Proving authentic femininity: transnormative health narratives in television

ABSTRACT

Through a rhetorical analysis of Pose, Euphoria, and Supergirl, the author explores the transnormative health narrative that evolves from these popular series. She argues that the representations simultaneously bring awareness and positive visibility to the issues facing transgender communities while reinforcing a false and harmful gender binary. By constructing health narratives from media representation, this research uses public discourse and imagery to offer a comprehensive analysis of how media informs social realities that dictate medical access. She argues that trans representations of health invite both a resilience against and an assimilation toward hegemonic dictations of gender transition and transgender identity.

KEYWORDS:

• Transnormative
• health narrative
• transgender
• gender binary
• critical cultural rhetoric

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Jamie C. Capuzza and Leland G. Spencer, “Regressing, Progressing, or Transgressing on the Small Screen? Transgender Characters on U.S. Scripted Television Series,” Communication Quarterly 65, no. 2 (2017): 214–30; Andre Cavalcante, “Breaking into Transgender Life: Transgender Audiences’ Experiences with “First of Its Kind” Visibility in Popular Media,” Communication, Culture & Critique 10, no. 3 (2017): 538–55; Joanna McIntyre, “‘They’re So Normal I Can’t Stand It’: I Am Jazz, I Am Cait, Transnormativity, and Trans Feminism,” in Orienting Feminism, (Springer, 2018); Richard Mocarski et al., “The Rise of Transgender and Gender Diverse Representation in the Media: Impacts on the Population,” Communication, Culture & Critique 12, no. 3 (2019): 416–33; Sarah F. Price, Sim Butler, Richard Mocarski, Robin King, and Deborah Hope, “Transgender Representation on Television and the Construction of Transnormativity: Whiteness, Wealth, and Deviance,” in Transgender Representation on Television, ed. M. P. Riedel (New York: Peter Lang, 2022); Victoria E. Thomas, “Gazing at ‘It’: An Intersectional Analysis of Transnormativity and Black Womanhood in Orange Is the New Black,” Communication, Culture & Critique (2019); Florian Hendrik Jakob Vanlee, Frederik Dhaenens, and Sofie Van Bauwel, “Indifference and Queer Television Studies: Distinguishing Norms of Existence and Coexistence,” Critical Studies in Media Communication (2020): 1–15.

2 Mocarski et al., “TGD Representation in Media”; Price et al., “Transgender Representation on Television”; Vanlee et al., “Indifference and Queer Television Studies”: R. Gossett, E.A. Stanley, and J. Burton, Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility (MIT Press, 2017); Benny LeMaster, “Discontents of Being and Becoming Fabulous on Ru Paul's Drag U: Queer Criticism in Neoliberal Times,” Women's Studies in Communication 38, no. 2 (2015): 167–86; Sarah F. Price, “Nia Nal the Super Girl: Transgender Representation and Body Image,” The Popular Culture Studies Journal (2019): 85; Sarah F. Price, Sim Butler, and Richard Mocarski. “‘The World Wants Us Dead’: Stigma and the Social Construction of Health in Pose.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 38, no. 4 (2021/08/08 2021): 307–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2021.1934503.

3 Gossett et al., Trap Door, 44.

4 Natalie R Holt et al., “Trans Collaborations Clinical Check-in (Tc3): Initial Validation of a Clinical Measure for Transgender and Gender Diverse Adults Receiving Psychological Services,” Behavior Therapy (2019); Natalie R Holt et al., “The Provider Perspective on Behavioral Health Care for Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Individuals in the Central Great Plains: A Qualitative Study of Approaches and Needs,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry (2019).

5 Holt et al., “Clinical Check-in”; Holt et al., “Provider Perspective”; Natalie R Holt et al., “First Impressions Online: The Inclusion of Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Identities and Services in Mental Healthcare Providers' Online Materials in the USA,” International Journal of Transgenderism 20, no. 1 (2019): 49–62; Debra A. Hope et al., “Culturally Competent Evidence-Based Behavioral Health Services for the Transgender Community: Progress and Challenges,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 86, no. 4 (2016): 361.

