640535

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ECS0010.1177/1367549416640535European Journal of Cultural StudiesMcIntyre

european journal of
Article

European Journal of Cultural Studies

2017, Vol. 20(1) 87­–103
Transgender idol: Queer © The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1367549416640535
reality TV ecs.sagepub.com

Joanna McIntyre
University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia

Abstract
Transgender is a marginalised category to which reality TV has given visibility, yet it
is usually overlooked in observations regarding the minority groups that have gained
mainstream representation through these programmes. Popular Australian reality TV
shows have provided a unique space for the constructive representation of certain queer
subjectivities. The Australian reality TV contestants in question present gendering that
embraces ambiguity, that is, they demonstrate the deliberate disruption and blurring
of gender/sex category divisions. This article examines the ways in which Australian
reality TV’s representations of transgender contestants remain robustly queer while
also being negotiated and made palatable for ‘family’ television audiences. It asserts
the reality TV shows that feature transgender performance orchestrate a balance
between queer expression and its containment. This article also takes as a case study
a particularly successful Australian transgender reality TV contestant, Courtney Act.
It argues Act’s representation of queerness was ‘managed’ within the normative
framework of mainstream television yet she is still significantly troubled by gender
binaries during her time on Australian screen. In 2014, she appeared as a contestant
on the United States’ queer-themed reality TV show RuPaul’s Drag Race and again
proved to be a reality TV success. This transnational intersection of transgender
performance signalled the productive possibilities of international cross-pollination
in regard to affirmative reality TV representations of marginalised subjectivities. At
the same time, however, it also revealed the localised nature of reality TV, even in
those shows with an international queer appeal.

Keywords
Australia, queer, reality TV, RuPaul, transgender

Corresponding author:
Joanna McIntyre, University of the Sunshine Coast, Sippy Downs Drive, Sippy Downs,
QLD 4556, Australia.
Email: jmcinty2@usc.edu.au
88 European Journal of Cultural Studies 20(1)

In a country that celebrates rugged, ‘blokey’ masculinities, significant and sympathetic

portrayals of male-to-female transgender subjectivities have been an intriguing upshot of
Australian reality TV. At the start of the new millennium, reality TV became a staple of
Australians’ nightly viewing, and a particular band of Australian transgender contestants
flounced their way onto the small screen. Popular Australian reality TV shows such as
Big Brother Australia (Network Ten, 2001–2008; Nine Network, 2012–present),
Australian Idol (Network Ten, 2003–2009), Australia’s Got Talent (Seven Network,
2007–present), The X Factor (Network Ten, 2005; Seven Network, 2010–present) and
So You Think You Can Dance Australia (Network Ten, 2008–2010) provided a unique
space for the supportive representation of certain queer subjectivities. Although ideologi-
cally conservative representations of gender are usually preferred television fodder, with
the inclusion of transgender contestants, these reality TV shows delivered their main-
stream audiences definitively queer representations of gender. Moreover, these contest-
ants often queered the very strategies the shows implemented to make them more
comprehensible in a normative gender framework. The wide-ranging support these
Australian transgender contestants received from voting audiences also indicates the
influence of these distinctive representations. Transgender is one of a number of margin-
alised categories to which reality TV has given visibility, yet it is usually overlooked in
observations about the minority groups who have gained mainstream representation in
this popular television genre. By no means is Australian reality TV a utopia of affirma-
tive action, yet it has revealed itself to be uniquely suited to repositioning transgender in
relation to gender norms on- and off-screen.
The Australian reality TV contestants who are the focus of this investigation pur-
posefully expressed gender in ways that embraced ambiguity, that is, they demonstrated
the deliberate disruption and blurring of gender/sex category divisions. Their television
representations thus aligned with the impetus of queer theory, which aims to interrogate
the hetero/homosexual binary, expose the constructedness of traditional gender roles
and acknowledge the diversity of human genderings and sexualities (Jagose, 1996: 3).
The term ‘transgender’ is used here not as the signifier of a particular identity category
but as an umbrella term that refers to all expressions of gender that fall outside or
between the normative categories of male and female and/or masculine and feminine,
whether they be behavioural, sartorial, physical and/or psychological. For the purposes
of bringing together in analysis a range of gender expressions that interrogate binary
categories, transgender, in this context, encompasses the psychological and/or corpo-
real permanence of transsexualism, the sartorial gender-crossing of transvestism and the
performative excess and gender dualities of drag. This article examines the ways in
which Australian reality TV’s representations of transgender contestants remain robustly
queer, but also how these queer expressions are made palatable for mainstream
Australian television.
The organisation of Australian television can be seen to sit roughly between the com-
mercial model in the United States and the public service broadcasting model in the
United Kingdom. In Australia, there are three major free-to-air (FTA) commercial net-
works (Network Ten, Seven network and Nine Network) and two major public service
broadcasters (the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the Special Broadcasting
Service). With the introduction of digital television, each FTA network expanded to
McIntyre 89

three digital channels. Subscription television became available in the 1990s but
remained relatively unpopular in Australia compared to the rest of the developed world
(though this is changing with the introduction of streaming television services, such as
Netflix and Stan). The Australian Communications and Media Authority, an Australian
Government statutory authority, regulates all Australian broadcasting. In the heavily
regulated and generally conservative television space of Australian FTA commercial
television, reality TV’s inclusions of queer subjectivities are, in part, a reflection and
extension of the representation of transgender performance elsewhere in Australian
screen history and broader Australian culture. As I will argue, the gender-queer contest-
ants in question adhere to particular nationalised patterns of transgender representation,
and the reality TV shows in which they appear orchestrate a balance between their queer
expression and its containment. Nevertheless, these elements, combined with the
specificities of the genre, produce queer celebrities who have mainstream acceptance.
After examining the nature of transgender representation in reality TV more generally
and then in Australian reality TV specifically, this article takes as a study a particularly
successful Australian transgender reality TV contestant, Courtney Act (that is, ‘Caught in
the Act’). A transgender celebrity born of reality TV, Act’s success was largely dependent
on balancing queer rupturing and an adherence to mainstream Australian sensibilities.
Act significantly troubles gender binaries, and, in her Australian screen representations,
her queerness had to be ‘managed’ within the normative framework of mainstream tele-
vision. In 2014, she appeared as a contestant on the United States’ queer-themed reality
TV show RuPaul’s Drag Race (Logo, 2009–present) and again proved to be a reality TV
success; she reached the finals and was announced as third in the season finale. At this
transnational intersection of reality TV transgender performance, Act appeared as dis-
tinctly Australian, further clarifying the nationalised nature of the queer subjectivity she
embodies. At this intersection, she also revealed the viability of transgender performance
in both mainstream and queer reality TV forums.

