Conchita Wurst - Good or Bad

• Posted by Pauline Smith May 13, 2014 #  #transgendered  #bearded lady  1,729 views
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  After Conchita Wurst won Eurovision 2014 my instinctive reaction was Yay, Woohoo - that showed Putin and those Neanderthals in Eastern Europe. Apparently over 170 million people watched the show, and after there were over 5 million tweets on Twitter. Conchita herself dedicated her win to peace and freedom "this award is dedicated to everyone who believes in a world of peace and freedom"

   

   

  

   

  Now that I have had a few days to think I started wondering if that really was the case, should we still be celebrating her win and will Conchita be a positive for the TG community, or a negative?  

  Is she a "just a drag act, a bearded lady, a freak show"? Or like so many of us is she just doing her own thing and making her own journey?  Or is she in some special way a torch for good, based on that old adage that any publicity is good publicity?

  That well known pro minorities and pro TG paper the Daily Mail has given us, for the past few days articles about Conchita in their on line version, which is the most widely read on line newspaper (certainly in the UK and maybe in the world?) The first one was about her life and fairly balanced. She dressed from a young age - like many of us and announced she was gay when she was 18 plus there were lots of photos of her. And though there were some negative comments from Russians and bearded men in the article, on a positive note the 585 comments from the public were not too negative, from the ones I read. The one below is probably the best -

  She is doing her thing and that should always the main priority! We all just want to be whoever we choose to be! That said I get the whole transgender thing, the beard I don't get! It's not even real for starters!

   

  Then yesterday The Mail had a weird article doing makeovers of well known attractive women by giving them beards; in my opionion this is purely a ridicule article - turning the whole thing into a freak show. There were less comments -348 - but the ones shown were almost all negative and this one below had 194 green arrows (or pluses).

  As a real woman I find this very insulting towards the female race to say the least! The only reason this person won Eurovision is because of the PC brigade, if he didn't win we all would of been ignorant so and so's!! Pathetic what his world is coming to.

   

  Initially I thought that the Guardian treated Conchita's win as a joke and not as something serious - they showed a photo of Russell Brand in a dress, and had an article about fashion and beards. But no in depth article about Conchita or photos of ladies with beards, apart from a link to Twitter as Nigella Lawson tweeted a pic of her with a beard.

  So for them it was low key and I was disappointed  till I read the article by Paris Lees - stating that Conchita is an ambassador and thats what matters - see her headline and some extracts below :-

   

  The Eurovision winner is another great stride in the treatment of trans people, showing us what gender diversity really looks like

   

  It's always great when someone from our side wins, and by "our side" I of course mean everyone who isn't Jeremy Clarkson. The gay boys and girls; the trans people; the downtrodden. 

   

  But what does it all mean, this hair and that beard and those lashes? Conchita has been crowned queen of Europe, but is she a transvestite, a drag queen, a bearded lady, a transgender woman or what? And does it even matter? Facebook recently introduced more than 50 gender options in the US, and if you're puzzled about what all those terms mean, Conchita is a clue as to what this gender diversity might look like in practice. "She" is actually a boy called Tom. Conchita is his lady persona, a strangely compelling mix of Katy Perry and Jesus, but it's female pronouns, please, when the lashes are on – and male ones when they come off. Confused? This is gender fluidity and you'd better get used to it.

  Radical feminists claim that they've been trying to dismantle gender for the past 40-or-so years, but I'm yet to see evidence of their success. Some seem more preoccupied with insisting that people like me are really men. They say trans people reinforce gender roles while simultaneously they try to push us back into neat little "boy" or "girl" boxes. Conchita knows no such box – and she won't let radicals, Russians or rightwingers tell her who she is supposed to be. She's Conchita, not the greatest singer of all time, let's be honest, but a perfectly good phoenix.

  I am obviously friends with pretty much half the gay people in Britain on Facebook, not to mention every transgender person and a respectable showing of drag queens, and from what I can tell we were all Team Conchita. She's become a sort of bearded Beyonce; adoring her is now compulsory, and rightly so. A few people might have wasted time trying to define Conchita's identity or worrying if she is one of "us", but the majority saw her for what she is: an ambassador for diversity, and a beacon of light – no doubt – to our queer cousins on the continent.

   

  Please read the rest in the last link of the 5 at the bottom of the page.

   

  So what do you think? Does it matter that Conchita won Eurovision?

  Does it matter what the Mail or Guardian write? Will it make it any easier for any of us everyday Tgirls without beards as we go out and about - or decide if its safe to go out and about?  

  Has it helped us become more acceptable to the mainstream Jo and Sue Public? Or is it more important what each of us do on an individual level - whether its Debbie, Rachel and Liz telling us about their journeys or me going to Asda in Radcliffe to buy my groceries?  Are those small and big steps that so many of us take more important than one big glitter show - or do we need both?

  I think we need both and that people are becoming more tolerant of us special girls, not just in places like the Manchester Village or Leeds First Friday but in every day occurrences. I had this theory that I blended in and then I realize that by and large most people dont care that we are out there in the community, they dont care how we dress or that we may look a sight. Yes we get read all the time - so what?  Give them a big smile.

   

  hugs

   

  Pauline xxx

   

  Links are below :-

   http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2625866/Winner-whisker-Austrias-bearded-lady-conquers-Eurovision-Russias-rage.html

   

  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2626650/There-stubble-ahead-As-bearded-lady-wins-Eurovision-catches-on.html

  
  http://www.theguardian.com/media/mediamonkeyblog/2014/may/12/eurovision-2014-russell-brand-nigella-lawson-beard
  
  

  http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/gallery/2014/may/12/eurovision-2014-the-year-the-song-contest-went-hipster-in-pictures

  http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/12/conchita-drag-queen-transgender-ambassador-eurovision-winner-trans-gender-diversity