When it comes to queer representation, sometimes you had to take what you could get. That's extra true for trans representation on screen. Even though I am a cinephile now, I didn't watch a lot of movies as a kid. We didn't have a movie theatre, so film night film was whatever the whole family could agree on. The Rocky Horror Picture Show was not a choice my parents were going to pick (I think my mom would watch it now, for what it's worth). The movie wasn't even on my radar.
About a year before I came out publicly, my friends invited me to a screening of Rocky Horror on Halloween. I knew I was trans, but I wasn't ready to be out. I had attended a few Drag Race viewing parties where my friend did my make-up, but my exploration of my identity ended there. But our friend group decided to go as the female characters from Inside Out. Ironically, I got to be Joy.
So there I was, sitting in a movie theatre in a yellow dress and a blue wig, high on gender euphoria. I was vaguely aware of Frank-N-Furter, but I avoided lots of LGBTQ+ media in my youth, worried someone would find me watching it and know I was queer. The screening kicked off with an intro from some fans, welcoming us to the show. The audience was rabid. This was not just a thing you watched. You participated in it. I did feel a little out of the loop. I didn't know the in-jokes, but I was falling in love with it regardless.
And then Frank-N-Furter showed up and he cracked my egg.
What happened, all at once, was I saw someone confidently being themselves — weird and sexy and a spectacle.
Obviously, Tim Curry is utterly brilliant in the role. There's no denying the charisma he brings to Frank, and I was mesmerized. He was all the things I was afraid people would say about me: loud, strange, sexual, unapologetically queer. And he owned every bit of it. Sure, the movie is transphobic in ways that haven't aged well (cue Billy Presley telling me to shut the fuck up), but sometimes you take the representation you can get.
But what fully cracked my egg wasn't Frank. It was the audience. They fucking loved him. They cheered for him. They dressed like him. They had built an entire community around celebrating this character who was everything I was terrified of being seen as. Obviously, I wasn't going to become a murderous cannibal with a castle full of sex slaves. But sitting there in my yellow dress and blue wig, surrounded by people celebrating someone for being loudly and unapologetically different, something clicked. Maybe being seen didn't have to be terrifying. Maybe I could just be me.
So from one transvestite, here's to Tim Curry, that sweet transvestite from Transexual, Transylvania.