They’re here, they’re queer!

Transgender representation is a notable facet of reality TV in Western countries other
than Australia. Reality TV in both the United Kingdom and the United States has fea-
tured transgender individuals, sometimes in a manner fraught with misunderstanding
and exploitation, while, at other times, these representations are progressive and even
transgressive. For example, transsexed beauty Miriam Rivera was the star of the UK
reality show There’s Something About Miriam (Sky1, 2004), in which a group of hetero-
sexual cisgender men vied for Rivera’s romantic affection. The show made much of its
star having been born male but living as an attractive woman, yet her transsexualism
was only disclosed to the contestants as a shock surprise in the final episode. This real-
ity TV show exploited Rivera’s transsexualism, objectifying her body and problemati-
cally positioning transsexual identities as deceptive (Ryan, 2009: p. 114). In contrast,
the US reality TV show RuPaul’s Drag Race celebrates its male-to-female transgender
contestants in its annual search for ‘America’s next drag superstar’. A queer parody of
America’s Next Top Model (The CW, 2006–2015; UPN, 2003–2006), RuPaul’s Drag
Race features celebrity drag performer RuPaul as the host and mentor to a group of drag
90 European Journal of Cultural Studies 20(1)

queen contestants who are progressively eliminated. This ironic, fun reality TV show
revels in queer sensibilities and transgender performance.
Reality TV shows that foreground transgender people and themes are important cul-
tural texts in their treatments of gender and queerness. Shows that incorporate transgen-
der individuals among a range of cisgender participants bring to light broader social
attitudes towards transgender in the given cultural context as well as the positive political
potential of this genre. Although excluded from many other mainstream television for-
mats, certain queer subjectivities have been deemed suitable for inclusion in mainstream
reality TV, notably in performance-centred shows. Unlike television genres such as tab-
loid talk shows – which are inclined to include transgender participants for the purpose
of ridicule or derision (Gamson, 2009) – the reality TV shows discussed here treat
transgender contestants earnestly and personalise the audience’s engagement with them.
There is, of course, novelty value in contestants who demonstrate unusual gendering, but
it is precisely their distinguishing features that assist them in fulfilling the successful
formula of a reality TV candidate.
Because reality TV is a popular media forum associated with ‘reality’ and the ordi-
nary, its integrations of queer subjectivities become especially significant representations
of queer gendering in the mainstream. These shows foreground that the chance to partici-
pate in them is open to the general population, which positions the selected contestants
as special for being singled out but also, paradoxically, reconfirms their status as mere
members of the masses. Despite reality TV ostensibly prioritising the everyday, reality
TV contestants are seldom completely ‘ordinary’. Biressi and Nunn (2005) assert that to
appeal to the television-watching public, reality TV contestants need to be interesting
and memorable while remaining inoffensive, ‘distinctive but not too distinctive’ (p. 151).
As the focus of these popular shows, many of the ‘ordinary’ yet special contestants
become widely accepted and admired. It is in this context ‘ordinary’ people from minor-
ity social positions can ascend to the heights of celebrity. The power reality TV has to
create celebrities is particularly significant in relation to transgender participants, who
are often granted an unusually equalised standing in this genre. Hartley (1999) contends
in his discussion of celebrity and reality TV participants that celebrity is primarily con-
cerned with identity and ‘the representation of individualism’ (pp. 26–27). As such,
celebrified transgender reality TV contestants are at once presented as ordinary and
therefore knowable, while also standing out as individuals and being celebrated as such.
Moreover, viewers engage with these reality TV celebrities in a personalised manner. As
Turner (2010) contends, reality TV shows ‘generate a mode of consumption that actively
responds to the formats’ invitation to regard the audiences’ own judgments and responses
as direct contributions to the meanings and pleasures of the programme’ (p. 42). Even so,
audiences’ perceived authority over reality TV programmes does not hinder these media
texts from disseminating new ideas, information and points of view.
The celebration and celebrification of transgender Australian reality TV contestants
becomes particularly potent in regard to the popularity and pervasiveness of the reality
TV shows in which they feature. These shows are very often ‘event shows’, prime-time
attractions that rely on media convergence to enhance the viewer experience, and
although they generally have a limited shelf-life, during their time on air, they attract
large audiences and lucrative sponsorships. Regular, sometimes daily, scheduling
McIntyre 91

spans the entire seasonal run. Such familiarity is able to breed acceptance and even
affiliation, and thus, when they feature queer contestants, these reality TV shows are
able to propagate the affirmation of queer subjectivities. For example, while There’s
Something About Miriam may have been exploitative (and certainly there have been
other instances of transphobia in UK reality TV), in 2004 transsexed contestant Nadia
Almada won Big Brother UK (Channel 4, 2000–2010; Channel 5, 2011–present). Such
a victory in a show whose competition relies on public voting demonstrates a signifi-
cant amount of support for Almada as an individual and also for her queer subject
position. In Australia, it has become customary for mainstream reality TV to treat
transgender contestants with approval if not affection, though this positive representa-
tion is not without its caveats.

