Trans* media ecology: The emergence of gender variant selfies in print

Abstract

Despite having become more visible in popular and academic discourses over the last half decade, trans* selfies are not new. In this article, I examine an early set of trans* selfies featured in a sexploitation periodical published in the United States during the early 1960s. I show how numerous media, including bodies, clothing, cosmetics, photographs and magazines, produced a socio-technical environment through which trans* subjects composed alternative gender expressions and identities, formed intimate networks and created conditions of possibility for the eventual re-emergence of trans* selfies via digital social media platforms. Merging trans* theory with media ecology, I develop trans* media ecology as a conceptual frame from which to locate the always imbricated – but never complete – becoming of gendered bodies and media. Methodologically, trans* media ecology adopts three guiding principles: (1) genders are media, (2) genders depend on media and (3) genders and media change.