6 The term “transgender and gender diverse” comes from previous research with a transgender research advisory board through the research initiative Trans Collaborations, which focuses on community based participatory research. In particular, transgender and gender diverse community members objected to the term “transgender and gender non-conforming” as implicating a norm that trans and non-binary people choose to deviate from. There is not a current citation for this terminology as it is part of community-collaborative on-going work.

7 Among others, these bills include: Florida H0211 – Youth Gender and Sexual Identity; Kentucky SB83 – AN ACT relating to athletics; New Hampshire HB1651 – Adding sexual reassignment to the definition of child abuse; Tennessee HB2835 – Youth Health Protection Act; Arkansas SB140 – Designate Sex For School-sponsored Sports; Arizona SB1138 – Irreversible gender reassignment surgery; minors (BillTrack50.com).

8 Based on the terminology that the characters used within these series, I will use the term trans to describe the characters who identify as transgender and gender diverse.

9 Mocarski et al., “TGD Representation in Media.”

10 Price et al., “The World Wants Us Dead”; Price et al., “Transgender Representation on Television”; Richard Mocarski et al., “A Different Kind of Man” Mediated Transgendered Subjectivity, Chaz Bono on Dancing with the Stars, Journal of Communication Inquiry 37, no. 3 (2013): 249–64.

11 Often referred to as the “biomedical” or “single-disease” model of health, these models assert that there is a single solution to each health problem, that denies environmental, social, and political factors that impact an individual’s health. This often results in blaming marginalized communities for health inequalities. See Ross Brennan, Lynne Eagle, and David Rice, “Medicalization and Marketing,” Journal of Macromarketing 30, no. 1 (2010): 8–22; Derick T. Wade and Peter W. Halligan, “Do Biomedical Models of Illness Make for Good Healthcare Systems?” BMJ 329, no. 7479 (2004): 1398–401; Price et al., “The World Wants Us Dead.”

12 Price et al., “The World Wants Us Dead”; Helene A. Shugart, “Shifting the Balance: The Contemporary Narrative of Obesity,” Health Communication 26, no. 1 (2011): 37–47.

13 Shugart utilizes this understanding of “master health narratives” to analyze the representations and discourses of obesity in live television shows. Shugart draws on previous scholarly assertions of the social and political constructive environments surrounding the determination of “health” and “healthism”; Shugart, “Shifting the Balance.”

14 Mocarski et al., “TGD Representation in Media”; Celeste M Condit and Deirdre M. Condit, “Blueprints and Recipes: Gendered Metaphors for Genetic Medicine,” Journal of Medical Humanities 22, no. 1 (2001): 29–39; Helen C. Lundell, Jeff Niederdeppe, and Christopher E. Clarke, “Exploring Interpretation of Complexity and Typicality in Narratives and Statistical Images About the Social Determinants of Health,” Health Communication 28, no. 5 (2013): 486–98; Shugart, “Shifting the Balance.”

15 Sim Butler and Kim Bissell, “Olympic Effort: Disability, Culture, and Resistance in the 2012 London Olympic Games,” Journalism & Communication Monographs 17, no. 4 (2015): 228–73; Natalie R. Holt et al., “Clinical Check-in”; Natalie R. Holt et al., “Provider Perspective”; John W. Jordan, “The Rhetorical Limits of the ‘Plastic Body,’” Quarterly Journal of Speech 90, no. 3 (2004): 327–58.

16 Holt et al., “Clinical Check-in”; Holt et al., “Provider Perspective”; Greta R. Bauer et al., “’I Don't Think This Is Theoretical; This Is Our Lives’: How Erasure Impacts Health Care for Transgender People,” Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care 20, no. 5 (2009): 348–61; Heather M. Meyer et al., “Unmet Expectations in Health Care Settings: Experiences of Transgender and Gender Diverse Adults in the Central Great Plains,” Qualitative Health Research (2019): 409–22; Hope et al., “Progress and Challenges”; Holt et al., “First Impressions Online.”

17 McIntyre, “They’re so Normal”; Vanlee et al., “Indifference and Queer Television Studies.”

18 Capuzza, “Regressing, Progressing, or Transgressing”; Price et al., “Transgender Representation on Television”; Mocarski et al., “TGD Representation in Media.”

