MASS MEDIA INTERPRETATIONS OF A TRANSGENDERED BODY:
CHRISTINE JORGENSEN, AMERICAN CELEBRITY AND POSTWAR
ANXIETY
_______________
A Thesis
Presented to the
Faculty of
San Diego State University
_______________
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Arts
in
History
_______________
by
Mekila Del Re Martin
Fall 2012
iii
Copyright © 2012
by
Mekila Del Re Martin
All Rights Reserved
iv
DEDICATION
This thesis is lovingly dedicated to Grandma Del Re, who continually inspires me to
be the best version of myself.
v
The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.
—Chuck Palahniuk
Invisible Monsters
vi
ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS
Mass Media Interpretations of a Transgendered Body: Christine
Jorgensen, American Celebrity and Postwar Anxiety
by
Mekila Del Re Martin
Master of Arts in History
San Diego State University, 2012
In the 1950s, Christine Jorgensen became a household name when she first made
headlines for undergoing a sex change operation. Her transformation made her both a
celebrity and social anxiety as she challenged idealize notions of traditional femininity and
masculinity that were rooted within popular culture. Her gender nonconformity ultimately
publicized a type of sexual variation that was less than ideal for Cold War standards. Yet,
instead of turning away from her as an outcast, the popular media sold Jorgensen’s story to
the nation, catapulting her to celebrity stardom.
This work explores Christine Jorgensen’s unconventional celebrity and the media
attention surrounding it. Though it could be assumed that as the years went by, she would
find more social and political acceptance in the public eye, but this was not the case. This
work will argue that despite the revolutionary social landscape in which Jorgensen grew as a
celebrity, her and other transgender individuals did not gain large-scale acceptance or
understanding. Jorgensen’s body highlighted the public’s fear and fascination with changing
sex and gender roles throughout the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.
vii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................. vi
LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................... viii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................................................................................... ix
CHAPTER
1
INTRODUCTION .........................................................................................................1 2
COLD WAR, BURNING QUESTIONS .....................................................................11 1950s: Recipes for a Proper Society ......................................................................12 Mass Media, Friend or Foe? ..................................................................................14 Selling Christine.....................................................................................................31 3
SEXUAL UPRISING ..................................................................................................34 A Glimpse of 1960s Social Atmosphere ................................................................36 Jorgensen Attempts to Wed, Media Criticism Follows .........................................40 Jorgensen: Sex Symbol or Laughing Stock? .........................................................42 1960s Mass Media Responses Beyond Jorgensen .................................................45 1960s Magazine Advertisements ...........................................................................48 4
COMING OF AGE ......................................................................................................51 Paving the Way for Christine: 1970s Social History .............................................52 Christine’s Story Hits the Big Screen ....................................................................57 Mass Media Publishing on Sexual Variation after Jorgensen Film .......................60 Sensationalist Media Persists .................................................................................64 5
CONCLUSION: REMEMBERING CHRISTINE ......................................................68 REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................72 viii
LIST OF FIGURES
PAGE
Figure 1. Christine uncensored. ...............................................................................................16 Figure 2. What ever became of Christine Jorgensen?..............................................................43 Figure 3. The Christine Jorgensen Story, movie poster 1........................................................58 Figure 4. The Christine Jorgensen Story, movie poster 2........................................................58 ix
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It is overwhelming to think of all of the individuals who have shaped my life and
work during the progression of creating this thesis. I would first like to thank my committee
chair, Professor John Putman who first sparked my interest in everything Cold War as an
undergraduate student. His guidance and expertise have been the driving force behind my
work from day one. I would also like to thank my second and third thesis advisors, Professor
Matt Kuefler, and Professor Esther Rothblum, for their support and encouragement
throughout my writing process. I am also grateful to Professor Eve Kornfeld and all of the
graduate students I have worked with over the years who have aided my growth, both
personally and intellectually.
Although I have been fortunate enough to work with some of the best individuals at
San Diego State University, I would be nowhere without the constant love and support of my
family and close friends. I am ever grateful to my grandma, Antoinette Del Re, for instilling
in me from a young age the necessity of higher education. To my mother, Angie, my father,
Phil, and my sister, Monica who are the three strongest people I know. Their advice and
words of encouragement have anchored me throughout my entire life. To Lauren, Lindsey,
and Blake, thank you for keeping me both fed and sane over the past year. Lastly, I would
like to express my gratitude to Miss Christine Jorgensen, and anyone else who dares to be
completely authentic in the face of scrutiny.
1
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
At one time or another, I had been called a male homosexual, a female homosexual, a
transvestite, an hermaphrodite, a woman since birth who devised a sensational method of
notoriety for financial gain, a true male masquerading as a female, or a totally sexless
creature—the last category placing me in the same neutral corner as a table or chair.
—Christine Jorgensen
Throughout her lifetime, Christine Jorgensen changed the way the world viewed sex
and gender.1 In 1952 she became an overnight fascination of Cold War popular culture when
reports of her sex change operation went public. Christine was born male, but always had an
inner feeling she was female. Her transformation made her both a celebrity and social anxiety
as she challenged idealize notions of traditional femininity and masculinity that were rooted
within Cold War culture. Her gender nonconformity ultimately publicized a type of sexual
variation that was less than ideal for Cold War standards. Yet, instead of turning away from
her as an outcast, the popular media sold Jorgensen’s story to the nation, catapulting her to
celebrity stardom.
On a limited scale, notions of changing “sex” and the biology behind it have been on
America’s cultural radar since before World War II. Across the globe, evidence of humans
altering their sex and gender has been found within various cultures for centuries.2 Decades
before Jorgensen’s story went public, doctors in Europe worked to identify biological sex on
a hormonal level. Some experimented with changing the sex of animals, eventually altering
the sex of human subjects who desired the change. These changes were not easy; they
required several doses of hormones coupled with psychological evaluations, and invasive
1
Author’s note: Since Jorgensen felt she was a female her entire life, she will be referenced as a female
throughout this work. She will only be referenced as a male when discussing her childhood.
