my opinion as always is that there are two important things we'll regularly leave out of the conversation- everybody fixates on the simple look of a character (ie curves on a trans guy), but what is actually important is variety and characterisation. so, you might think "ugh another show about gay people where their arc is the bigotry they face", the issue isn't "depicting what we often really experience is bad", as some people frame it, the issue is the lack generally of variety. when a character wears a dress as a joke, it's framed as a simple aesthetic issue of the show, but it's really the inadequate characterisation to show this is a guy who likes to be dressing in a gender non-comforming way, and whether or not it results in judgement from others- heck, in school guys often did wear dresses as a joke on non-uniform days (I'm not american, it normally is a thing in my country that schools have uniforms), so having a guy wear one as a joke is possible, the world just needs variety in reasons and characters that carry those reasons in the shows, where you can tell the intent isn't to mock trans/gnc folk. going back to op's example, we need trans characters who don't actually pass, but we need variety and characters that work with however they look- guys with curves who aren't being made the simple butt of the joke, but rather are just a guy with curves, and both trans and cis guys like that (I know cis guys with hourglass figures pretty much). like op said, the aesthetics aren't bad, they simply are badly executed a lot of the time. I'm a hairy person in makeup, and it has been a relief meeting people in hospital who actually don't treat that as weird and funny, but just "dude, your eyeshadow is so well blended" and that's it, and it'd be nice if we could see that energy in tv shows more. sorry to ramble btw op.
stormborns
areudirty
izzy806
