Beauty Break: Trans Day of Visibility

by Nathaniel R

Jamie Clayton of Sense8 fame photographed by Austin Hargrave

Since today is Trans Day of Visibility let's gaze at some trans actors. There's been an explosion of visibility for the community in the past ten years or so in showbusiness both in front of cameras and behind them. When we were growing up there were only a few out gay and lesbian celebrities but virtually no trans celebrities and now there are hundreds of queer actors working including trans actors. Even a couple of househould names. Let's be grateful for progress even in a world filled with many injustices and still rampant discrimination of the LGBTQ+ community.

After the jump a dozen semi-randomly selected trans actors (so don't say we missed someone. We're happy to report that there are many we missed but we're on a deadline)... 

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Blueprints: "A Fantastic Woman"

To celebrate Pride Month, every week of June Jorge has been highlighting the script of a movie that focuses on a different letter of the LGBT acronym. For “T”, the last installment in this miniseries, he looks at the most recent Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film.

The LGBT experience encompasses all types of people, genders, nationalities, economic statuses, and every intersectionality in between. It doesn’t look one single way, and it certainly doesn’t feel like one, either. As the canon of queer cinema being to expand beyond one or two points of view, the ways in which film reflects this experience starts to get as diverse and colorful as the community itself.

So let’s take a look at A Fantastic Woman, the Oscar-winning Chilean film about a trans woman dealing with the loss of her partner, and the overwhelming grief and pressure that come with it. While it is a sobering portrait of a trans experience, it also effectively uses surreal imagery to portray the particular moments that Marina is going through. Let’s dive into two of them. 

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Showbiz History: God bless Lily St. Cyr 🎵... and Joan Crawford

Here's what happened on this day, June 3rd, in showbiz related history...

1910 Paulette Goddard born in Long Island. She becomes a star in the 1930s and 1940s making multiple films with Charlie Chaplin and Bob Hope among many others and is Oscar nominated for So Proudly We Hail (1943). Famously screen tests and is publicly considered as Scarlett O'Hara but loses the role to then unknown Vivien Leigh.

1918 BURLESQUE CENTENNIAL ~ Stripping star Lili St Cyr was born on this day. Her short lived film career kicked off with B movie Son of Sinbad (1955) but mostly she was famous for burlesque performances. She's name-checked in the famous 'Floor Show' number in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1976) with Susan Sarandon warbling "god bless Lili St Cyr 🎵"...

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Red Carpet Lineup Finale: 41 more looks from the 90th Oscars !

by Nathaniel R

Best Dressed

Who were your best dressed on Oscar night? If I had to do a top 10 it'd be these 4 pictured above -- Greta Gerwig, Zendaya, Daniela Vega, and Betty Gabriel -- plus Nicole Kidman, Viola Davis, supporting actress nominees Janney & Manville, and Taraji P Henson who's never looked sexier. 

37 more looks coming at'cha after the jump starting with Best Dressed Men...

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The Oscars were gay and Latino, just like I am

by Jorge Molina

A couple of months ago I wrote a piece for this site about feeling seen, in a way I hadn't before, onscreen. Coco and Call Me by Your Name perfectly captured two different parts of my identity. Fast forward to Sunday’s 90th Academy Awards. Both of those movies deservedly won statues. More surprisingly a never ending parade of queer and Latino moments made me feel, yet again, that someone like myself has a place in the biggest stage in the world...

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