19 Peri J. Ballantyne, “The Social Determinants of Health: A Contribution to the Analysis of Gender Differences in Health and Illness,” Scandinavian Journal of Public Health 27, no. 4 (1999): 290–5; Judith Butler, “Gender Trouble, Feminist Theory, and Psychoanalytic Discourse,” Feminism/Postmodernism 327(1990): x.

20 Gender can have a direct impact on socioeconomic status and wealth, contributing to the disparity of health care and access. See: Holt et al., “Provider Perspective”; Meyer et al., “Unmet Expectations”; Margaret Denton and Vivienne Walters, “Gender Differences in Structural and Behavioral Determinants of Health: An Analysis of the Social Production of Health,” Social Science & Medicine 48, no. 9 (1999): 1221–35; Ballantyne, “Social Determinants of Health,” 294; John M. Sloop, “Disciplining the Transgendered: Brandon Teena, Public Representation, and Normativity,” Western Journal of Communication (includes Communication Reports) 64, no. 2 (2000): 169; Butler, “Gender Trouble”; Havelock Ellis and J. Baldwin, “Etiologies: Causes and Categories,” in Transgender Emergence: Therapeutic Guidelines for Working with Gender-Variant People & Their Families, ed. Arlene Istar Lev (New Work: Routledge & Francis Group, 2004).

21 Leslie Feinberg, “Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come,” in The Transgender Studies Reader (Routledge, 2013).

22 Danielle C. Ompad et al., “Social Determinants of the Health of Urban Populations: Methodologic Considerations,” Journal of Urban Health 84, no. 1 (2007): 50.

23 McIntyre, “They’re so Normal,” 11.

24 McIntyre, “They’re so Normal”; Thomas, “Gazing at ‘It’”; Vanlee et al., “Indifference and Queer Television Studies”; Price et al., “Transgender Representation on Television”; Price, “Nia Nal the Supergirl”; Price et al., “The World Wants Us Dead.”

25 McIntyre, “They’re so Normal”; Mocarski et al., “TGD Representation in Media”; Price et al., “Transgender Representation on Television”; LeMaster, “Discontents of Being”; Shugart, “Shifting the Balance.”

26 McIntyre, “They’re so Normal,” 12; Shugart, “Shifting the Balance”; Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume I, New York: Vintage (1978); Robin Tolmach Lakoff and Robin Lakoff, The Language War, (University of California Press, 2000).

27 Vanlee et al., “Indifference and Queer Television Studies”; Judith Butler, “Undiagnosing Gender,” in Transgender Rights, ed. Paisley Currah, Richard M. Juang; Shannon Price (University of Minnesota Press, 2006); Jason Cromwell, “Queering the Binaries: Transsituated Identities, Bodies, and Sexualities,” in The Transgender Studies Reader (Routledge, 2013); Evan Vipond, “Resisting Transnormativity: Challenging the Medicalization and Regulation of Trans Bodies,” Theory in Action 8, no. 2 (2015).

28 Fisher, Walter R. “Narration as a Human Communication Paradigm: The Case of Public Moral Argument.” Communications Monographs 51, no. 1 (1984): 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/03637758409390180; Fisher, Walter R. “The Narrative Paradigm: An Elaboration.” Communications Monographs 52, no. 4 (1985): 347–67. https://doi.org/10.1080/03637758509376117; Dennis K. Mumby, “The Political Function of Narrative in Organizations,” Communication Monographs 54, no. 2 (1987): 113–27; Mumby, “Narrative in Organizations.”

29 Fisher, “An Elaboration.”

30 Shugart, “Shifting the Balance,” p. 38.

31 Lindemann-Nelson, Hilde, and Hilde Lindemann. Damaged Identities, Narrative Repair. Cornell University Press, 2001.

32 Beck, Christina S. “Becoming the Story: Narratives as Collaborative, Social Enactments of Individual, Relational, and Public Identities.” Narratives, Health, and Healing: Communication Theory, Research, and Practice (2005): 61–82; McClure, Kevin. “Resurrecting the Narrative Paradigm: Identification and the Case of Young Earth Creationism.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 39, no. 2 (2009): 189–211. https://doi.org/10.1080/02773940902766771.

