On Trans* Beauty Contestants
Filed By Mercedes Allen | March 29, 2012 6:30 PM
http://www.bilerico.com/2012/03/on_trans_beauty_contestants.php or
http://dentedbluemercedes.wordpress.com/2012/03/29/on-trans-beauty-contestants/I have to admit, as far as trans issues go, beauty pageants are way down my list of priorities. At a time when it's difficult to access doctors willing to treat trans people for the flu let alone assist in transition, when even something as simple as basic human rights inclusion remains uncertain, and when I still struggle to find answers to questions about which shelters are willing to take in trans men or women, Miss Universe seems an alternate reality, in many ways.
The delisting of health care funding for genital reassignment surgery in 2009 jenna-Talackova.jpgmade it difficult or impossible for many Albertans to reach a pivotal benchmark that would make beauty pageants (mainstream ones, anyway) a real possibility, let alone allow the documentation change that would enable legal congruence in their everyday lives. I've always been inclined to stand up for the "cause un-celebre"... pretty white people (and I mean that non-critically, as someone who is sometimes identified as such) usually have plenty of folks willing to stand up for them.
Too, I'm not all that comfortable with the idea of reinforcing the beauty myth, the gender expectations and stereotypes - to some of us, a kind of lookist oppression that keep women self-conscious, self-deprecating and at times too subjected to assert what we need. The way we devalue people based on their looks is devastatingly cruel. An "un-pretty" person aspiring to compete in such a pageant would easily receive the same kind of crude and derogatory remarks that a trans contestant does, and probably worse.
