Netflix’s feel-good summer series “Glamorous” has a lot to say about queerness and pride, yet the message is delivered with mixed success. The earnestly camp show, which currently is among the top 10 most-viewed shows on the platform globally, follows the coming-of-age story of Marco Mejia, a young queer person who up until the last three minutes of the final episode uses he/him pronouns. At that point, the audience is informed that she is, in fact, a trans woman.
Marco is played by Miss Benny, a 24-year-old who came out as a trans woman in a Time magazine op-ed on June 26, just days after the show premiered. Miss Benny auditioned for Marco, who was not initially written as a trans woman, before the pandemic and before Miss Benny came out and started transitioning. In the intervening time, amid production hiccups and pandemic-related delays, Miss Benny started to privately transition.
The themes and characters do not promote any kind of body positivity. Quite the opposite actually, as it reinforces toxic messaging about bodies, worth and attractiveness.
The main character is a makeup artist and aspiring influencer who gets swept up in the world of makeup maven and magnate Madolyn Addison (Kim Cattrall). Marco helps Madolyn recover parts of herself after decades of being muted by the industry and playing it safe, just as Marco embarks on a journey of self-discovery.
“Glamorous” is absurd in its campiness as much as it is in its story and character development, such Marco being hired by Madolyn almost immediately after they meet at a department store where Marco works; Marco suddenly being thrust into a role where the future of Madolyn’s empire rests on Marco’s shoulders; people exacting revenge using glitter bombs; and Madolyn’s ripped, gay son, who works for her company, constantly working out in his office sweaty and shirtless because, why not?
This is partly what makes the series a fun, mindless and sometimes joyous watch. But its two-dimension storyline ironically creates a microcosmic play-it-safe version of itself — the show fails to actually break free of the very same dynamic it purportedly challenges and deconstructs in order to make way for something braver, bolder and more authentic.
Miss Benny explains in her op-ed how she made the courageous decision to tell the show creator and executive producer about her transition and asked if this could be incorporated into the storyline. Miss Benny expresses humility and gratitude in their willingness to do so. But, while Marco is obviously gender-nonconforming, the audience is only explicitly introduced to her transness in the show’s final minutes. We learn of it after her co-worker finds a Callen-Lorde business card — an excellent shoutout to one of the nation’s leading gender-affirming health care centers — in Marco’s desk (we’ll overlook the huge privacy violation).
And while it's great that the show did sort of work it in, real allyship on the part of the show creator and producers would have been fully rewriting the character as a trans woman so Miss Benny didn’t have to play someone using he/him pronouns — even wearing men’s clothes sometimes.
I was assigned female at birth and came out as trans about a year ago. I cannot think of anything more uncomfortable or painful than having to play the role of a woman again after the excruciating process of getting to where I am.
To a certain extent, I take Miss Benny’s point about not making her transness the focal point of the show. She writes:
It was really important that Marco’s trans-ness was not the plot of the show. It’s not a “twist” to surprise the audience. Instead, we get to watch a young queer person experiencing first love and heartbreak, career success and failure, and everything else that comes with being a young adult… while also discovering their identity in the background of life.
But I would argue that there is a difference between portraying transgenderism thoughtfully — by, for example, not foregrounding trans alterity or fetishizing it — and making it an afterthought. Unfortunately, this very much felt like the latter. Also, there is a world in which Marco could have simply been openly trans from the start, without making it a big deal — or “the plot of the show” — as we see the character experiencing everything Miss Benny describes.
It also highlights a very particular and exclusive version of gayness — by and large cis-men with washboard abs.
Instead, there is absolutely no discussion or development of Marco’s transness: She mostly wears women’s clothes, uses he/him pronouns and then, all of sudden, appears to make what looks like a deceptively easy decision to start medically transitioning. We never see Marco having a conversation about it or going through related emotions.
Full disclosure: I wept so loudly in the last few minutes of the show that I woke my dog up from her nap. But I attribute that more to a function of hardly seeing any representations of transitioning in popular culture than a reflection of this being a moving representation of transness. More than anything, I felt disappointed by the missed opportunity to do something thoughtful and meaningful around the transgender experience.
The process of transitioning is one that, for me and for many of the trans siblings I’ve spoken with, includes a range of acute and intense emotions: grief, euphoria, terror, liberation. It is not muted or an afterthought, as “Glamorous” portrays it, which, again, is highly ironic given the show builds its world around challenging conformity and refusing to play it safe.
There are other ways the show has a mottled track record when it comes to how it deals with queerness. It makes an amusing and accurate critique about the corporatization of pride and how companies ostensibly show solidarity through meaningless, insipid and empty ad campaigns with equally vacuous slogans (think: “Love is love.”) Lest we forget, the origin of pride was angry — featuring tear gas, not glitter bombs, as people protested queer-targeted police violence in 1969.
The show seeks to challenge this with its own version of a meaningful Pride campaign for Madolyn’s makeup company featuring drag queens of color. Only one problem: They end up being props to Cattrall’s character, a wealthy cis, presumably hetero white woman, who ultimately is front and center in the ad campaign.
It also highlights a very particular and exclusive version of gayness — by and large cis-men with washboard abs. There is little body diversity, and the themes and characters do not promote any kind of body positivity. Quite the opposite actually, as it reinforces toxic messaging about bodies, worth and attractiveness.
Queer cis-women, too, appear to be an afterthought, represented with two side characters who end up dating each other. Again, in portraying queerness as largely male, or through the lens of people who are assigned male at birth, the story, while inclusive in some ways (i.e. its racial diversity) ends up being exclusionary in others.
“Glamorous” shoots itself in the foot by billing itself as a queer inclusive, radical and boundary-pushing show. It doesn’t live up to the standard it sets for itself. If it was really all that boundary-pushing, Miss Benny would’ve been able to play the role of a trans woman from the start. And it might have featured more than two queer cis-women side characters and maybe a gay man or two without chiseled abs.
So, yes, it’s great that racially diverse and extremely queer mainstream shows are getting made. But the show ultimately ends up being a “Love is Love”-equivalent of queer storytelling: while trying to be all things to all people, it lacks substance and depth.