2
Joanne Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States, (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2002), 4.
2
surgeries.3 The work of these individuals shaped the treatment Jorgensen received when she
first arrived in Denmark in 1950.
Though Jorgensen was not the first individual to change sex in human history, her
story is important because it forced everyday Americans to redefine the possibilities of sex,
gender, science, and modern medicine. 4 The 1950s was a decade full of highly prescribed
gender roles that left little room for variation. The term “transsexual” was used in 1949 to
describe those who desired to change sex. After Jorgensen’s story broke to the media, her
doctor, Harry Benjamin publicized and defined the term.5 The media frenzy over Jorgensen’s
body forced the mass media to tackle questions that previously had simple answers. Joanne
Meyerowitz in How Sex Changed: a History of Transsexuality in the United States, argues
that these questions were part of a reconceptualization of sex that took place in the twentieth
century:
The notion that biological sex is mutable, that we define and redefine it, that we
can divide it into constituent parts, such as chromosomes, hormones, and genitals,
and modify some of those parts, that male and female are not opposites, that
masculinity and femininity do not spring automatically from biological sex, that
neither biological sex nor gender determines the contours of sexual desire…6
Jorgensen’s story raised these questions, kick starting the public discourse of sex and
gender in the 1950s that continues today.
Christine Jorgensen was born a biological male, George Jorgensen, on May 30, 1926
in New York.7 Jorgensen had a typical childhood; his father was a contractor and his mother
stayed at home to raise George and his older sister Dorothy.8 This “typical” childhood,
however, was full of isolation and inner suffering for Jorgensen. He continuously chose to be
alone instead of playing rough with boys at summer camp.9 This isolation would be a theme
3
Ibid., 5.
4
Author’s note: The term “sex” refers to biological sex, “gender” refers to the social representation of sex.
5
Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed, 5, 6.
6
Ibid., 4.
7
Christine Jorgensen, Christine Jorgensen: A Personal Autobiography, 3rd ed. (San Francisco: Celis
Press, 1967), 53.
8
Ibid.
9
Ibid.
3
throughout Jorgensen’s life as he struggled to figure out who he truly was. Jorgensen fought
his inner yearnings to play with girl’s toys and dress in feminine clothing.10 In her
autobiography, Jorgensen would later write that she was a terribly shy child who lived in a
time when “subjects such as a ‘feminine’ boy were not openly discussed.”11
Regardless of a lack of proper language for his feelings of femininity, Jorgensen
always felt that his inner self was female.12 In his twenties, George enrolled in a medical
technician’s school and began to research literature on the chemical makeup of men and
women. After much research, Jorgensen decided that certain hormones could aid his desire to
be female. He went to a local drugstore and convinced the clerk to sell him a strong dose of
female hormones.13 However, these hormones did not provide the solace that Jorgensen
hoped for, and he was still physically male. A few years later, comfort came in the form of a
friend who told Jorgensen of Harry Benjamin, doctor in Denmark who performed sex change
operations. With that thought in mind Jorgensen made the bold decision to travel to
Copenhagen to undergo a series of hormone and surgical treatments in order to become
physically female.14
During the 1950s, European countries were much more accepting and advanced than
the United States in social and medical issues regarding sexual variation.15 American doctors
were hesitant to perform “unnecessary” surgeries on healthy adults.16 Doctor Harry Benjamin
argued in “Transsexualism and Transvestism” that transsexuality was likely caused by a
combination of psychological and hormonal influences, thus rendering psychotherapy useless
when attempting to “cure” a trans individual.17 Despite published reports like these, medical
professionals in the United States opted to alter the mind of patients by performing
10
Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed, 54.
11
Jorgensen, Christine Jorgensen, 17.
12
Ibid.
13
Ibid., 76.
14
Ibid., 85.
15
Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed, 39.
16
Ibid., 48.
17
Harry Benjamin, “Transsexualism and Transvestism as Psychosomatic and Somatopsychic Syndromes,”
in The Transgender Studies Reader, eds. Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle (New York: Routledge, 2006), 45.
4
lobotomies although it was not a success.18 Seeking a sex change operation in America was
not an option for Jorgensen. She hoped that Denmark would be solution to her lifelong
struggle with sex and gender.19 Jorgensen wrote that she viewed her trip to Denmark as a
“one-way ticket to a new life.”20
If a new life is what Jorgensen wanted, she got a new world. The story of her sex
change operation hit the world press before she even left her hospital bed in Denmark.
Jorgensen’s media coverage was almost obsessive as every reporter fought to get a piece of
her story.21 Jorgensen’s media coverage was a constant mix of positive and negative
reactions. The American public was unsure what to think of this medically engineered blonde
beauty. In an attempted to classify Jorgensen, the media often wrongly labeled her as a
hermaphrodite or female impersonator.22 The year 1952 would mark the beginning of a
turbulent thirty-year relationship between Jorgensen and American popular culture. The mass
media’s continuous embrace and rejection of Jorgensen mirrored the intricate Cold War
environment that nurtured her celebrity.
This work will focus on Jorgensen’s unconventional celebrity and the media attention
surrounding it. Though it could be assumed that as the years went by, Jorgensen would find
more social and political acceptance in the public eye, this was not the case. This work will
argue that despite the revolutionary social landscape in which Jorgensen grew as a celebrity,
her and other transgender individuals did not gain large-scale acceptance. Jorgensen’s
celebrity highlighted the public’s fear and fascination with changing sex and gender roles.
This fascination coupled with the media machines of the 50s, 60s, and 70s, allowed
Jorgensen’s celebrity to skyrocket. Her story was plastered over newsstands across the
globe.23 For better or worse, this mass media circus transformed a woman who completely
contradicted the highly prescribed gender roles of postwar life into a full-fledged star.
18
Ibid., 113.
19
Jorgensen, Christine Jorgensen, 86.
20
Ibid.
21
Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed, 49.
22
Ibid., 71.
23
Jorgensen, Christine Jorgensen, vi.