Transgender down under

Australian reality TV has proved a hospitable environment for constructive transgender
representation. An assortment of queer contestants has successfully competed in
Australian reality TV shows throughout the new millennium, meaning that, nationally,
this minority has maintained a substantial presence within the genre. Moreover, the
Australian reality TV shows that have significantly featured transgender participants
were widely popular ‘event shows’; Australian Idol, Australia’s Got Talent, So You Think
You Can Dance Australia, The X Factor and Big Brother Australia are Australian edi-
tions of international franchises that appear on the main channels of FTA commercial
networks. As such, these shows’ gender-queer contestants have received exposure
throughout the country and experienced celebrity status, even if only briefly. Australian
reality TV’s affirmative inclusion of celebrified transgender performers is an extension
of Australian culture’s enduring warmth towards certain celebrated Australian drag and
transgender identities. These include most notably the much-loved Dame Edna Everage,
who started out as male performer Barry Humphries’ Australian housewife sketch char-
acter in the 1950s but ultimately became a flamboyant synthetic personality (a personal-
ity in her own right) and one of Australia’s most cherished icons. A different type of
celebrity but also long admired in Australian culture, transsexed performer Carlotta
found fame as the star of the legendary Sydney Kings Cross transgender cabaret troupe
Les Girls in the 1960s and from there became a well-known television personality and a
household name. Even more than finding alignment with these longstanding celebrities,
however, successful transgender contestants in Australian reality TV evoke other specifi-
cally Australian conventions of ‘acceptable’ transgender representation. Over a number
of decades, Australian screen culture has cultivated a particular framework for the main-
stream representation of transgender. This framework includes positioning queer gender-
ing in the context of performance and spectacle and prioritising the transgender figure of
the white, attractive, showgirl drag queen, such as the sequined outback explorers fea-
tured in the renowned Australian film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
(Elliott, 1994) (McIntyre, 2015). Likewise, transgender representation in Australian real-
ity TV tends to manifest as showgirl drag queen performances and through the presence
of (white) gender-queer males. Indeed, the existing cultural standing of and familiarity
with such queer representation indicates these reality TV contestants are less likely to
92 European Journal of Cultural Studies 20(1)

offend mainstream sensibilities and are actually, as all good reality TV contestants should
be, ‘distinctive but not too distinctive’ (Biressi and Nunn, 2005: 151).
Although Australian transgender reality TV contestants may adhere to privileged
modes of transgender embodiment in Australia, it is nonetheless queer embodiment. Gay
and lesbian themes and storylines are becoming increasingly common in scripted narra-
tive television, but ‘queer content and its radical potential’ is usually a late ‘evening
affair that exists on the margins of the television schedule’ (Needham, 2009: 146).
Nevertheless, these contestants negotiated a way to bring queerness into the convention-
ality of FTA commercial television during peak viewing times. Within the normative
frame of such television time slots, there are factors that work to contain their queerness;
however, these reality TV shows neither neutralise this queer representation nor co-opt it
entirely. Instead, these contestants remain contextualised as queer, and their visibility in
a mainstream media space is thus important to the acceptance of gender and sexual diver-
sity within Australian culture. As Misha Kavka (2007) summarises eloquently

Reality television cannot exist outside of or in opposition to hetero-normative culture; it

requires too broad an audience base and its success is measured too blatantly in terms of ratings
and advertising revenue. Yet … reality television incorporates a precarious balance between the
status quo and its destabilising elements. (p. 222)

In three different seasons, showgirl drag performers have been successful on

Australia’s Got Talent; two reached the semi-finals stage of this competition, Miz Ima
Starr in 2007 and Miss Man in 2008, and another, Wayne Rogers, made it to the finals in
2011. Australia’s Got Talent has a talent show format and places a wide variety of stage-
performed acts in competition with one another for a large cash prize. On the show, each
of the transgender performers demonstrated not only an impressive singing voice but
also a range of disruptions to the sex-gender system. Drag performances necessarily
distance the drag actor from their drag role and consistently display purposeful gender
discontinuities (Newton, 1979: 127). Yet, it is the individual nature of these discontinui-
ties and the context in which they are located that crucially affect whether the drag per-
formance supports or subverts hegemonic expectations of gender and sexuality (Butler,
1990: 176–177). Drag representations that emerge in the context of the performers’ queer
sexual and gender identities manifest as representations of queer drag. In Australia’s Got
Talent, Starr, Man and Rogers were contextualised as queer through the information
given about them and how they self-represented, including Man describing herself as the
product of putting ‘Barbie and Ken in a blender’, and Rogers introducing his male part-
ner of 20 years. They all adeptly executed showgirl routines, dressed in exaggeratedly
feminine costuming and make-up, but sang in deep voices and made visible markers of
male physicality, such as Man’s and Rogers’ often unpadded and exposed chests. As
such, they each exhibited the disruptive dualities of queer drag, displaying incongruities
of gendering and casting doubt upon binary alignments of sex and gender. In this reality
TV show, through their stage performances, each of these performers presented queer
contradictions of gender that remained largely unresolved.
Queer gender representation in stage performance-based reality TV shows does not
necessarily appear only during the stage performances. For example, the runner-up of the
McIntyre 93

