The legendary trans icon Calpernia Addams is a musician, actress, and activist whose work has increased transgender visibility and invented opportunities for queer and trans people—long before there were any opportunities already there. She discussed her incredible journey with the Huffington Post, including a mention of the 2008 World of Wonder reality show Transamerican Love Story:
I was lucky enough to star in the first reality dating show starring an “out” transsexual woman: “Transamerican Love Story.” It was a complete blast! World of Wonder, the production company behind so many iconic shows and media, took a big chance on me.
She continues:
I totally get that reality TV is just stupid fun, but I really wanted to do good as a representative of the trans community, too. I decided the only way to make it work was to approach it earnestly: I would go in with an open heart and open mind, look for someone nice, and try not to do anything on camera that would embarrass me or the community. I’m proud of the show, but it probably would have made more of a splash if I’d done a few drunken bikini slap-fights or slept with all the guys just off camera like they do on “Big Brother.” I didn’t end up finding a boyfriend from the show, but it was a great bonding experience for me and my best friend Andrea James. And the most enduring gift from it has been the forever-friendship that we developed with the host Alec Mapa and his family, Jamie and Zion.
Read an excerpt:
What role has music, art, and performance played in your journey to live as your authentic self?
In my early days as a showgirl in the South, trans women often performed on stage alongside drag entertainers at the various gay bars, as both an artistic outlet and as one of the few jobs in which you could work encouraged and loved among people who included you in their self-made family. If you were good, it could become a full time career, as it did for me. I was called by my female name and pronouns. My innate, natural femininity was complimented and encouraged. It was so different from how my family had all but cast me out, and how the average non-LGBT person reacted with disgust, scorn, condescension or outright violence.
It was a parallel life… we all lived alongside non-LGBT people, and moved through their world when we had to, but all of our friends were LGBT. All the bars we went to were LGBT (and pre-Internet, one had to leave one’s house to find community and friendship). The only people who loved me and treated me like a human being were LGBT. Some trans women never needed those cocooning years that the LGBT community gave me. They transition as quickly as possible and immediately move through the world as a heterosexual woman. I’ve been sneered at by a few of those, who see women on my path as failures: “Be a straight woman! Don’t ghettoize yourself in the gay bars!” Others have taught me all the things I never learned about non-LGBT society, and helped me fit in better in that new world.
The stage gave me so much confidence in myself, which I’d never have had outside the unique LGBT world of that time. I’ve always said that the stages of gay show bars are one of the only places in the world that a chubby loudmouthed effeminate boy could become a star and even a sex object. One of the only places a skeletally thin, lisping sissy could become a drop dead gorgeous bombshell. I took as much of that magic as I could, and made myself from it.
Read the rest here.
