Enough is Enough

Project Runway winner Christian Siriano’s ubiquitous catchphrase needs to stop

BY CALPERNIA ADDAMS

I've been unhappy about the “hot tranny mess” catchphrase popularized by Project Runway's Christian Siriano ever since I first heard it, and then heard it repeated amidst squeals of delight by hetero and gay people who felt entitled because “a gay person said it.” I can take a joke, and I make quite a few myself. But if I'm going to risk walking politically incorrect thin ice, I try to do it firmly within the context of comedy. Continually using “hot tranny mess” to describe anyone who is some sort of trainwreck is ignorant and hurtful. Comedy can soften the blow, but it doesn't feel harmless when it's a majority telling the minority they're laughing at to get a sense of humor and learn how to take a joke.

One reality show contest winner's prejudice and bigotry isn't the end of the world, but then there was this from Daily Star:

Openly gay Christian, 21, was forced to apologise to “he-she” groups for using the term “hot tranny mess” on TV to describe frocks he doesn't like.

He further upset the “snip-tuck” brigade by saying in a magazine interview: “If you think of heterosexuals, they have white trash women and trailer parks and we have drag queens and trannies.”

Whenever an apology follows a “backlash” via press release that sounds like someone's publicity team wrote it, I have a hard time buying it. The damage is done. If the supremely ignorant Siriano ever chooses to enlighten himself on the subject of transsexuals, he might try Googling something like Lynn Conway's TS Successes, where he will find transsexual doctors, lawyers, writers, actresses, and, yes, fashion designers.

Is this what my generation suffered through the 1980s LGBT civil rights battles for? To give a 21-year-old gay man the comfort of being able to slam part of the community without any sense of the tradition of cruelty and ignorance he is perpetuating? He has added a new insult against trans women to the general national consciousness, and that is huge.

Being gay isn't a free pass for bigotry against other people in the LGBT community. I hope people continue to call Siriano on his hurtful phrases and stereotypes. In any case you won't catch me squeezing my 30-something curves into one of Siriano's “hot tranny mess"-free, “white trash"-free garments. Perhaps it would make a nice dust cloth for me to use around the trailer.