first season of Dance in 2008 was Rhys Bobridge, a gay man who does not conform to
hegemonic expectations of masculinity. Each season, Dance auditioned a large number
of trained dancers and selected a small group who would then perform weekly in differ-
ing styles of dance. The voting public determined who was sent home every week, until
one eventually won the title of Australia’s Favourite Dancer. Dance was a show struc-
tured around clearly sexed categories; even numbers of male and female dancers were
chosen as contestants, with male–female pairs dancing together. During his time on the
show, Bobridge – a prominent Melbourne drag performer with a drag alter ego called
Regime Dettol – adhered to his role as a male dancer, yet the ‘real’ person separate from
his stage performances was presented as, and thus became known to be, ambiguously
gendered. Throughout the season, footage of Bobridge outside of the studio competition
featured him in feminised attire, including dramatic make-up and high heels. His adapt-
able gendering was followed up in publicity in other media, in which he was often
depicted wearing flamboyant costumes and sometimes drag. Through dance and its focus
on the body, Bobridge established himself as a skilled male performer. Yet winning over
a reality TV show audience takes more than the mere demonstration of skill, for viewers’
perceived connection with the show’s ‘ordinary’ celebrities is a critical element of their
engagement with the programme. While Bobridge’s dancing drew attention to his male
body, his celebrity persona drew attention to his masculine as well as feminine expres-
sions of gender. As such, Bobridge emerged as a reality TV celebrity whose queer gender
status disrupts the supposedly stable masculinity of the male body.
Australian reality TV has also made celebrities of gender-queer men in shows not
based on stage performances. Big Brother Australia celebrified Zach Douglas, the show’s
2007 runner-up who embodied a similar mode of queer gendering to Bobridge. A young,
blonde, gay corsetiere, Douglas made his entrance into the Big Brother house wearing a
white suit, a purple fedora and a corset. He was an ‘intruder’, a contestant inserted into
the Big Brother house a number of weeks after the season’s launch. Intruders were noto-
riously unpopular housemates, as they disrupted the household’s established dynamics,
and audiences usually maintained loyalty to the original contestants. Despite this hin-
drance, Douglas defied Big Brother Australia norms and went on to almost win the
contest, losing by only 1 percent of votes in the season finale. Although he spent most of
his time on the show wearing masculine attire, he was closely associated with the corsets
he took into the house. His ‘character’ was also portrayed as having an affinity with femi-
nine behaviours. For example, the show highlighted him teaching female housemates
how to catwalk model and demonstrating how to do a striptease. Douglas was thus
inscribed with femininity as well as masculinity and he, too, became a popular gender-
queer reality TV celebrity.
Big Brother has also incorporated existing transgender celebrities, such as Australian
showgirl drag queen icon Vanessa Wagner who took part in Celebrity Big Brother in
2002 to favourable reception. Notably, Rivera, the star of There’s Something About
Miriam, entered the Australian house as a special guest in the fourth season in 2004. Her
appearance on Australian Big Brother was to follow the same theme as the show that
brought her to fame, as the housemates were not informed their guest was transsexed
(There’s Something About Miriam screened while they were cloistered inside the house
without media access), only for this information to be exposed with a ‘big reveal’. Like
94 European Journal of Cultural Studies 20(1)

There’s Something About Miriam, Big Brother approached Rivera’s transsexualism

exploitatively; however, the Australian housemates’ reactions towards Rivera after the
‘big reveal’ were sympathetic and friendly (unlike the contestants on There’s Something
About Miriam, who sued the show’s producers). The Australian housemates’ respectful
acceptance of Rivera’s transsexualism is in line with, as this article argues, a broader
trend in the way queer subjectivities are treated in Australian reality TV.
In Australian reality TV, singing competition shows have also provided a platform for
talented transgender contestants to display their skills and to receive public recognition,
including female-to-male transsexual Paige Elliot Phoenix who was successful in the
first audition round of The X Factor in 2011. Nevertheless, it was during the first season
of Australian Idol in 2001 that Courtney Act became the prototype of transgender repre-
sentation on Australian reality TV. Shane Jenek auditioned for the show but did not pass
the initial selection stage, yet when Jenek returned the following day in the guise of his
drag persona Act, she was successful and continued to be so up until the last round of the
semi-finals. Because ‘she’ first auditioned as a ‘he’ and this footage was shown and dis-
cussed within the programme, an understanding of Act as a man was absorbed into the
viewers’ perception of this contestant. Yet it was Act, not Jenek, who participated in the
competition; while onstage, in interviews between stage performances, and in publicity
for the show, Jenek remained in costume and in character. The full impact of Act as a
transgender celebrity will be explored shortly, but it is worth noting here that like the
transgender performers on Australia’s Got Talent, during her season of Australia Idol,
Act presented drag’s queer dualities. As a taut, leggy, blonde ‘gender illusionist’ who
expertly enacts ‘womanliness’, Act troubles binary gender categories by often passing as
a woman and displaying a male body able to exemplify hegemonic expectations of
youthful, attractive femininity. Nevertheless, the knowledge and enduring presence of
Jenek’s underlying maleness, coupled with Act’s glamorous femininity, poses a double
signification of gender. Both the performer and Act have remained visible throughout her
time on reality TV, offering a contradiction of sex and gender, and throwing the natural-
ness of the sex-gender system into question.

A bent peg in a straight hole

All the transgender reality TV contestants considered above have endorsed queer
expressions of gender, and they did so in a ‘straight’ media space; all these reality TV
shows aired on FTA commercial networks at times in the nightly schedule when the
imagined audience includes families with children. In this television context, pressure
from advertisers, government regulations and assumptions about family viewing times
constrain what and when shows will be produced and aired. As such, the Australian
reality TV shows in question were compelled to abide by mainstream television’s over-
arching adherence to temporal and familial normativity. The mode of address and con-
tent of these shows is deemed appropriate for family audiences (Needham, 2009:
143–146). The shows’ hosts are always friendly to contestants and to the at-home audi-
ence (with whom they frequently use direct address), and all footage shown is innocu-
ous and often made even more easily understandable with voiceover narration. If there
are judges, they aim to be helpful in their advice, and any unsporting behaviours or
McIntyre 95

