What's With Trans Women and Glamour? | Re ContraPoints Opulence | BreadBusting #23

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Today, I am going to continue to respond to the latest ContraPoints video, titled Opulence. This is part two of three, and my focus today will be on her point about trans women and glamour. As I understand it, Natalie seems to be seeing glamour through the lens that it is the portrayal of the fantasy of a lavish lifestyle. And to be fair, she has a point. But I think it's more complex, and therefore we should take a closer examination of this idea, as I often like to do.

Let's start with the fact that some trans women love glamour, even if some don't. In fact, according to my observations, proportionally more trans women love glamour, compared to non-trans women, something I will discuss again later. Natalie is a good example of a trans woman who loves glamour, as is Gigi Gorgeous, who Natalie often likes to mention. Natalie then discussed the political dimensions of it, hypothesizing that far-left trans women could be getting frustrated at her love of glamour for political or ideological reasons, drawing on quotes from DJ Sprinkles, as read out by Theryn's voice in the video. However, I think we should note that many trans women with a wide range of politics are of the glamour type, ranging from the moderate Republican Blaire White, to staunch progressives like Natalie, even to Stef Sanjati, who as I understand it holds very far-left political views. Therefore, the love of glamour does not represent a political type among trans women, and I guess among women in general.

However, I think that glamour could be associated with certain cultural ideas or idealized social types. For example, when I see a fully glammed up person, no matter what their gender is, I often think of them as having a Hollywood style mindset, and it turns out they often do. Larger than life, and bold in experimenting. My other instinctive feeling about glamorous people is that they tend to have less traditional views on a wide variety of things compared to myself. And 99% of the time I would be right. Natalie, Gigi Gorgeous, and Stef Sanjati are all clearly culturally not very traditional. And then, there's also the fact that the glamour style is less common in more conservative areas, for example rural America. On the other hand, I think it's interesting that Natalie raised the fact that far-left trans women are most often not interested in glamour either. DJ Sprinkles, whose quotes were used by Natalie in the video, has very radical cultural ideas. While she shares the traditionalist's aversion to excessive glamour, she doesn't share any of the traditionalist worldview. In fact, her negative views about families and family values scare me. In the quotes used in the video, she justified her disinterest in glamouros LGBT icons using social class theory, but I suspect for many far-left trans women rejecting glamour could also be a cultural thing. Throughout history, those who see themselves as revolutionaries generally don't embrace glamour. Being a revolutionary is a pretty gritty thing in general, and roughness is often part of that culture. For the traditionalist, rejecting glamour is about being down to Earth and family orientated; for the revolutionary, rejecting glamour is about being rough and facing up to the toughness of the world.

My point is, the embrace of glamour or lack thereof is often a function of internalized cultural image, that is, the ideal of how a person sees themselves. This could be related to politics in some, but probably not most, circumstances. For trans women, this association between style and self-image may become particularly intense, which I think could explain why the full expression of the Hollywood glamour style is overrepresented among trans women. As we grew up, many of us built up our image of what we want to be like, but were unable to actually portray that image. Therefore, when we actually can do so, it feels like reclaiming what has been denied to us. As Natalie said, portraying glamour can be part of this reclamation for some people. But equally, for those of us who don't see ourselves in the images of the glamouros Hollywood types for whatever reason, this reclaimation would occur without embracing glamour, or even explicitly rejecting glamour. As someone whose idealistic image is that of a family person, perhaps one day a successful small business owner, and an outspoken independent thinker, Hollywood style glamour is clearly outside of my self image. Glamour doesn't suit my identity. However, I respect that other trans women embrace glamour because they have a different ideal identity, and portraying glamour could be part of their self actualization. Again, this is also valid. I think we just need to learn to respect each other.