A recent issue of In Touch Weekly presents Bruce Jenner sporting obviously fake, drawn-on makeup, his head on a woman’s body. The headline causing stirs boldly pronounces, “My life as a woman.”
In Touch Weekly is hardly the first tabloid or celebrity gossip magazine to use the aging Olympian’s long hair and multiple bouts of plastic surgery against him in this way; however, the apparent doctoring of the photo coupled with the headline that places the controversy falsely from Jenner’s point of view makes this recent invention much darker and sinister than others. Its sheer ridiculousness brings into focus the unethical fabrication that media outlets use to contribute to the mistreatment of transgender people.
The media and the public who buy and read this pseudo-news support, and thus propagate, a culture that is intolerant and harsh toward those who were born or choose to be different.
The LGBT community was quick to express its outrage, and rightfully so. We should all be outraged that this is the social climate in which we must survive.
We all must know that this treatment is really hurtful to transgender communities, and that it is definitely never OK to mock someone’s trans-status. Being bullied and publicly shamed for being transgender is simply horrible and a social injustice that is intensified as we encounter it whenever we open our web browser or stand in line at the grocery store. These daily injustices may appall us, but we do nothing to speak out against them and allow media outlets to treat a group of people like they are just fodder for sensational headlines and magazine sales.
This “transphobia” has haunting parallels to propaganda that has been used to attack other historically disadvantaged groups in the past.
Being homosexual has become much more mainstreamed and accepted in recent years in the United States, while transgendered people continue to be ostracized and misunderstood. This is proven by how many people outside of the LGBT community refuse or just don’t care enough to learn the distinctions.
People need to feel safe enough to be able to live as their authentic selves. The stigmas against transgendered people cause them to be ostracized as they face discrimination from employers, housing agencies, the military and medical providers. Not only that, but they must endure harassment constantly, and, in many cases, violence. Many live in poverty, and the transgender community has an outrageously high suicide rate.
Sometimes it seems as if the tides are changing, and then things such as this magazine cover make it glaringly obvious that we aren’t as tolerant and accepting as some may think. For example, on Jan. 20, President Barack Obama said “transgender” during his State of the Union Address. This was the first time in history that a president has used “transgender” in a State of the Union address. Laverne Cox was on the cover of Time magazine in 2014, and tickets to her speech on campus were highly sought after when she came to NC State last fall. The Amazon original series “Transparent,” which chronicled the life of a family with a transgender father, won a Golden Globe this year.
However, the little victories don’t amount to much when we still have the cover of a grocery store tabloid featuring a man’s head placed on a woman’s body and a headline designed to shock people and belittle transgendered people in general.
“As Americans, we respect human dignity… That’s why we defend free speech, and advocate for political prisoners, and condemn the persecution of women, or religious minorities, or people who are gay, bisexual, or transgender,” Obama said in his State of the Union address.
We must defend the transgender community in order for us all to attain the basic human rights that we deserve. I also ask that if Bruce Jenner, or anyone else you know, decides to come out as transgendered, that you publicly and privately support their decision to become their more genuine selves.