5
In order to fully examine the complexities of Jorgensen’s celebrity, this work utilizes
several primary sources such as, magazine articles, advertisements, photographs, interviews,
and Jorgensen’s own autobiography. Some media sources that featured her will be analyzed
for positive, negative, or neutral reactions towards Jorgensen. These categories are important
because they highlight the ongoing contradictory relationship between Jorgensen and the
mass media. Analysis of intended audience, advertisements, language, photographs, and
photo captions for these sources also provides insight into the creation of her celebrity. This
work will also include several secondary sources that cover sexual variation and norms
throughout the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Studies on postwar homosexuality are incorporated in this
work as well in order to fully analyze the context of Jorgensen’s celebrity. Though she was
transsexual and not homosexual, it is important to touch on the stigma of postwar
homosexuality because the media continuously intertwined these two groups. Collectively,
these sources will illustrate the media’s contradicting attitudes towards changing sex and
gender that spanned over three decades.
The history of sexuality is a relatively new aspect of historical research. Though
human sexual variation is present within the earliest periods of history, it is not until the late
1950s with the Kinsey reports that sexual research gained public inertest. Elaine Tyler May
in her work Homeward Bound, utilizes Kinsey and other sex researchers work in order to
unveil American life in postwar America. May explores the return of “traditional American
life” amidst Cold War circumstances. 24 This social history allows the reader to enter postwar
American life, from the work place, and even in the bedroom. May’s work expands on the
sex and gender prescriptions of the 1950s, and argues that young Americans eagerly fulfilled
these roles.25 Homeward Bound is particularly important to this study because it provides the
foundation for the context by which Jorgensen’s celebrity emerged. Though May does not
address transsexuals, she does mention cross-dressing and the fear of homosexual
manipulation that was present throughout the 1950s.26
24
Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound (New York: Basic Books, 1988), 8.
25
Ibid., 6.
26
Ibid., 91.
6
In 1960, Dr. Albert Ellis published The Folklore of Sex, a study of the mass media
and its projection of various sexual attitudes for public consumption. This work covers a
range of sexual topics from incest to fornication.27 Ellis attempts to draw public opinion on
the sexual attitudes of the 1950s and 60s based on media outlets. His study consists of several
sources including over 200 best- selling books of the decades, magazines, motion picture
scripts, and newspapers.28 This work is a fairly complete look on sexuality and the mass
media in the 50s and 60s, however, it fails to address trans issues. Transgenderism is a
relatively new term, so it is reasonable that Ellis did not include transsexuality in his
research. However, transvestitism (cross- dressing) was and issue largely addressed in 1950s
and 60s media that is not covered in this work. He does include a section on “Sex
‘Perversions,’” but mainly touches on ideas of homosexuality, torture, and bestiality.29
Despite the lack of trans coverage, Ellis is successful in depicting the fluctuating opinions
and anxieties of sexuality as it played out in the mass media.
Other scholars of sexuality have also overlooked transsexuality or the third sex in
their research. Editors Jack and Joann DeLora used several articles together to create their
book Intimate Life Styles: Marriage and Its Alternatives. This work was published in 1972
yet it still ignores trans topics. The DeLora’s focused their resources mainly on heterosexual
experiences with the exception of a small chapter on homosexuality.30 The history of
sexuality until rather recently failed to include trans topics in academic research. Though the
DeLora’s offer an impressive body of work for the history of heterosexuality, the lack of
sexual diversity and depth to the chapter on homosexuality leaves too many holes in their
research.
In 1974, Morton Hunt included a small paragraph on transsexualism in his work,
Sexual Behavior in the 1970s. Hunt’s research mainly centers on heterosexual behaviors and
27
Albert Ellis, The Folklore of Sex (New York: Grove Press Inc., 1960), 5.
28
Ibid., 7.
29
Ibid, 180.
30
Jack R. DeLora and Joann S. DeLora, Intimate Life Styles: Marriage and Its Alternatives (Pacific
Palisades: Goodyear Publishing Company, Inc., 1972), 252.
7
attitudes towards sex before marriage, affairs, sexual fulfillment, and fetishes.31 Hunt
narrowed public opinion by utilizing surveys, and other studies on sexuality from the 1950s
and beyond. He mentions transsexuality under the larger umbrella of sexual deviance and
like other authors, elaborates only on ideas of homosexuality. Perhaps this lack of
information on trans issues in the 70s was due to a lack of academic research on the topic.
For Hunt, keeping his focus on heterosexuality with a smaller mention of homosexual
behavior allowed his work to have a cohesive tone.
In the past two decades, the history of transsexuality has emerged as a sub-section of
the history of homosexuality.32 Therefore, limited literature on transsexuality has surfaced in
academia, though it is a topic that will continue to grow in years to come. Within these
works, an in depth analysis of the media responses to Jorgensen has yet to fully be
accomplished. Most authors dedicate a chapter or section to Jorgensen, but fail to focus on
the media whirlwind that surrounded her. Academics tend to focus on the larger progression
of the history of transsexuality instead of focusing on one individual in a specific decade.
Authors such as Susan Stryker, Patrick Califia, Dallas Denny, David Serlin, and Joanne
Meyerowitz have utilized various approaches when analyzing the history of transsexuality.
Stryker and Califia focus on the political side of transsexuality in their books
Transgender History, and Sex Changes: the Politics of Transgenderism. Stryker’s book is
more or less a collective history of transgender social change and activism in the United
States.33 Politically, she aligns transgender social change within the larger framework of the
feminist movement. Much like Stryker’s work, Califia also examines the political forefront
of transsexuality. He notes that his work, “…speaks to bolster an alliance between gay and
transsexual activists.”34 These works attempt to form a political narrative for transgender
history.
31
Morton Hunt, Sexual Behavior in the 1970s (Chicago: Playboy Press, 1974), vii.
32
Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed, 8.
33
Susan Stryker, Transgender History (Berkeley: Seal Studies, 2008), 2.
34
Patrick Califia, Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism, 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Cleis Press,
2003), 7.