33 Jamie C. Capuzza, “What’s in a Name? Transgender Identity, Metareporting, and the Misgendering of Chelsea Manning,” Transgender Communication Studies: Histories, Trends, and Trajectories (2015): 93–110.

34 Bruce E. Gronbeck, “Traces through Time and Space,” Visual Rhetoric: A Reader in Communication and American Culture (2008).

35 Dwight Conquergood, “Rethinking Ethnography: Towards a Critical Cultural Politics,” Communication Monographs 58, no. 2 (1991): 184.

36 Butler, “Olympic Effort,” 233.

37 Kevin M. DeLuca, Ye Sun, and Jennifer Peeples, “Wild Public Screens and Image Events from Seattle to China: Using Social Media to Broadcast Activism Beyond the Confines of Democracy,” (2011), 147.

38 Kevin Michael DeLuca and Jennifer Peeples, “From Public Sphere to Public Screen: Democracy, Activism, and The ‘Violence’ Of Seattle,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 19, no. 2 (2002): 147.

39 Butler, “Olympic Effort”; Jordan, “Rhetorical Limits”; Mumby, “Political Function of Narrative.”

40 Celeste M. Condit, “Race and Genetics from a Modal Materialist Perspective,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 94, no. 4 (2008): 387.

41 Genny Beemyn and Susan Rankin, The Lives of Transgender People (Columbia University Press, 2011), 17.

42 Shugart, “Shifting the Balance.”

43 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (Routledge, 2004).

44 Capuzza, “Regressing, Progressing, or Transgressing”; Meyer et al., “Unmet Expectations.”

45 Mocarski et al., “TGD Representation in Media”; Thomas, “Gazing at ‘It.’”

46 Sloop, “Disciplining the Transgendered,” 169.

47 Raymie E. McKerrow, “Critical Rhetoric: Theory and Praxis,” Communication Monographs 56, no. 2 (1989): 91.

48 Celeste M Condit, “When Do People Deploy Genetic Determinism? A Review Pointing to the Need for Multi-Factorial Theories of Public Utilization of Scientific Discourses,” Sociology Compass 5, no. 7 (2011): 618–35.

49 Lundell et al., “Exploring Interpretation”; Debra Hawhee and Paul Messaris, “Review Essay: What’s Visual About ‘Visual Rhetoric’?” Quarterly Journal of Speech 95, no. 2 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630902842095

50 Shugart, “Shifting the Balance.”

51 Lynn M. Harter et al., “Freedom through Flight: Performing a Counter-Narrative of Disability,” Journal of Applied Communication Research 34, no. 1 (2006): 8.

52 LeMaster, “Discontents of Being”; Susan Stryker, Paisley Currah, and Lisa Jean Moore, “Introduction: Trans-, Trans, or Transgender?” Women's Studies Quarterly (2008): 11–22.

53 Lovelock. (2017). Call me Caitlyn: making and making over the “authentic” transgender body in Anglo-American popular culture. Journal of Gender Studies 26(6), 675–87. https://doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2016.1155978

54 Vanlee et al., “Indifference and Queer Television Studies”

55 Lovelock, “Call me Caitlyn,” p.676

56 Vanlee et al., “Indifference and Queer Television Studies”; Lovelock, “Call me Caitlyn”; Mocarski et al., “TGD Representation in Media.”; Price et al., “Transgender Representation on Television”; Price et al., “The World Wants Us Dead.”