comments are condemned. All the reality TV shows discussed adhere to the limits of
straight, family friendly, prime-time viewing on FTA commercial networks. To include
queer subjectivities in an environment that does not usually accommodate queer gen-
der-disruption, these shows also incorporated practices that deflected the ‘threatening’
aspects of the contestants’ non-normative genderings. Nevertheless, Australian
transgender reality TV contestants remained contextualized as queer, and, in Australia,
this television genre has demonstrated an ability to facilitate mainstream acceptance
and approval of queer subjectivities.
In this structure of normativity, inclusions of transgender are necessarily assimilated
into the reassuring atmosphere of the shows. One strategy is using jokes to alleviate the
potentially threatening nature of the contestants’ queer drag. Playful teasing and double
entendres became a way of deflecting uncomfortable and even distressing aspects of con-
testants’ queer embodiment. In Australia’s Got Talent, during the judges’ comment seg-
ments and in dialogues between the host and the transgender contestant, deflective joking
was used to alleviate tensions. For example, after one of Starr’s songs, judge Red Symons
affectedly feigned not understanding what was ‘different’ about this ‘beautiful young
woman’. In a later season, after Rogers performed a 1970s-inspired disco number, the
show’s cisgender host, Grant Denyer, made a point of including a tawdry pun when he
exclaimed, ‘it does take a large set of mirror balls to put on such a dynamic performance’.
Deflective jokes that referenced the performers’ male anatomies were particularly com-
mon. While lightening the mood with ‘cheeky’ humour, these jokes also worked to recon-
firm the transgender contestants’ maleness and thus reassert the underlying sex of the
performer. Rather than underscoring the queer contradictions of drag, however, they func-
tioned as an attempt to locate and stabilise a reassuringly singular sex for the performer.
The judges and hosts of Australian Idol, too, repeatedly took this tack in their dealings
with Act, such as when she and the judges deliberated her viability as a mainstream pop
artist, and multiple quips were made about her ‘package’ and whether she had the ‘balls’
to take up the challenge. For the heterosexual, cisgender male judges and hosts interacting
with transgender contestants, deflective joking had the compound effect of showing they
were straight men who were ‘okay’ with these performers while quelling any rising homo-
sexual panic – such joking clarified the transgender performer had not ‘tricked’ them and
that they were not ‘accidently’ sexually attracted to their feminine form.
Another significant technique making transgender reality TV celebrities more com-
prehensible to middle-Australia is an affiliation with certain ‘Aussie’ rhetoric. Although
the reality TV shows in question are international franchises, their queer renderings of
gender are tempered for the (assumed to be) straight at-home audience with evocations
of nationally specific ideals and mythologies. As Roscoe (2001) observes of Big Brother
Australia, despite its international format, it ‘performs its Australianess and speaks to
its local Australian audience’ (p. 475). Such reality TV shows do this in varying ways,
from the Australian Big Brother house including a backyard pool and barbeque – ‘cen-
tral signifiers of a relaxed Australian lifestyle’ (Roscoe, 2001: p. 476) – to Australia’s
Got Talent foregrounding distinctively Australian cultural elements – such as Old Fella,
an elderly comedian wearing the iconic Australian bushman’s Akubra hat whose stand-
up routine in the 2011 grand finale concluded with a band playing a well-known
Australian bush-themed folk song. Over the course of their time on Australian reality
96 European Journal of Cultural Studies 20(1)

TV, transgender performers have tended – whether by design or opportunity, whether

because of their own behaviour or through producers’ maneuverings – to become
invested with ideals commonly upheld as those that epitomise (white) ‘Aussie’ values.
Australian reality TV show representations of transgender have been imbued with dis-
courses persistently reiterated in Australian politics and culture, particularly that of:
mateship, a fierce camaraderie with military and sporting connotations; the ‘Aussie
battler’, a ‘true blue’ Australian who pushes through hard times; and a ‘fair go’, which
all good Australians should give and receive. Alignment with one or more of these
nationalistic, masculinised ideologies functioned as a counterweight to the destabilising
capacity of queer expression, balancing out their anti-heteronormativity with a demon-
stration of faithfulness to a separate hegemonic directive.
In Big Brother Australia, for example, Zach Douglas’ portrayal of Australianess was
secured with the blossoming of a mateship between him and his fellow contestants, par-
ticularly the homosocial bond he shared with the ‘good Aussie bloke’ Travis Perkins.
Perkins was a friendly, ‘ocker’1 truck driver who exhibited a penchant for the ‘Aussie’
trait of using diminutives ending in ‘o’ (even referring to Douglas’ corsets as ‘cors-oes’).
He was the favourite to win for most of the season because this likable character’s
‘blokey’ mode of masculinity had proven popular, and therefore successful, for compa-
rable contestants in previous seasons. Nevertheless, mateship between contestants had
also been a celebrated staple of Big Brother Australia since the first season. For Douglas,
mateship rivalled ‘blokey’ masculinity when, in the final weeks of competition, he over-
took Perkins in the popular vote and ultimately almost took out the top prize. Without the
camaraderie that was established between Douglas and his housemates, this queer
‘intruder’ would arguably not have succeeded as he did, but he was a ‘good mate’ and the
Australian voting public approved. Similarly, in So You Think You Can Dance Australia,
Bobridge was also established as a ‘good mate’ to his fellow contestants. He and the
straight male winner of his series, Jack Chambers, often proclaimed their comradeship
and demonstrated it in instances such as ending the last dance of the season in a backslap-
ping hug. Likewise, in Australia’s Got Talent, the ‘battler’ or ‘underdog’ mythos, as well
as that of a ‘fair go’, was wound around Rogers. Whenever the judges commented on
him, or background information about him was given, his long-enduring struggle for
acceptance in the entertainment industry was continually brought to the fore. Descriptions
of Rogers’ life experiences were couched in phrases such as ‘he never gave up’, and his
place in the television competition was repeatedly declared ‘his last chance’. Rogers’
self-doubt, previous rejections and his deservedness of a ‘fair go’ were further empha-
sised in backstage footage of the performer, such as that of him earnestly choking out the
words, ‘I just hope I do Australia proud’. Like Douglas’ and Bobridge’s association with
mateship, Rogers’ attachment to the nationalised preoccupation with the ‘battler’ and a
‘fair go’ made him more intelligible as a queer contestant, therefore granting him a
broader appeal and, in all likelihood, gaining him more viewer votes.
Although infusing television transgender representations with deflective jokes and
‘Aussie’ rhetoric may have diluted these reality TV celebrities’ queer impact, it was cer-
tainly not entirely subsumed. Indeed, the mere presence of these contestants in the nor-
mative, ‘family friendly’ context of prime-time television demonstrated queer rupturings.
In fact, the very elements of Australian reality TV shows that made the inclusion of queer
McIntyre 97

