Calpernia on the cover of Jan 2009 California Apparel News Magazine
Wow, what an honor! California Apparel News chose my photo for the cover of their January 2009 issue! What a great way to start the year!
About the magazine:
The voice of California’s apparel industry since 1945, the California Apparel News serves the largest apparel center in the country.
1. Au commencement.
J’avais pour habitude de rêver d’un navire noir, échoué au milieu de débris rejetés par la mer déchainée. La pluie, atteignant le sol, m’humidifiait les pieds et les instables surfaces des eaux noires s’ouvraient pour engloutir le reflet d’une lune dégagée. Alors que d’épais nuages fondaient dans les airs et glissaient rapidement vers des fissures rougeâtres situées entre ciel et mer, les ondulations s’incorporaient aux flaques couleur acier qui se rétrécissaient à mes pieds, déformant les créatures du dessous, isolées et contorsionnées par la mort. J’avais été laissé en retrait, avec ce navire. Il était sombre et l’eau de mer infiltrée l’avait fait pourrir. « Je ne suis pas censé être ici, » dis-je au ciel, mais je n’eus aucune réponse. Il était facile de s’allonger, érodé par l’exhalaison des vagues et les doigts du vent à la fois doux et déchirants sur mon dos. Il n’y avait personne ici. Aucune volonté. Aucun mal
Hot For Winter
Come see photographer Eric Schwabel’s glorious photography, alongside the work of other artists, at the Hot For Winter show on Sunday, December 14th. His nude photo of yours truly (taken for the Advocate’s body image issue) will be on display, along with his other work.
Well, if I had any illusions that most of the same people who supported Obama also viewed gay and lesbian people as equal human beings, those illusions are very much dead now. As I mentioned in the Psychology Today piece I wrote on trans people and politics the day before the election, it has become more and more of a struggle for me to avoid bitterness when I look at the strangers around me who prove again and again that most of them are at best apathetic to GLBT issues. And many of them are outright hostile and hypocritically judgmental.
Certainly not all… my life is full of good friends who are heterosexual and gender normative. The ”No on Prop 8” events I worked introduced me to tons of really cool, supportive people like Laura Silverman and others.
But numbers don’t lie, and our supporters were drowned out by the slim majority of fear mongering, falsehood promoting, religiously hypocritical average Joes and Janes. Most of the people who voted yes on Proposition 8 (yes to discrimination) were influenced by the millions of dollars funneled against us by religious institutions like the Mormon church (2) (3) (4), and many cited religious reasons when asked why they were voting to exclude same sex marriages.
Why do I care? After all, I am attracted to men and I can legally marry any man I choose. I care because outsiders see all GLBT people as “the same”, and their vote against same sex marriage was a vote against ALL our humanity. A vote against ALL of our participation in the human family. You can bet your britches that the people who voted “Yes on Prop 8 (YES to discrimination)” are the same people who will vote away my rights to legal womanhood if and when they try to cram that onto their Frankenstein monster of a Constitution, too. Attacking gays and lesbians is just the precursor to coming back and sweeping out the even-more-minor minorities like transsexual people.
So yes, I see how it is, and I won’t forgive this blatant slap in the face of the community that has been my only source of nurture and comfort through my difficult transition. Religious bigotry, hate, intolerance and hypocrisy has resonated throughout my entire life. I hope that now, more people in the community and our supporters will see exactly what’s going on here and start actively working to dismantle the influence that religious and fundamentalist nuts have established on OUR lives.
Hey kids, I wrote a nice piece on my views concerning transsexual people (and all GLBT people, really) and politics for Psychology Today magazine’s blog. Please click on the link, even if you don’t have time to read it, so that I can get some page views! Thank you!
For most of my life, when I looked at the people passing by in my daily activities, on some subconcious level I felt like I was one of them. Beneath whatever surface tensions, we were all part of the human family, and aside from my transition I wasn’t terribly unlike most of them when it came to the basics. But even more so than a lifetime of almost numbingly commonplace rejection, the heartbreaking contempt toward transsexual people (as part of the GLBT community) exposed by the heightened politics around the 2008 Presidential election has left me feeling like I need to examine closely who and what I am a part of. For trans people, gender is forced into being a social, political and legal issue as a matter of simple survival.