57 While this article focuses on the critique of the representation of transwomen due to the limited representations of transmen on popular television, transmen face unique challenges as well when it comes to health and well-being. For more information, see: Bockting, Walter O., Michael H. Miner, Rebecca E. Swinburne Romine, Autumn Hamilton, and Eli Coleman. “Stigma, Mental Health, and Resilience in an Online Sample of the Us Transgender Population.” American Journal of Public Health 103, no. 5 (2013): 943–51; Brewster, Melanie E., Brandon L. Velez, Aaron S. Breslow, and Elizabeth F. Geiger. “Unpacking Body Image Concerns and Disordered Eating for Transgender Women: The Roles of Sexual Objectification and Minority Stress.” Journal of Counseling Psychology 66, no. 2 (2019): 131; Dubois, L. Zachary. “Associations between Transition-Specific Stress Experience, Nocturnal Decline in Ambulatory Blood Pressure, and C-Reactive Protein Levels among Transgender Men.” American Journal of Human Biology 24, no. 1 (2012): 52–61; DuBois, L. Zachary, Sally Powers, Bethany G. Everett, and Robert-Paul Juster. “Stigma and Diurnal Cortisol among Transitioning Transgender Men.” Psychoneuroendocrinology 82 (2017): 59–66; Velez, Brandon L., Aaron S. Breslow, Melanie E. Brewster, Robert Cox Jr., and Aasha B. Foster. “Building a Pantheoretical Model of Dehumanization with Transgender Men: Integrating Objectification and Minority Stress Theories.” Journal of Counseling Psychology 63, no. 5 (2016): 497; Testa, Rylan J., G. Nicole Rider, Nancy A. Haug, and Kimberly F. Balsam. “Gender Confirming Medical Interventions and Eating Disorder Symptoms among Transgender Individuals.” Health Psychology 36, no. 10 (2017): 927.

58 Alvin R. Tarlov, “Social Determinants of Health: The Sociobiological Translation,” in Health and Social Organization (Routledge, 2002), 71.

59 Price, “Nia Nal the Supergirl”; Kimberly Bissell and Amy Rask, “Real Women on Real Beauty: Self-Discrepancy, Internalisation of the Thin Ideal, and Perceptions of Attractiveness and Thinness in Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty,” International Journal of Advertising 29, no. 4 (2010): 643–68; Robin M. Boylorn, “As Seen on TV: An Autoethnographic Reflection on Race and Reality Television,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 25, no. 4 (2008): 413–33.

60 Mocarski et al., “TGD Representation in Media.”

61 Prior to her gender corrective surgery, Jazz Jennings was required to lose 30 pounds before her doctor would clear her for surgery. Since her surgery, in 2018, Jennings has gained 100 pounds over the last two to three years. She explains that this is largely due to mental health problems, an eating disorder, and medication side effects. She has publicly discussed issues of fat-shaming in her family, while also announcing her planned journey of weight loss. In her public Instagram post announcing her weight gain, she outlines her plans for weight loss (see, Kacala, Alexander. “Jazz Jennings Opens up about Binge-Eating Disorder and 100-Pound Weight Gain.” Today, November 30, 2021. https://www.today.com/health/diet-fitness/-jazz-star-jazz-jennings-talks-100-pound-weight-gain-rcna7017).

62 McIntyre, “They’re So Normal”; Price et al., “Transgender Representation on Television”; Price et al., “The World Wants Us Dead.”

63 Price et al., “The World Wants Us Dead.”

64 In Supergirl, Nia “comes out” to two of the other main characters, both of whom are cisgender. In Pose, Angel is approached by the wife of her lover, during which she is forced, again, to explain her trans identity.

65 Thomas, “Gazing at ‘It’”;

66 Lucy J. Miller, “Becoming One of the Girls/Guys: Distancing Transgender Representations in Popular Film Comedies.” Transgender Communication Studies: Histories, Trends, and Trajectories (2015): 127.

67 Shoveller, “Risky Groups.”

68 McIntyre, “They’re So Normal.”

69 This is not to condemn prostitution or sex work as a profession, but rather demonstrate the desperation that drove Electra in to this line of work, and further exemplify dominant U.S. ideology that labels sex work as deviant.

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71 Vanlee et al., “Indifference and Queer Television Studies.”

72 Capuzza, “Regressing, Progressing, or Transgressing”; DeLuca, “Public Sphere to Public Screen.”

73 Michelle A. Holling and Bernadette Marie Calafell, “Identities on Stage and Staging Identities: Chicanobrujo Performances as Emancipatory Practices,” Text and Performance Quarterly 27, no. 1 (2007): 58–83.