ABSTRACT

Since the turn of the century, mainstream media representations of trans people have significantly increased, and trans celebrities have been a determining force in this cultural movement. Media interest in trans people’s lives has expanded to encompass trans children, and the trans child celebrity has become a relatively new recruit in the realm of stardom. Nevertheless, little scholarly work has attended to their specificities. Addressing this lacuna, this article examines the particularities and impacts of contemporary trans child celebrities, taking two celebrity case studies as its focus: North American trans celebrity Jazz Jennings, star of the long-running reality television programme I am Jazz; and Australian trans celebrity Evie Macdonald, who plays the central character in the Australian trans-themed children’s television series First Day. This article examines intersections of transnormativity, gender norms, and discourses of ‘childhood innocence’ as they manifest in media representations of Jennings and Macdonald. We argue that there is a problematic tendency for mainstream media to present these trans child celebrities in transnormative frames; nevertheless, evident in these representations is the potential for broader shifts from transnormative to transformative approaches to representing trans child celebrities, and therefore to how they shape public discourse regarding trans people’s lives.

摘要

自世纪之交以来，主流媒体对跨性别者的报道显着增加，跨性别名人已成为这场文化运动的决定性力量。媒体对跨性别者生活的兴趣已经扩大到跨性别儿童，跨性别儿童名人已成为明星领域相对较新的成员。然而，很少有学术工作关注它们的特殊性。针对这一空白，本文以两个名人案例研究为重点，研究了当代跨性别儿童名人的特殊性和影响：北美跨性别名人爵士詹宁斯，长期播出的真人秀节目我是爵士; 澳大利亚跨性别名人埃维·麦克唐纳 (Evie Macdonald) 在澳大利亚跨性别主题儿童电视连续剧“第一天”中扮演主角。本文考察了跨规范性、性别规范和“童年纯真”话语在詹宁斯和麦克唐纳的媒体表现中的交集。我们认为，主流媒体在跨规范框架中呈现这些跨性别儿童名人存在问题倾向；然而，在这些表现形式中，很明显可以从代表跨性别儿童名人的跨规范方法到变革方法进行更广泛的转变，从而改变他们如何塑造有关跨性别者生活的公共话语。