subjectivities palatable for the general population actually helped facilitate queer repre-
sentation in mainstream media. As Kavka (2007) asserts in regard to moments of queer
excess in reality TV, ‘the very fact of their existence’ in this genre is important, for ‘the
more it focuses on the “ordinary,” the more it reveals the incoherence of the hetero-nor-
mative script’ (p. 222). Kavka (2007) writes, ‘The point is thus not to argue that a femi-
nist or queer moment is possible “even” on reality TV’, but that queer representations in
reality TV ‘are symptomatic of productive fissures in the hetero plot that reality televi-
sion opens up – almost despite itself’ (p. 222). The mollifying elements apparent in
Australian reality TV meant transgender contestants were viable as content for prime-
time viewing while remaining identifiably queer. For instance, Denyer’s ‘mirror balls’
joke was made while Rogers remained visible in the frame as a bedazzled and heavily
made-up male. As for Act, despite jests about her ‘package’, she also continued to con-
found audiences with her skilful gender illusions. In such cases, deflective joking made
queer performances more easily digestible for mainstream audiences (as well as for the
judges and hosts), but such deflection was necessary exactly because these contestants
troubled ingrained assumptions about the relationship between sex and gender.
Furthermore, showing queer contestants exemplifying the Australian ideals of mateship,
the ‘Aussie battler’ and a ‘fair go’ can be understood to actually displace the masculine,
heterosexual imperative of these, giving these ideals themselves queer inflection. As was
seen in relation to Douglas and Rogers, ‘Australianisms’ that have been used to fertilise
homophobia and transphobia within Australian culture (through these being guarded as
only belonging to heteromasculinity) were given a different life.
Perkins’ approval of Douglas as a mate is perhaps metonymic of the welcoming
response transgender contestants have received in Australian reality TV, for it was an
approval manifested in contrived circumstances but one that nevertheless bore genuine
affirmative effects. While a lack of discrimination against queer people may not be an
accurate reflection of social reality, in the accommodating space of reality TV, anti-
transgender prejudices received exposure and vilification. Previous persecutions of the
contestants were regularly discussed and condemned (sometimes as queered evocations
of ‘battler’ or ‘underdog’ ideologies). Lumby (2003) maintains that ‘the most prominent
and frequently voiced ethical concern about reality TV’ is that it ‘tricks viewers into
believing that what they see on television is real’ (p. 15). Lumby (2003) counters such
claims, arguing that in regard to televisual texts, ‘the relationship between the real and
the represented is always and already complex’ (p. 16), and that ‘the assumption that the
audience simply takes reality television’s claim to represent real life at face value ignores
evidence of the growing media literacy of contemporary viewers’ (p. 17). She finds that
viewers often look to reality TV shows for insight and guidance about identity and socio-
cultural integrities, and that reality TV is able ‘to offer a forum for reflection on the poli-
tics of everyday life’ (p. 23). The acceptance of and encouragement given to these
transgender reality TV contestants present models of inclusivity and ethical behaviours
popularised by the very forum in which they were created. Furthermore, the celebration
of transgender contestants established during their time on reality TV extended past their
final eliminations, and they met with approval and cordiality on the media circuit and at
public appearances after leaving their respective shows. As is the nature of reality TV
fame, however, for most of these contestants, their celebrity status was rescinded as the
98 European Journal of Cultural Studies 20(1)

spotlight on their season faded. Nevertheless, there is a selection of reality TV contest-

ants who maintain their celebrity, and Act is one such example. In Rojek’s (2001) terms,
Act transitioned from a ‘celetoid’ (p. 20) to a bona fide celebrity, and she did so standing
on the shoulders of some Australian transgender giants.

In on the act
Act is a paragon of Australian male-to-female transgender performers, and her tran-
scendence to the realm of legitimate celebrity is indicative of her nationalised appeal.
Act’s celebrity has carried over into areas outside reality TV, taking with it the accept-
ance she received during her time as a successful Australian Idol contestant. Between her
fame-establishing time on Australian Idol and her appearance in RuPaul’s Drag Race,
Act has remained a queer force in some very straight media spaces. Act stayed in the
public eye in a range of ways, releasing songs and accompanying music videos, perform-
ing in acclaimed theatre productions, writing for popular publications and appearing as a
celebrity guest on numerous television shows. In 2008 and 2009, her presence on the
small screen extended further when she became ‘the face’ of Sheer Cover Mineral
Makeup, starring in advertorials airing frequently during morning talk shows. Despite
Act’s widespread appeal, she has maintained proximity to queer culture. Since she
appeared on Australian Idol, affinities with the queer world have ensured this celebrity
is construed as queer, even in straight arenas. Act has publicly maintained queer associa-
tions as an ambassador for the AIDS Trust of Australia and a representative of the 2010
Wear It with Pride national same-sex law reforms awareness campaign. Act has also
headlined queer-themed drag/cabaret stage shows and was the official ambassador for
the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in 2015 and 2016.
An exemplary queer product of Australian reality TV, Act merges significant aspects
of transgender prominent in Australian culture. First, together Act and Jenek represent
both types of male-to-female transgender contestants seen in Australian reality TV, as
Act executes drag-style performances, while Jenek is a gender-queer male. Act, however,
is not constituted only by her stage performances – the performance that Act extends
offstage, and she functions as a synthetic personality. Like the beloved Dame Edna
Everage, as a synthetic personality, Act has her own name, her own established character
and others interact with her as an individual separate from her performer. She invites
play-acting and camp banter, and audiences are complicit in stabilising the verisimilitude
of the character. Nevertheless, in contrast to Dame Edna, Act’s performances as a syn-
thetic personality are infused with queerness. Unlike synthetic personalities played by
straight performers, such as Dame Edna, a synthetic personality that is also a queer drag
persona manifests queer gender dualities. The understanding of Jenek as a gender-queer
male and Act as a corollary of his subject position critically affects the ways in which
Act’s performances of gender discontinuity are interpreted. In contrast to Dame Edna’s
evasive relationship with her male performer Humphries, Act spends no time denying a
connection with Jenek; instead, allusions to the underlying man are a defining aspect of
this queer synthetic personality’s celebrity. Exemplifying this doubling was Act’s Wear
It with Pride campaign poster, which featured a heeled, bewigged Act apparently leaning
on Jenek, who wears a singlet and jeans, with the tagline, ‘You don’t have to live a
McIntyre 99

