Thursday, April 16, 2009

Blake Lively Feels Like A Transwoman?

Gossip Girl's Blake Lively recently did a photo shoot for the May issue of Allure magazine which will be hitting the stands on April 21.

During the interview for the upcoming magazine cover Lively confessed 'she feels “like a tranny a lot of the time.”

The 21 year old star then expounded on her remarks by saying “I don’t know, I’m…large? They put me in six-inch heels, and I tower over every man. I’ve got this long hair and lots of clothes and makeup on. I just feel really big a lot of the time, and I’m surrounded by a lot of tiny people. I feel like a man sometimes.”

Blake, I'm 6'2" and proud of it. Some of those shorter women you tower over would love to have the beauty and 5'10" height you were blessed with.

If you really want to know what being a transwoman is Hollywood is like, call up Calpernia Addams, Alexandra Billings, Aleshia Brevard, Jazzmun and Candis Cayne sometime. I'll bet those women could give you a PhD level 'ejumacation' on the subject. I'd also be willing to bet that Candis and the other Hollywood transwomen would remind you they aren't getting calls to do photo spreads like you are for fashion magazines or their pictures plastered all over the place either.

And let's face it, even with your declaration notwithstanding, not many people question what genitalia you pack in your panties like they do transwomen even after decades of transition.

But at the same time, just as I want people to take me and other transpeeps at face value when we articulate our feelings, I'm extending the same courtesy to Blake Lively. I'm not walking in her pumps, so I respectfully take her word for it that was her emotional state at the time she said those comments.

But next time, please refrain from using the word 'tranny'. While I feel you in terms of the emotions you expressed, the T-word coming from the lips of a cisgender woman is still a little problematic.

1 comment:

whatsername said...

I get what she was trying to say but wow she couldn't have said it worse.

I've felt the same way before, not because I'm tall so much as that I just didn't feel how I thought a "feminine woman" should feel. I felt too "big", like she said.

But I associated that with feeling like a "guy", not transgender, that would have never even crossed my mind. I really have to wonder where she got the idea to articulate that feeling in that way...