Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Bo Bice Is The New Clay Aiken, Part I
By Jacob Clifton | Season 5 | Episode 1 | Aired on 01.16.2006
April Walsh (27, Laguna Niguel CA) enters in a kicky red and black dress with a red flower in her hair and sings "It's Oh So Quiet," and it's quite dramatic. She has no problem with projection, and a lot of character. I think theatre would love to have her. There are movements, and she makes hysterical faces, and the judges kind of giggle, and afterwards she admits how much fun singing that song turned out to be. Simon offers that if somebody in a restaurant started that shit up, you'd tell them to shut it right down, and he's right, but I beg you to tell me the song of which this is not true. Other girls get through, including the girl with creepy dyed red hair, a girl in capris, and a girl with a complicated necklace, but not many guys, including the very gracious hot gymnastics guy from the beginning of Denver.
Okay, here's the part I didn't want to talk about, and then we're done. Zachary Travis (18, Denver) is wearing a girl's top from Wet Seal, straight-leg jeans, high heels, about a 12-inch waist, bad acne scars, hair like a drama girl, and a white belt. Lord knows I don't like to diagnose, but this is a lot of XXY signage to be looking at, which usually comes with a bunch of dysmorphic bullshit that gets you beat down, and usually causes your parents to turn into assholes. This is very much an obstacle that we should respect, because yeah, wear your love like heaven and all that, but knowing the difference between reaching for utopia and thinking you live there is what will save you from getting your ass killed.
Wearing girl's clothes, while still demanding to be called a boy, puts the onus on every single person you run into, and it's not only an unfair demand, but a stupid one. Relying on thinking you can complain later about your rights, and everyone else's ignorance, doesn't mean a damn thing if you're in a ditch somewhere. Prior restraint doesn't apply to social relationships, and it's asking a lot of the world at large to suddenly evolve just for your self-expression. If you have nine out of ten gender signifiers happening, it's not that I'm an idiot for filling in the blanks, and it's not because I'm "prejudiced" or hateful in some way; it's because you haven't done your semiotics homework. Which should be like your purpose in life. This is the whole Second Wave/Third Wave feminism argument all over again: I would love it if you created the rules of the society in which we live, and maybe one day you will, but it hasn't happened yet, and pretending that it has so that you can bitch later is only hurting yourself. If you're going to be a gender pioneer, at least have the attitude to go with it. But we're getting ahead of things.
He's tall enough, and skinny enough, with enough muscle mass -- kid's packing some guns -- that maybe these kind of clothes are his only hope, but still, we're talking about actively choosing the most feminine gear possible, which makes this an identity issue, and you have to fight for those like a motherfucker.
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