I'm beginning to like my "Sunday ease-ins," as I call my practice of posting frivolously funny or insightful things Sunday night. The purpose is to get everyone ready for the weekly nonsense we have to deal with via the Trump Administration. Tonight is slightly serious because it comes with a small complaint:
Besides the fact that I would like to see coming out scenes involving the bisexual and transgender community, why does television portray young folks coming out as cute, whispy, or basically attractive. They tend to be "too pretty" for me.
A lot of us who come out aren't exactly considered as "models of beauty." Hell, when I was young, I had bad skin and bad hair, to say nothing about a unusually skinny frame and eyeglasses so big that they could double as a helmet. And I haven't even begun to talk about my dark skin tone, which was looked at as a negative. I would love to see television shows rely on normal, awkward folks coming out rather than folks who look so pretty, you have a hard time believing that they sit on toilets.
Besides the fact that I would like to see coming out scenes involving the bisexual and transgender community, why does television portray young folks coming out as cute, whispy, or basically attractive. They tend to be "too pretty" for me.
A lot of us who come out aren't exactly considered as "models of beauty." Hell, when I was young, I had bad skin and bad hair, to say nothing about a unusually skinny frame and eyeglasses so big that they could double as a helmet. And I haven't even begun to talk about my dark skin tone, which was looked at as a negative. I would love to see television shows rely on normal, awkward folks coming out rather than folks who look so pretty, you have a hard time believing that they sit on toilets.
2 comments:
I was struck by the fact that so many of the coming out events were traumatic, emotional, sad, or met with denial, rejection or violence. I hope this will be less prevalent as we become more and more visible. I remember Lance Loud in American Family, 1970-ish. --- Probably the first gay person on TV.
. I'd make the general point that Hollywood tends to hire actors - almost always with women, most of the time with men - who fit conventional standards of beauty for the leads in their films and TV shows. Even someone who became a star while defying these standards around weight, like Melissa McCarthy, wound up going on a crash diet, possibly in response to cruel reviews of her films calling her ugly and suggesting she was going to have a heart attack the next day. Lena Dunham is hardly obese, but I've seen Facebook threads responding to her nude scenes showing off her very moderately chubby body as though she weighed 350 pounds (probably from guys who aren't exactly Matt Damon or Ryan Gosling lookalikes.)
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