What happens to those who don’t transition so beautifully?
I published “Are We Fabulous Yet?” in In These Times.
An excerpt:
“Fabulous” is hard to define—like porn, one knows it when one sees it. Fabulousness originates from a queer cultural history that includes John Waters’ carefully-crafted mustache, RuPaul’s high heels and singer Beth Ditto’s unabashedly fat body. “Fabulous” is deviance with a high gloss, the most stylish middle finger you could thrust at the oppression of normality.
In the new world of “body positivity,” fatness and gender-non-conformity have been interpellated into an implicit: Be fabulous or else! Dove’s “Real Beauty” ad campaign, for example, insists on affirming that you should find your true beauty—all the while telling you that you really, really need to be beautiful.
You can read the rest here. Contact me if you need a pdf.
Image: Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus (c. 1484–1486).