8
Three years after publishing Transgender History, Stryker in collaboration with
Stephen Whittle published The Transgender Studies Reader, an edited work that includes
various articles on transsexualism from its earliest conception. Dallas Denny also edited a
diverse work on transgenderism in Current Concepts in Transgender Identity. In this work,
Denny has pieced together numerous articles that involve some aspect of transgender
identity. David Serlin’s, Replaceable You: Engineering the Body of Postwar America, is
important for its analysis of changing bodies, and gender during the Cold War. Perhaps the
most complete social history of transsexuality today is How Sex Changed: a History of
Transsexuality in the United States, by Joanne Meyerowitz. Her work covers transgenderism
from its earliest conception and concludes with possibilities for future generations.
Each of these authors uses Jorgensen in their works. Stryker touches on her in order
to define a new section of activism from stemmed from a transvestite movement.35 In regards
to media attention, Stryker notes that Jorgensen received widespread attention, but fails to
examine the actual media outlets and cultural constraints that fed Jorgensen’s celebrity.
Califia writes on Jorgensen and focuses on only the negative media attention that surrounded
her. He fits Jorgensen neatly into a broader picture of transgender history, but fails to analyze
the media outlets that printed stories of her life. Denny writes a very interesting article on
Jorgensen. However, she focuses mainly on how Jorgensen advanced the study of
transsexuality, ignoring the postwar environment in which her celebrity was created. Stryker
and Whittle’s reader is important because it covers several works from various disciplines on
trans research including an article by Doctor Harry Benjamin. His article provides insight on
his earliest work with transsexualism, and his thoughts on treatment. His research and
methods provided the science that supported Jorgensen’s decision to change her gender.
Serlin’s study of Jorgensen is one of the first to analyze her publicity and the attitudes
of a postwar environment. He argues that the press originally received Jorgensen’s story in a
positive light because they believed she was born as a hermaphrodite. However, once the
mass media realized that Jorgensen was born biologically male, and that her sex change was
35
Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle, ed., The Transgender Studies Reader, (New York: Routledge,
2006), 47.
9
more than a simple “corrective surgery,” they turned their back on her.36 This notion refers
back to what Serlin coined as a “medical consumerism” that was popular throughout the Cold
War. With medical advancements on the rise, including plastic surgery, Serlin argues that
Americans became obsessed with using modern medicine to reconstruct the body on the
outside to match what people felt on the inside.37 Though Serlin’s work is a detailed look at
Jorgensen’s relationship with the mass media, it does not continue to analyze her celebrity
past the late 1950s. Meyerowitz also includes a fascinating chapter on Jorgensen in her work,
focusing mainly on her earlier years (as a man) but also provides an interesting perspective
on Jorgensen’s media impact. She successfully acknowledges the Cold War culture in which
Jorgensen lived, yet fails to examine the photographs, language, and advertisements of the
media sources that reported on Jorgensen.
Scholars of Transgender History have mainly attempted to cover the broad social,
political, and cultural aspects of the field. Though Jorgensen is referred to in almost all of
these histories, the media sources that covered her story have not been fully analyzed. This
research is innovative in that it focuses on the ambivalence of Jorgensen’s celebrity through
1950s, 60s, and 70s media, providing a glimpse into the psyche of postwar popular culture.
Jorgensen’s star influenced the culture in which she lived and vice versa. This work is a
concentrated study of the media’s response to Jorgensen during the height of Cold War
conservatism. It will build on previous studies of transsexuality because it provides a specific
study of various media reactions to a transsexual individual living in postwar America.
This work specifically focuses on representations and responses to Christine
Jorgensen through a mass media lens. In order to understand why there was such a flux of
media reactions, cold war ideals of gender, sex, and body image must be examined during the
peak Jorgensen’s celebrity. Though each of these post war decades was full of changing
attitudes towards sex and gender, Jorgensen’s media attention continued to be combination of
positive and negative reactions. Each chapter will briefly analyze the decade’s attitudes on
sex and gender in order to situate the mass media’s use of language in describing Jorgensen’s
36
David Serlin, Replaceable You: Engineering the Body in Postwar America (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2004), 162.
37
Ibid., 11.
10
transgendered body. These categories of “positive and negative” are separated by the media’s
acceptance of Jorgensen’s inherent femininity or masculinity. Positive reactions tended to
give Jorgensen credit for feminine attributes while negative views focused on her masculine
traits.
Each chapter of this work will highlight the pivotal decades of Jorgensen’s mass
appeal. Chapter one analyzes the 1950s and the beginnings of a love hate relationship that
emerged from Jorgensen’s stardom. The 1950s were a time of highly prescribed gender roles
for men and women. Thus, Jorgensen’s celebrity marks a complete contradiction to
traditional Cold War life. As a result, Jorgensen was depicted as both bombshell and
Frankenstein. Chapter two moves into the 1960s where the mass media still struggled to
classify a transgender body. The underlying social revolutions of the time shifted media
attitudes towards Jorgensen and other trans individuals. An impending sexual revolution
influenced magazines to publish stories that sensationalized transgenderism by over
sexualizing notions of changing sex. With transgenderism at the center of sexual and social
confusion, Jorgensen and others similar to her struggled to find legitimacy throughout the
60s.
The final chapter on the 1970s follows Jorgensen’s celebrity as the social revolutions
of the decade flourished. Women’s Liberation and the Sexual Revolution gained political
power with successful cases centering on birth control and censorship codes. This explosion
of sexual and media freedom allowed for more public discourse on sexual variation. These
social advances set the stage for more tolerance towards Jorgensen and others that challenged
traditional gender norms. It is within this decade that the mass media (though there is never a
full acceptance of her) finally begins to legitimize Jorgensen’s transgender identity.
Together, these chapters will convey the complexity of Jorgensen’s public and private life
that evoked an array of responses from Cold War society. Jorgensen’s body inspired media
contradictions as postwar Americans struggled with the fascination and fear of changing
gender and modifying sex.
