelina Jolie, and Ione Skye) -- all of whom appeared in the fabulous gender-bending promo for last year's GMHC - FASHION FORWARD 2011 fundraiser for the Gay Men's Health Crisis. As RuPaul would say, they work it.
TRANSGENERATION is back on Sundance Channel! Tune in Tuesdays 10p and stay connected with the four transgender college students.
Author: Em & Lo4. Chaz Bono on Dancing with the Stars
Conservatives freaked out last year when this popular prime-time ABC show dared to have Cher and Sonny Bono's FTM son as a contestant. "How will I explain this to my kids?" they cried (without once explaining how they explain to their kids why every female dancer on this "wholesome family" show is half-naked performing some act of simulated fellatio on her partner). But the biggest scandal turned out to be how such a bad dancer could make it so far in the competition. Apparently, America just liked rooting for this pretty average dude as the underdog.
TRANSGENERATION is back on Sundance Channel! Tune in Tuesdays 10p and stay connected with the four transgender college students.
Author: Em & Lo3. "Middlesex" by Jeffrey Eugenides
This 2002 bestselling novel, centered around an intersex protagonist, sold over three million copies; won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction; received the Ambassador Book Award, Spain's Santiago de Compostela Literary Prize, and the Great Lakes Book Award; was featured in Oprah's book club in 2007; and was called one of the best books of 2002 by The New York Times and The L.A. Times and Entertainment Weekly. You go, girl/boy/other!
TRANSGENERATION is back on Sundance Channel! Tune in Tuesdays 10p and stay connected with the four transgender college students.
Author: Em & Lo2. Trans-Kids
Who could forget that adorable Halloween pic of the 5-year-old boy dressed as Daphne from Scooby Doo that made the rounds on the Internet in 2010? While we weren't so sure the mother should have posted her son's face online without his consent (which he can't really give as a five year old), there's no denying how adorable he was -- and how spot on his mom was in her unconditional love for and defense of her son, her unveiling of the "concern" from other moms as adult bullying, and her logical reasoning: " I am not worried that your son will grow up to be an actual ninja so back off."
In recent years the media has covered several cases of gender dysphoria in young children. One of the best, most moving examples of this was the "This American Life" story called "Tom Girls" about Lilly and Thomasina, two 8-year-olds born boys but destined to be girls who became best friends when their families attended a conference on transgender parenting a few years ago in Seattle. Well-worth a listen.
Before that, ABC News's 20/20 did a series of touching stories on kids born with the wrong body, Jazz and Riley. And then last year ABC News' Nightline covered German pop singer Kim Petras, who was deemed the world's youngest transsexual after undergoing female hormone treatments at 12 and then gender reassignment surgery at 16.
TRANSGENERATION is back on Sundance Channel! Tune in Tuesdays 10p and stay connected with the four transgender college students.
Author: Em & Lo1. Lady Gaga as a Drag King
Many celebrities have been champions of LGBT rights issues, but no one has run with them quite as far as Lady Gaga. In a world where female stars are expected to be beautiful, fashionable and feminine 24/7, it took serious balls...or rather labes for Gaga to go full-on drag king -- complete with five o'clock shadow -- for her performance of "You and I" at the 2011 MTV Music Video Awards -- staying in dirty, foul-mouthed character the entire night. The fact that she won for "Best Female Performer" while dressed as a man was just icing on the gender-bending cake.
TRANSGENERATION is back on Sundance Channel! Tune in Tuesdays 10p and stay connected with the four transgender college students.
Author: Em & Lo