Calpernia Addams and Brian Pera on the set of "Not For You"
Brian Pera, director of the upcoming short film tenatively titled “Not For You”, has written a very kind essay about working with me on our recent shoot in Memphis. Check it out:
http://brianpera.blogspot.com/2008/11/calpernia-addams-in-womans-picture.html
Recently, I filmed a short here in Memphis, a week-long production with a cast of three and a crew of four. One of the actors was Calpernia Addams, whom I’d first seen on TV, subsequently contacted by email, and eventually met at Outfest in LA. Like many people who meet at film-related events in Los Angeles, we exchanged compliments and expressed what seemed like a genuine interest in working with each other. Following the template, it might have ended there.
Read Brian’s Essay: http://brianpera.blogspot.com/2008/11/calpernia-addams-in-womans-picture.html
Click HERE to listen live via iTunes, VLC Media Player or other media player or go to the site: http://www.rationalradio.org
Hey kids, tune in to me being interviewed by Jack E. Jett at 12:06pm PT (2:06pm CST). Jack is a really cool, fun guy who had me on his show “Queer Edge” a few years ago.
Audio/Video Clips, Diary, In Print, Interviews, Media Appearances
Meghan Cavalier
Actress, singer and entertainer Meghan Chavalier did a great interview with me for ”Stopping the Hate”. Check it out!
Calpernia Interviewed by Meghan Chavalier: http://stoppingthehate.com/CalperniaAddams.htm
Hey kids, I don’t send out bulletins like this often, but things are tight these days and so I decided to start putting my autobiography out there in downloadable PDF format. You can read about it on my site HERE or even download a copy for five smackers here.
In any case, all my best and thank you for all the support! =)
Calpernia
Mark 947 chronicles one woman’s progress from spirit to flesh, a literal transubstantiation by force of will. Raised as a boy by loving but religious parents in the rural heartland of Tennessee, Calpernia Addams found her way on an unlighted path from forbidden dreams to fulfillment as a scholar, showgirl and eventually, as a woman.
Sultry stage siren by night, intellectual chameleon by day, she worked her way to the top of Nashville’s underground entertainment scene without ever succumbing to drugs, alcohol or bitterness, and through it all never lost her heart. When love walked into her new life in the form of a handsome young Army private, it seemed everything had at last come together. Then at the pinnacle of her career, as she was crowned Tennessee Entertainer of the Year in front of hundreds of adoring fans, her love was murdered in his sleep sixty miles away by bigoted fellow soldiers, sparking a national controversy that resonates still.
Whether ablaze in the dazzle of the spotlight or haunting the woods of Tennessee in flannel and pigtails, Calpernia lives her life with the humor and spirit of a woman who can face anything and still move forward with hope intact.
Mark 9:47
43 And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched:
44 Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.
45 And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched:
46 Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.
47 And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire:
48 Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.
- The Bible, King James Version
Dynamic YouTube comedy duo Riot & Anger do a hilarious tribute video referencing several of my latest YouTube vidz! You kinda have to have seen the originals to get the jokes: they reference the Bubble Bath Blog, Ghost Rider and Bad Questions. Ha! Leave them some comments, they’re cool.
Just as they warned me in the “How not to be a bad role model” handbook that is given to every actress in Hollywood, I see that my smoking onscreen as “Tracey” in “Ghost Rider” has inspired these young people to smoke in real life. That’s 10 demerits for me, sigh. Just so everyone knows, “Tracey”s cigarette was made from a sheet of white paper Scotch taped into a cylinder and colored with brown and yellow sharpies to simulate a filter. But still, BAD role model! BAD!
Audio/Video Clips, Diary, In Print, Mentions, Product Reviews
Recent Comments