11
CHAPTER 2
COLD WAR, BURNING QUESTIONS
On June 26th, 1950, Time published the article “Medicine: The Cold Women,”
claiming, “Some doctors suspect that about three out of every four U.S. women are frigid,
i.e., get no sexual satisfaction.”38 For most women, being female in the 1950s meant living
under a gender ideal that was influenced by the government and enforced by the public. This
ideal forced middle class women to ignore their individual wants and desires. They lived in
the suburbs, tended to their husbands and became the mothers and saints of society. In, Cold
War, Cool Medium: Television, McCarthyism and American Culture Thomas Doherty
vividly describes Cold War suburbia as “a prison camp of ranch houses and manicured front
lawns, an American Reich with a dorky dress code.”39 Individualism held little importance in
postwar society. With the fear of Communism on the rise from Russia, American politicians
emphasized democratic social ideals in the form on the nuclear family.40
It is within these conflicted times of gender conformity that Christine Jorgensen
reached the highest levels of both stardom and scientific debate. This chapter will analyze the
beginning of a thirty-year struggle between the mass media and the portrayal of a publicized
transgender body. Jorgensen is such unique figure not only because of her transgenderism but
also because her very existence blatantly contradicted Cold War ideals of gender normalcy.
With these contradictions in mind, this chapter will explore the positive and negative
reactions from media outlets relating to Jorgensen and her physical body. This chapter will
argue that in spite of a Cold War climate that prescribed strict gender roles, Jorgensen
managed to not only become a popular celebrity but also somewhat of a media darling. Her
38
“Medicine: Cold Women,” Time, June 26, 1950, accessed May 21, 2012,
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/ 0,9171,857838,00.html.
39
Thomas Doherty, Cold War, Cool Medium Television, McCarthyism and American Culture (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2003), 249.
40
Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed, 67.
12
blonde hair and good looks put her on the cover of fashion, tabloid, and even men’s
magazines across the country. During this time of sexual repression and strict gender ideals,
Christine Jorgensen managed to become a household name.
1950S: RECIPES FOR A PROPER SOCIETY
In Homeward Bound, author Elaine Tyler May notes that each of the superpowers in
the Cold War struggled to expand their authority around the world. American’s private lives
were the focal point of a global struggle, “divisions in American society along racial, class,
and gender lines threatened to weaken the society at home and damage its prestige in the
world.41 Therefore, a reinforcement of highly prescribed gender roles remodeled the core of
American values. In order to adhere to these roles, men and women functioned in completely
separate spheres of life.42 Men worked outside the home in competitive, stressful spaces and
provided an income for their families. 43 Women stayed at home with children, cleaned,
cooked, and provided a relaxing space for husbands coming home from work.44 According to
May, this new way of American life actually contradicted the previous ideals of individuality
in the 1930s and 40s, when “the grandparents [of the baby boomers] challenged the sexual
norms of their day, pushed the divorce rate up and the birthrate down…”45 She also notes
that this endorsement of nuclear family life stretched across all lines of race and class.46
1950’s American life became the most powerful piece of international propaganda.
The mass media machine of consumer capitalism also fed into this notion of idolized
living. Popular media continually reinforced the idea that anyone could either be a
Communist, or fall prey to Communist persuasions.47 In their compliance with the cultural
41
May, Homeward Bound, 8.
42
Wini Breines, Young, White, and Miserable: Growing Up Female in the Fifties (Boston: Beacon Press,
1992), 23.
43
Stephen J. Whitfield, “Sex and the Single Decade,” American Literary History 12, no. 4 (2000): 771.
44
Susan Douglas, Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media (New York: Three
Rivers Press, 1994), 44.
45
May, Homeward Bound, 7.
46
Ibid., 8.
47
Doherty, Cold War, 147.
13
ideals of traditional gender roles, some American’s felt as if they were acting as good
citizens, warding off any threats of Communist infiltration.48 Individuals who did not fulfill
these traditional sex and gender roles were considered outcasts and poor citizens of their
country. 49 Homosexuality was considered to be a weakness of character that a Communist
could use to gain advantage over democracy. Suspected homosexuals not only lost their jobs,
they even faced physical retaliation from anti Communist groups.50 This fear of Communism
swept the nation, spreading fear and subsequently provided a detailed design of gender
interactions and ideals for proper Americans to live by. The Red Scare stretched beyond
politics to infiltrate the personal lives of everyday Americans.
Though these notions of male and female roles seemed to be picture perfect,
researchers such as Alfred Kinsey and E. Lowell Kelly proved that the postwar ideal did not
fit postwar reality.51 May cautions that though popular culture tried to save sex for marriage,
by the early 1950s, it was already out of control. She notes that Kinsey shocked the nation
with, “his documentation of widespread premarital intercourse, homosexual experiences,
masturbation, and extra-marital sex among American men and women.”52 Though it was not
uncommon for individuals to participate in premarital sex and other activities, for some, the
guilt of their actions strained relationships. The KLS questionnaire (the Kelly Longitudinal
Study led by E. Lowell Kelly) notes the conflict between postwar ideals and the realities
couples faced. May argues that though many individuals did not conform to the pressures of
limiting their sexuality exclusively to marriage, were likely to have been influenced by its
sway.53
For a transgender individual living in a highly conservative decade, Christine
Jorgensen was not meant to be a celebrity. She completely challenged the highly idolized
48
Ibid.
49
David K. Johnson, The Lavender Scare: the Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal
Government (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 9.
50
Ibid.
51
May, Homeward Bound, 14.
52
Ibid., 97.
53
Ibid., 111.