double life at work anymore. Unless you want to’. As such, Act brings together elements
of Australia’s two most popular, enduring drag and transgender celebrities, Dame Edna
and Les Girls star Carlotta, respectively. Like Dame Edna, and in contrast to Carlotta,
Act is a male-to-female synthetic personality; yet like Carlotta, and in contrast to Dame
Edna, Act is an Australian celebrity who troubles hegemonic divisions of sex and gender
and is publicly affiliated with queer culture.
Like all Australian transgender reality TV contestants, Act’s presence on prime-time
television was a negotiation of acceptable mainstream Australianess and queer represen-
tation. Synthetic personalities invite a camp mode of engagement, and camp engagement
with Act as a queer synthetic personality displays a willing involvement in queer gender-
ing. With full knowledge that Jenek is indeed a gay man, and in concert with Act’s own
references to the man beneath, straight male television personalities happily role-played
with her, treating her as a youthful woman. However, in these contexts, this camp engage-
ment actually functioned to contain and manage her queer presence, undercutting its own
transgressive potential. The ‘once-removed’ nature of synthetic personalities not only
enables them to be outrageous, but also permits those participating in the farce to feel
they, too, have more freedom and that there are fewer consequences for their behaviour
during these encounters (Bonner, 2011: 30). Because of the opportunities for camp role-
play Act offers as a synthetic personality, those interacting with her on Australian Idol
felt free to make what would otherwise be seen as outrageously forward sexual com-
ments to and about her, which were generally interpreted to be ‘all in good fun’. When it
was Act’s turn for evaluation, the Australian Idol judges would regularly make reference
to ‘those legs’ and ‘that body’, especially male judge Ian ‘Dicko’ Dickson. Dickson
declared Act to be ‘one of the sexiest women in the competition’ and said many lascivi-
ous things to her, including, ‘I’m just about to go and tell my wife I’m leaving her for
you’. Between Dickson, the other judges and the show’s two laddish hosts, double enten-
dres such as ‘she’s raising the bar’ and ‘if you want to get behind Courtney’ were plenti-
ful. As such, many of those operating within the freedom of interaction with a synthetic
personality revealed a worrying equation between treating Act as a (youthful, sexy, het-
erosexual) woman and observing her body and remarking on her sexual capacity.
The unusually excessive attention given to Act’s feminine physicality and sexual desir-
ability was considered acceptable, in part, because she is a synthetic personality; camp
engagement with Act as a synthetic personality worked to sexually objectify her. However,
the sexualisation of Act was also perceivably a symptom of broader attitudes towards
male-to-female transgender. Writing on the sexism transwomen experience, Julie Serano
(2007) observes that the all-too-common inclination to sexualise transwomen is under-
pinned by the same attitudes that see cisgender women objectified and subjugated. Serano
(2007) states, ‘the media’s and audience’s fascination with the sexualization of trans
women is a by-product of their sexualization of all women’ (p. 45). Serano (2007) argues
that one of the most prevalent assumptions regarding transwomen is that their central aim
in physically transitioning is to attract the sexual attention of heterosexual cisgender men,
thus leading to the erroneous perception that transwomen, much like a sexual assault sur-
vivor who wore revealing clothing, invite their own sexualisation and objectification (pp.
258–9). Hence, the sexualising and objectifying responses Act received on Australian
Idol were a combination of the lack of consequences and frivolity associated
100 European Journal of Cultural Studies 20(1)

with interacting with a synthetic personality and the prevailing sense that it is ‘okay’ to
sexualise male-to-female transgender people. At the same time, however, these responses
also served to align her with binary gender structures, engaging with her as ‘woman’,
which allowed for the disavowal of, or at least the diversion from, the queer contradictions
and multiplications of her transgendering. Riggs (2005) asserts that Australian Idol
repeatedly attempted to situate Act’s gender transgressions within a normative gender
framework. Riggs (2005) identifies that positioning Act as nominally ‘female’ rather than
transgender worked to make her intelligible as a gendered being within a binary gender
structuring (p. 5). Nevertheless, as Riggs (2005) argues, overall Act refused such co-
option and in doing so troubled heteronormative gender scripts, as her embodiment of
queer gender ‘often exceeded, and indeed questioned, such narrow boundaries’ (p. 6).
Much like Act’s performance of gender, the strategies used to negotiate her queerness
were nuanced, layered and complex. Aside from the particular interactions her transgen-
der synthetic personality status engendered, the same techniques applied in regard to
other Australian transgender reality TV contestants to render them ‘acceptable’ were also
applied to Act. During Australian Idol’s first season, Act was associated with certain
‘Aussie’ discourses; she was framed as being loved and supported by the other contest-
ants and as reciprocating their camaraderie, aligning her with the cherished ‘Aussie’
quality of mateship. This being his/her second chance at the audition immediately posi-
tioned her as a ‘battler’ deserving of a ‘fair go’. Furthermore, as discussed above, deflec-
tive joking was implemented during television interactions with her. While both camp
engagement and deflective joking arise as jovial communications designed to smooth
over the fissures in mainstream consciousness that gender-queer contestants might cause,
they operate from opposing locations. In an ironic contrast to camp engagement disa-
vowing Act’s underlying maleness, deflective joking, especially that which referenced
the performer’s male body parts, arose as a refusal to participate in his/her queer gender
performance. Such jokes worked to undermine the performer’s feminine persona and
reinstate the underlying male body in an effort to minimise any awkwardness that queer-
ness might cause. Despite the differing trajectories of these seemingly opposing strate-
gies, during televised contact with Act, straight Australian males tended to exhibit both
these modes of interaction, shifting back and forth between the two. Such oscillations
between camp engagement and deflective joking allowed a negotiation of contradictory
responses to Act’s queer performance. These differing modes of interaction provided a
balance between fascination, acceptance, rejection and containment. Committing to nei-
ther response, the cisgender television hosts and judges exposed, perhaps unwittingly,
the uncertainty that transgender can evoke, but at the same time mediated this uncer-
tainty for their (assumed to be) straight audiences. Nevertheless, however she was being
handled, audiences’ experience of Act was recurrently interrupted with the queer revela-
tion of what they already knew – that Act is Jenek, and Jenek is a gender-queer man.

