“I Am…”: Caitlyn Jenner, Jazz Jennings and the cultural politics of transgender celebrity

Abstract

In the twenty-first century, the visibility of transgender celebrities appears greater than ever. Whilst scholarly work has analysed, and continues to analyse, representations of trans celebrities, this research has largely approached these figures as significant because they make transgender visible, rather than the more specific fact that they are celebrities. This article interrogates the role of discourses and tropes of celebrity itself in enabling particular incarnations of trans subjectivity to become intelligible within popular culture. Focusing upon the examples of Caitlyn Jenner and Jazz Jennings, two of the most widely-circulated trans celebrities in the contemporary moment, I argue that the tropes of authenticity, self-reflexivity, self-revelation and manufacture central to celebrity culture, have functioned as core discursive frameworks through which Jenner and Jennings' transgender identities have been rationalised within the popular media. In becoming legible as transgender through celebrity, I argue that Jenner and Jennings' media narratives have worked to confer recognisability to a highly limited model of transgender life, fraught with exclusions around race and gender normativity.

Think outside the book: Transformative justice using children’s literature in educational settings

“…While I am Jazz positively models the transition of Jazz with the support of family and friends, it inadvertently stereotypes gender roles and expressions along a binary, unless there is a critical conversation about how the story is particular to Jazz's experience as a transgender child. As Michael Lovelock (2017) notes, the visibility of trangender people in the media is largely due to the more specific fact that they are celebrities as much as they identify as transgender, which includes Jazz Jennings, Laverne Cox, Janet Mock, and Caitlyn Jenner. The book, while speaking of the transgender experience, reaffirms gendered binaries with lines such as Jazz "having a boy body in a girl brain," and liking pink, singing, make-up, dress-up, and mermaids.…”

Dangerous Education: The Occupational Hazards of Teaching Transgender

“…This article was presented as ‘liberal’ commentary within the paper’s Education section and utilised a mocking tone as a way of undermining both the transgender initiative and the tabloid reporting that had occurred the day before. The five national articles used as data for this article were analysed using content analysis, and exploring prevailing discourses (Fairclough, 2003; Lovelock, 2017).…”

Unlearning gender—Toward a critical communication trans pedagogy

“…2. For further reading, see Serano (2016), Booth (2011, Lester (2016) Miller (2016), and Lovelock (2017.…”