14
nuclear family that Americans so desperately attempted to create. David Serlin notes, “…she
stood symbolically for the vulnerable American male body, besieged by a foreign power.”54
She willingly gave up her masculinity in order to become a woman, and she was sexually
attracted to men.55 Jorgensen was well aware of the rarity of her situation. When she first
emerged in the public eye, Jorgensen made it clear that she did not want to be categorized
under the umbrella of homosexuality.56 Since homosexuality and communism were
publically linked in the 1950s, Jorgensen shied away from any homosexual label, claiming
that any experiences she had with men occurred after her sex change operation.57
Jorgensen’s hesitation towards homosexuality reinforced the power of heterosexual
normalcy that was prevalent in Postwar America. Her blonde hair, flawless makeup, and
highly feminine style of dress all added to her character of Miss Christine Jorgensen. Author
Marjorie Garber argues in, Vested Interests: Cross Dressing and Cultural Anxiety,
Jorgensen’s persona may have been both an object of desire and the “embodied construction
of mimetic desire.”58 Jorgensen tried so desperately to embody the bombshell and the girl
next door. Perhaps she hoped that if she conformed to the mainstream attitudes of her time
that she would gain public acceptance and understanding. Despite her highly feminine dress
and claims of heterosexual desires, the mass media would continue to clumsily label
Jorgensen as America attempted to address what it was to be transgender.
MASS MEDIA, FRIEND OR FOE?
The postwar media expressed varying opinions about Jorgensen. She created a type of
feeding frenzy with the American public and publishers rushed her story to newsstands. As a
result, various publications printed reactions to Jorgensen’s transformation from tabloids like
Uncensored, to other more reputable publications like Time magazine.59 Regardless of the
54
Serlin, Replaceable You, 169.
55
Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed, 67.
56
Ibid., 57.
57
Ibid.
58
Marjorie Garber, Vested Interests: Cross Dressing and Cultural Anxiety (New York: Routledge, 1997),
59
Ingram, Billy. “Short History of the Tabloids.” Accessed August 19, 2012.
37.
15
quality of the publication, authors used similar tools in accessing the quality of Jorgensen’s
feminine or masculine appearance. For example, when referring to Jorgensen in a positive
light, authors tended to comment on her hair, certain body parts, or her clothing. When
discussing these topics, authors tended to compliment Jorgensen’s feminine attributes.
However, when discussing her with a negative lens, authors relied on questions relating to
the authenticity of Jorgensen’s surgery and sexuality. They ultimately questioned her
femininity as well by mentioning the masculinity of her body, voice, and mannerisms. Yet, in
many cases the dichotomies of positive and negative reactions are present within the same
article. This ambivalent response on the part of the media reveals the anxieties of Cold War
culture towards sex and gender variation.
Uncensored magazine’s October 1954 issue is a prime example of these mixed
reactions. Uncensored magazine featured an article on Jorgensen complete with “exclusive”
photographs of her in a bathing suit. 60 Before this article was published, Jorgensen had only
been photographed in long dresses and coats. The depiction of Jorgensen in a bathing suit
revealed her body shape, which immediately sexualized her photographs. On various
occasions, the author of this article provides a positive reaction to Jorgensen’s sexual appeal
while making negative comments on her masculine appearance.
These comparisons are most clear in the actual photographs and captions in the
article. As seen in Figure 1, there are two photographs of Jorgensen in her suit. In both
pictures she is standing, but one photo is much larger than the other. The large picture
features a posed Jorgensen calmly smiling for the camera. The smaller picture is a more
candid shot of her jumping in the water with a surprised look on her face. The caption is
located underneath the candid with an arrow pointing to the posed shot; it reads: “A more
flattering pose finds Christine smiling from released position on hotel springboard. Legs
seem thinner.”61 The juxtaposition of these two photographs on the first page is particularly
interesting because it shows that the author prefers Jorgensen in posed pin up style positions.
http://www.tvparty.com/tabloids.html.
60
“Christine Uncensored,” Uncensored Magazine, October 1954, accessed August 6, 2011,
http://www.christinejorgensen.org/MainPages/Publications.html.
61
Ibid.
16
Figure 1. Christine uncensored. Source: “Christine Uncensored.” Uncensored
Magazine, October 1954. Accessed August 6, 2011.
http://www.christinejorgensen.org/MainPages/Publications.html.
In the smaller photograph, she had a childish stance, her arms flailing in the air, mouth wide
open. In the larger more “flattering” photo, Jorgensen radiates womanhood in her composure
and control on the springboard.
The comments on Jorgensen’s legs are important because the author refers to how
slender her legs look in the larger photograph. Jorgensen’s slender legs is reference to her
femininity, however, those were the same legs she had all of her life, even while she lived as
George. Jorgensen’s legs are referred to once more on the next page of her pictorial. In a
sitting position with legs stretched out the caption of this photo reads: “Christine shows true
feminine reaction cavorting in surf at Miami Beach…the Jorgensen legs.”62 By simply
referring to her legs by last name, the author seems to be playing into the fact that
Jorgensen’s legs are well known as an attractive part of her physical make. Again, the
mention of legs is fascinating in that they are one of the few parts of Jorgensen’s body that
62
Ibid.
17
had not been medically altered. The author also mentions her “true feminine reaction” in
relation to the graceful position Jorgensen chose for the shot.
Though Uncensored mentions Jorgensen’s femininity in one photo, the comments
turn both negative and contradictory on the same page in another caption that reads: “…Here
her arms have feminine slenderness but hands are big.”63 For this shot, Jorgensen is laying on
her stomach, hands lightly clasped together in front of her body with legs bent at the knees.
Her slenderness is referred to as feminine, however, the author makes note that her hands are
large which is an inference to masculinity.
The article continues its contradictory message of Jorgensen’s gender and sexuality in
another picture at the bottom of the page where she is seen answering a phone call. Once
again she is in a controlled standing pose casually holding the phone in one hand and stylish
sunglasses in another. The caption reads: “Always in demand for dates, Chris takes time out
for phone call. ‘I’m a pretty busy number,’ sez she.”64 By being in demand for dates the
article is asserting Jorgensen’s feminine lure and sexual appeal. Jorgensen is so “in demand”
that she must take a break from her photo shoot to handle a phone call from a presumably
male suitor. The statement by Jorgensen feeds into the idea of her desirability; by having a
“busy number” she is claiming that many individuals contact her. Though the quote by
Jorgensen does not refer to calls about dates specifically, a reader could assume she is
mentioning dates by the placement of her quote within the context created by the magazine.