Trans* America
Looking for brighter lights and bigger cities, Jenek (taking Act with him) crossed the
Pacific like so many other Australian hopefuls. A decade after her fame-making time on
Australian Idol, Act once again found herself the darling of reality TV; however, this
McIntyre 101

time it was not in a mainstream commercial network forum but on RuPaul’s Drag Race,
a queer, self-reflexive reality TV show dedicated to male-to-female drag performance.
As a contestant on this niche-market queer-themed reality TV show, Act was free from
deflective joking and unbound from ‘Aussie’ idealisations such as mateship and a ‘fair
go’, yet the nationalised nature of her particular queer subjectivity shone through. In
distinction to the US drag performers who were her fellow contestants, she was inscribed
with Australianess, often referred to as ‘the thunder from down under’ and at one point
was even told she looked like a wallaby. The show emphasised that Act had made her
name in mainstream Australian reality TV, giving significant amounts of screen time to
discussions between Act and other contestants about her having been a queer and suc-
cessful contestant on Australian Idol. Further positioning herself as ‘Aussie’, during one
of her onstage performances, Act, speaking with distinctly Australian pronunciation,
joked, ‘as you may have all gathered from my accent … I am from Idaho’. When celeb-
rity transgender activist and female-to-male transsexual Chaz Bono guest starred on the
show, he participated in camp engagement with Act, flirting with her and declaring he
loved Australian women (in the queer context of this particular show, such camp engage-
ment was ironic rather than objectifying). Moreover, for one pageant round, Act flaunted
an extravagant gown that depicted sequined versions of the Australian flag and the
Australian Aboriginal flag, a distinctly Priscilla-esque costume in its flamboyant display
of Australian iconography. This gown was Priscilla-esque, too, in that this appropriation
of the Australian Aboriginal flag could be understood to mirror critiques of Priscilla that
find the film represents ‘white queerness’ working to ‘co-opt Indigeneity’ via the white
protagonists’ appropriative mode of interaction with Indigenous Australian characters
(Riggs, 2006). Because RuPaul’s Drag Race is a show focussed on drag performances
and personas, it was easy for Act to persist as the showgirl drag figure that is prioritised
in Australian transgender representation – but in this show Act played to other stereo-
types and was characterised as a smiling and tanned ‘Aussie’. While act may have been
represented and self-represented as consistently Australian, but she continued to push
and blur boundaries of gender and sexuality. For example, Act admitted on the show that
she has ‘intimate relations with gentlemen in and out of drag’, which some of the other
contestants found objectionable. She also became well-known for exclaiming, ‘I like to
think of myself as a glamorous stepping stone across the pond to homosexuality!’
Act’s transplantation to US reality TV signalled the productive possibilities of inter-
national cross-pollination in regard to affirmative reality TV representations of margin-
alised subjectivities. At the same time, however, it also revealed the localised nature of
reality TV, even in those shows with an international queer appeal. Just as Act evoked
oscillating responses during her time on Australian reality TV, going abroad and appear-
ing in a reality TV show where she could properly revel in queerness provoked compa-
rable but reversed oscillations. On straight Australian reality TV, Act was accepted as an
‘Aussie’ but her queer gendering was an obstacle that needed to be negotiated, yet in the
queer realm of RuPaul’s Drag Race Act shared solid bonds of queer drag with those on
the show but remained a geographical outsider; that is, while on Australian television,
Act was embraced as a mate deserving of a ‘fair go’ but was sexualised and objectified
as a synthetic personality and a male-to-female transgender figure; yet while on
RuPaul’s Drag Race, she was embraced as queer but stereotypified and distanced as
102 European Journal of Cultural Studies 20(1)

Australian. Act’s nonetheless welcome integration into the flamboyantly queer RuPaul’s
Drag Race did indeed highlight just how queer she is as a reality TV contestant. In this
way, her transnational reality TV excursion also facilitates a useful reflection on the
significance of the contribution she and her comrades in Australian reality TV made to
queer screen representation in Australia. Although the queerness of these contestants
was tempered in the process of incorporating them into the ‘family-friendly’ space of
FTA commercial television, their queerness was never entirely subsumed. Indeed, their
very presence in this mainstream context functioned as queer rupturings, and even the
techniques that were implemented to moderate their queerness often became queerly
inflected in the process. Through constructive representations of queer subjectivities
and an engaged relationship between queer contestants and audiences, Australian real-
ity TV has made significant moves towards challenging hegemonic binary gender struc-
tures and endorsing gender diversity.

Acknowledgement
The article develops and expands on arguments presented at the ANZCA conference 2015 and
published in the conference proceedings.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this
article.

Note
1. The ‘ocker’, closely associated with the ‘larrikin’, is an idealised Australian type coded as
white, masculine and heterosexual. Bruce Molloy (1990) states ‘“Ocker” is a slang term for
an unsophisticated Australian male, whose behaviour is characterised by crudity, insensitivity
and bad taste’ (p. 89).

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Biographical note
Joanna McIntyre is a lecturer in Screen and Media Studies at the University of the Sunshine
Coast, Australia. Joanna has published peer-reviewed articles on, and her research interests
include, celebrity, cinema and television, queer and transgender representation, and Australian
culture.