When Miss France Was Almost Mister
Donald Trump’s transphobia is even older than his birtherism
April 2001: Élodie Gossuin was crowned Miss France to much fanfare and media hysteria, quickly followed by unfounded claims — particularly from sensationalist tabloids like the New York Daily News — suggesting she might actually be a transgendered person.
Geneviève de Fontenay, then president of the Miss France committee, publicly called the rumors “imbecilic” and affirmed Gossuin’s identity as a “natural-born woman” — apparently substantiated by rigorous verification processes, and no further reasons to doubt Gossuin’s gender.
These ardent denials were then reinforced by stories from more reputable media sources like ABC News and Wired that confirmed Gossuin is “a perfectly normal young lady” — also claiming the entire “controversy” was blatant, attention-getting overreach by the greedy press.
At the time I was writing for Outlines, a Chicago paper, and saw through the implicit hypocrisy and transphobia of the media — and many of the inherent yet more subtle contradictions within the gay community that exploded into decades of political correctness and “over-correction.”
In retrospect the op-ed is even more prescient with its Trump commentary — who knew that The Donald would ascend to the Oval Office, and wreak such powerful revenge a quarter century later — gender now established by Executive Order, and trans people under fire again, perhaps like never before?
Note: “Miss Continental” was Chicago’s annual beauty contest for transgender showgirls run by The Baton nightclub owner, while the pre-Woke term “tranny” was common and considered — at least within the gay community — as familiar and almost endearing, like the N-word said by black people.
The Universe squealed tiny-violins for billionaire pageant provocateur Donald Trump last week, when big bang Elodie Gossuin, Miss France 2001, was theorized to be a post-op transgendered lass.
“This would not be good,” Trump grimaced to the media, until all that background radiation relativistically fizzled-out under the absolutism of an apparently positive XX-chromosome match for Ms. Gossuin.
The universal sigh of relief was almost audible, a virtual C-major: Perhaps the vindicated beauty queen will appear alongside computer-enhanced Ella Fitzgerald in next year’s “Is it live, or…” ads for Memorex.
Tell-tale surgical scars and disproportionately large hands notwithstanding, Miss France could still be gay as Paris — but behavior’s not the issue, it’s biology, right Don Donald?
Although most real chick Miss Universe contenders undergo as much cosmetic surgery and mystery make-over work as our own Miss Continental aspirants, trannies are explicitly barred from the global competition.
Granted, ’tis a private affair, contest rules excluding all men (and women over 27), but the genuine issue has more to do with our contemporary conception of identity than any universal criteria for female beauty: After all, “the difference that makes no difference is no difference,” so who’s counting? If she looks like a duck, and acts like a duck…
The tragic irony is as astounding as Miss Venezuela: Beauty contests, by definition, subsume personality for pussy, talent for tits, and (go ask Ivana) love for lust. The “talent portion” of most contests are like the prose filler in skinrags, the expression “reading Hustler magazine” as meaningful and expressive as “watching the Miss America pageant.”
Everyone knows it’s all about sex, few guys sporting extra wood should this year’s winner prove to be a Chess Grandmaster: Essentially, nobody seems to care about the unknown woman inside the overtly beautiful woman’s body, yet, Heaven help us should that overtly beautiful woman’s body actually contain a man.
What does this say about our true conception of the female? About the very notion of “gender”? And what does all this say about the “natural” boundaries of human sexual response, gay or straight or in-between, when our eyes tell us she’s beautiful, yet our minds try to convince us she’s somehow repugnant, a freak, inadmissible even within an admittedly shallow display of universal female form?
Oscillating currents of pageant homophobia aside, the gay political issue gets even more complicated. Transgendered folks tend to get lumped into the Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual minority, although the generalization can sometimes become more harmful and misleading than helpful or protective.
Discrimination based on skin color or ethnicity is frowned upon and combated with legal precedent, yet sexual orientation currently remains, for the most part, immune to such categorization. Enter the transgendered, where such complexities as overt behavioral and even biological freedom become the issues: Ostensibly born one gender, the person in every conceivable manner lives its complement.
Should we legally consider a male-to-female transgendered person, for example, a “woman” in every sense of the word, or should we acknowledge and adapt ourselves to the underlying biological reality, all the while and in every manner treating her as the woman she feels herself to be? Is the designation “third sex” legally discriminatory, or biologically inevitable? And accepting the reality that gender (inherent or acquired) and behavior (“gay” or “straight”) need not have any correspondence, what do we make of a beauty queen who must undergo a blood test to “prove” she’s a — she?
Meanwhile, Miss France, an ostensibly verified XX-er, is free to compete. Donald Trump — born white, male, heterosexual and rich, who’s summarily gone on to remain white, male, heterosexual while becoming way richer — can thank the stars that Elodie’s no Louis, and that the Miss Universe Pageant remains chromosomally pure.
But the world is changing, Donald, and the Universe might have to one day comply. We’ll eventually turn on our TVs and not even realize that our favorite show’s a science fiction, double feature: After all, what’ll they think of our Star Trek reruns in the 23rd Century? And does anybody really care that the hot blonde is half-Borg? Step aside, Marla Maples…
Postscript: Élodie Gossuin-Lacherie (née Gossuin) went on from French beauty pageant titleholder — she was elected Miss Picardy 2000, Miss France 2001, and Miss Europe 2001 to become a model, radio and television presenter, columnist and regional politician. Far as we can tell, and much to the relief of Donald Trump, she has remained biologically female throughout.
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