The final page of the article finds Jorgensen shoe and dress shopping. The author
notes that she was so pleased by the bathing suit shots that she invited the photographer along
while she shopped. The last bit of text in the article completely contradicts some of the photo
captions. The author notes that, “It was expected that Christine would be on the flat-chested
side, but her legs did cause comment.”65 Of her legs the author wrote, “Her thighs for
instance, seem boyishly thin, while her legs from the knees to the ankles are mannishly
heavy-set.”66 In the last part of the article the author seems to discredit all of the positive
63
Ibid.
64
Ibid.
65
Ibid.
66
Ibid.
18
feminine comments formerly made about the photographs of Jorgensen in her bathing suit.
As stated, she was expected to have a flat chest. This negative expectation is in direct relation
to Jorgensen’s masculinity because males typically have flatter chests. Her slenderness that
was previously associated with femininity was compared to a boy, and her calves were
referred to as “mannishly” heavy. Once again, the author reinforces to the reader that positive
comments relate to femininity and negative reactions convey masculinity.
Cold War anxieties with gender nonconformity play out for readers at the end of this
article. She was briefly feminine at first glance, then masculine upon further examination.
This contradiction confirms Jorgensen’s media status in 1950’s popular culture. Her celebrity
status put her in the magazines for entertainment, but her feminine appeal was continuously
accepted and challenged in Cold War media when traditional sex and gender roles were
questioned.
The following year, Whisper magazine (a competitor of Uncensored) published an
article titled, “Goodnight Christine WHICHEVER YOU ARE!” and documented the
experience of a male reporter had three dates with Jorgensen. During these dates he asked
very probing questions, always with a sarcastic biting tone.67 The magazine reported: “Then,
one night alone in the car, he asked the $64 question: ‘Chris, are you really, completely a girl
now?’”68 This bolded quote tops the first page of the article. Whisper’s obsession with the
authenticity of Jorgensen’s sex littered the pages of this article. The phrase “complete girl” is
an interesting use of negative language since it highlights the uncertainty of the reporter (and
possibly the reader) as to the completion of Jorgensen’s surgery. Was her entire body
“female”? The questioning of Jorgensen’s sex continues in the first line of the article:
“Christine Jorgensen is one of the nicest girls I’ve ever dated—which is unusual when you
consider Christine is a man!”69 The reporter calls Jorgensen a “girl” but immediately
reassures readers that her kind demeanor was a surprise because she is a man.
67
“Goodnight Christine WHICHEVER YOU ARE!” Whisper Magazine, June 1955, accessed July 23,
2012, http://www.christinejorgensen.org/MainPages/Publications.html.
68
Ibid.
69
Ibid.
19
This conflict of opinion on changing sex continues with a photograph on the first
page. In the picture, Jorgensen is sitting, legs crossed, in a long dress. The reporter (the man
who wrote the article and went on three “dates” with her) is looking down at her legs, slightly
lifting her dress as if he is checking on what is underneath. Jorgensen is flashing a smile and
lifting up her hat in a playful pose. Though the photograph displays a lighthearted banter, its
accompanying description is not as friendly “As a fond remembrance of the nights when he
[reporter] showed her/him the town, Chris gave author this autographed photo of she/he
showing him her/his underpins.”70 By stating a “fond remembrance” a reader could assume
that Jorgensen enjoyed her time with the reporter. However, the constant “she/he” comments
that were blatantly added to the caption reveal cruel responses by questioning Jorgensen’s
true sex.
The language throughout this article constantly alludes to the impracticability of
Jorgensen’s femaleness. Upon first meeting with Jorgensen the author reported “My first
impression of the alleged man-made-woman almost soured me for good. She breezed into a
press conference two hours late. Loping across the room in the stride doctors couldn’t
change.”71 Again questioning Jorgensen’s sex the author refers to her only as an “alleged”
woman. He also remarks on her “stride,” noting its inherent masculinity that a doctor could
not change. The reporter continues his critique of Jorgensen’s laugh, noting its “husky”
tone.72 One piece of “evidence” that the author claims to have gathered to support
Jorgensen’s femininity was the fact that she asked him to hold her purse while she posed for
a photograph. Though upon having the purse in his possession, he does admit that he took a
peek inside and noticed, “…the most expensive set of falsies I’d ever seen.”73 Much like the
Uncensored magazine article, Whisper and its audiences were also very concerned with the
size of Jorgensen’s bust line. His emphasis on the fact that they were the “most expensive”
set of falsies (bra padding) he had ever seen was also a negative comment on Jorgensen’s
70
Ibid.
71
Ibid.
72
Ibid.
73
Ibid.
20
body, implying that her small breasts needed the most sophisticated type of enlargement in
order to mimic the female form.
The second section of the Whisper piece continues the same biting rhetoric. Over
dinner the author commented on Jorgensen’s eating habits “While I toyed with a sandwich,
she polished off a hearty meal.”74 Here the author takes on a feminine persona, noting that he
“toyed” with his food. This approach directly contrasts with Jorgensen’s masculinity as she
“polished” off her “hearty meal.” This comparison is particularly noteworthy because the
author puts himself in a feminine role in order to over emphasize Jorgensen’s masculine
quality. Instead of both individuals enjoying a meal, the reporter chose to note that he simply
fondled his food while Jorgensen had no problem gobbling up her entire plate.
