TIPPED
Laverne Cox and Chella Man individually break barriers and shatter ceilings with every step in their careers. So, it’s a slightly arresting moment to witness them both meeting for the first time. Though the Emmy-nominated actress best known for her role on Orange Is the New Black quite literally paved the way for the 21-year-old genderqueer model who made his acting debut in the DC Universe’s superhero series, Titans, last year, the pair is surely far beyond what our transcestors (or transgender ancestors) could’ve imagined.
It’s a sharp, early winter afternoon deep in Brooklyn when Man arrives at our joint cover shoot and greets Cox, who has been on set all morning, dancing to Beyoncé and belting out operatic riffs as hair and makeup enhance her natural beauty. After some individual shots are taken in Man’s first look—a sage-green Miu Miu bustier and matching skirt—the time comes for the pair to pose together. Cycling through a number of poses, Man instinctually gets to one knee. Gazing up to Cox, he exultingly extends his arms in her direction, at once bowing to and reveling in her eminence. It’s both corny and endearingly awkward, yet necessarily reverential. After all, he is one of the newest trans actors on the scene. I can’t help but think that it’s exactly what he should be doing because, to put a spin on Martha Munizzi’s popular gospel hit, he was created—as we all were—to make her praise glorious.
Ironically, “glorious” is how Cox, 47, describes meeting Man to me a week later at the West Hollywood SoHo House in Los Angeles.
“I could cry. I really could…because I don't want to have children. But I kind of feel like these are my babies,” she says of the new generation of visible trans folks in Hollywood more than half her age. For many of them, she’s quite possibly the first trans person they saw on television.
“Not that I’ve even met them or whatever, but it's like, this is the dream. This has been the dream for me,” she continues, fighting back the tears. “The only reason I did reality television is [because] I was consuming media years ago, [and when] I watched The Real World and Making the Band, I was like, ‘What would it be like if a trans person were on here?’ Now we are, and it's just glorious.”
PRE-TRANSMISSION
Much ado has been made about the current increase in transgender visibility on and off screen, often ignoring, or at the very least not acknowledging, the troubled history of trans representation. Early trans characters were almost exclusively played by cisgender actors and often fell into the “cross-dressing killer” trope, as employed in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 Oscar-nominated flick Psycho. (Because of a difference in the language of the time, “trans” wasn’t often a term used to describe members of the community. “Crossdresser” or “female impersonator” was more common.) Or they villainize trans identity, presenting it as a tool for manipulation, deception, and confusion: Michael Sarne’s Myra Breckinridge, a 1970 comedy based on Gore Vidal's 1968 novel of the same name, starred cis actress Raquel Welch as a trans woman who, after having gender confirmation surgery in Copenhagen, lies her way into the lives of a heterosexual couple that she breaks up. Myra ends up sexually assaulting the man and running over the woman before she wakes from the apparent dream as Myron. Then in 1994’s Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, trans women are made to be vomit-inducing beings as, in one scene, Jim Carrey’s Ace throws up after discovering the trans identity of a character he’s kissed.
But it wasn’t all bad. In a 1977 episode of Norman Lear’s titled “Once a Friend,” Sherman Hemsley’s George meets up with a former Army buddy who is now a woman named Edie, played by cis actress Veronica Redd. While not void of some cringe-worthy jokes, the episode is ultimately, adapted from John Berendt’s nonfiction novel of the same name, trans actress and performer The Lady Chablis plays a version of herself (also present in the book) opposite Kevin Spacey and John Cusack. The role allowed her to become one of the first drag performers to be accepted by a mass audience.