The final section of the “Goodnight Christine” article subtitled, “A Giant
Masquerade” reveals the authors true attitude toward Jorgensen. Unlike the previous sections
of the article that were sarcastic and allusive, the author takes a frank approach in diagnosing
Jorgensen’s condition. He writes, “I believe the operations were performed only after
physicians had found it impossible to cure her of the obsession that she was a girl.” He
continues “In other words, the whole world was helping Christine in a masquerade, in which
the person being fooled most was herself!”75 These claims are consistent with the negative
questioning of Jorgensen’s sex that is apparent throughout the article. The author seemed to
be acting as a type of detective, attempting to uncover Jorgensen’s true sex by analyzing
(with a clear bias of course) her every move. The author who felt he had Jorgensen
completely figured out, ended his article by claiming “I had enjoyed three interesting,
pleasant and harmless dates with a guy named George—a real crazy, mixed-up kid.”76
The concluding line of this article depicts the author in a confident stance stating that
Jorgensen is “mixed-up” and “crazy. Jorgensen, however, is the only consistent variable
within the Whisper piece. Throughout this episode Jorgensen remains her femininely
gendered self. Her answers to the reporters questions and possible jabs are always from the
74
Ibid.
75
Ibid.
76
Ibid.
21
perspective of a woman, pointing out some towels that she wanted in a store front and
managing to keep her “girlish composure” when posing for a stunt.77 When examining this
article, it is the perspective of the author that is a bit mixed. He refers to Jorgensen as female
or male whenever he deems it appropriate. There are entire sections in the piece where he
refers to Jorgensen in only a positive female light, only to switch back to calling her a man in
a following line. The dual language present in this article is a continuing theme throughout
postwar media.
Out of the same vein of sensational media as Uncensored, and Whisper, Confidential
magazine, like the others, interest in Jorgensen. Featuring an article on a supposed romance
she had with a high-profile bachelor named Peter Howard. The article titled, “The HushHush Romance of Christine Jorgensen with a Vanderbilt Stepson” by Lowell Crane details
Jorgensen’s relationship drama.78 Though this article focuses on a possible relationship for
Jorgensen, the author still plays on her changing sex. Crane comments that Howard’s parents
were never surprised by their son’s actions until, “The got a jolt though when they learned
about his hijinks with the first dame even stamped: ‘made in Copenhagen.’”79 Crane
highlights Jorgensen’s manufactured sex with a joke about a trademark stamp. He also refers
to Jorgensen as a “rebuilt babe,” and a “doctored doll.”80 These phases suggest a lack of
authenticity in Jorgensen’s sex and allude to her ultimate masculinity. Crane notes of a report
that Howard complained that Jorgensen, “…was inclined to get a little bristly along the jawbone …which made whispering in her ear a little like talking into a clothes brush.”81 This
notion of fast growing facial hair on Jorgensen is an obvious negative referral to one of her
male qualities. The author evokes an image of Howard whispering into the ear Jorgensen
who simply cannot fight her five o’clock shadow. Crane is attempting to convey to the reader
that Jorgensen’s facial hair is a noticeable problem that she cannot overcome.
77
Ibid.
78
Lowell Crane, “The Hush-Hush Romance of Christine Jorgensen with a Vanderbilt Stepson,”
Confidential, November 1954, accessed August 7, 2011, http://www.christinejorgensen.org/MainPages/
Publications.html.
79
Ibid.
80
Ibid.
81
Ibid.
22
The author hints at Jorgensen’s masculine reaction in an alleged quote from Howard.
He quotes Howard as stating, “‘I love that girl,’” the Sinatra-thin playboy sobbed, ‘but every
time I tell her so, she just swats me on the back and laughs.’ ‘And believe me, the kid packs
quite a wallop!’”82 It is unclear as to whether or not this actual quote came from Howard but
the language has a direct bias for Jorgensen’s masculinity in her response. Crane describes
Howard as very emotional and “sobbing” which is a traditionally feminine attribute.
Meanwhile, Jorgensen simply laughs and “swats” Howard. The physical action of “swatting”
or hitting an individual is not a typical feminine response. Furthermore, by referring to
Jorgensen as a “kid” who “packs quite a wallop” the author is noting a lack of femininity.
Pose magazine took a real life look at Jorgensen as a woman in its 1954 article titled,
“The Men in Christine’s Life.”83 The author of the Pose piece chose a more positive response
to Jorgensen and defended her sex change. The article focuses on the men that Jorgensen
knows through work and outside friendships. Though the title of the piece hints that these are
romantic male relationships, the author avoids speculating who Jorgensen is dating. The
magazine ultimately concludes that Jorgensen’s manager is the most important man in her
life because he was responsible for introducing her to show business.84
The article begins with a clear statement from the author on why Jorgensen’s story
had been such a media success. If Jorgensen had not served time in the army, or had a taste
for the theatrical, then the press would not have picked up her story.85 For those who
speculated on Jorgensen’s true female completeness, the author positively writes, “People
who meet her find her to be completely charming and completely a woman. The more
clinical aspects should only be a concern to the man who’s interested in becoming her
husband.”86 This tone is very different from negative reactions that focused on masculinity,
here, the author attempts to defend Jorgensen’s celebrity. The author even defends Jorgensen
82
Ibid.
83
“The Men in Christine’s Life,” Pose, October 1954, accessed August 6, 2011,
http://www.christinejorgensen.org/MainPages/ Publications.html.
84
Ibid.
85
Ibid.
86
Ibid.
23
against the showgirls that she worked with. “Show girls who think nothing of changing
costumes in front of men in shows rebel if Christine is allowed to enter their dressing
rooms.”87 The author chastises the showgirls who have a problem with Jorgensen’s presence
in the dressing room while they have no issue when actual men see them change costumes.
The author is trying to evoke a sense of sympathy from the reader towards Jorgensen’s daily
struggles with negative public attention. Towards the end of the article the author claims,
“…let’s face it, she’s a she, and she’s a success.”88 Pose ultimately presented Jorgensen in a
very positive manner, concluding that she was a talented, attractive, successful woman.
The photographs in the Pose article match the positive representations of Jorgensen in
the written text. There are eight photographs throughout this article. Each picture displays
Jorgensen in a feminine portrayal. She is posed with legs crossed, hair and make-up perfectly
in place wearing very fashionable attire. One of the photograph captions reads, “Christine sits
and ponders her new life, she has fame and fortune but has also suffered.”89 Again, the author
sympathizes with Jorgensen’s case. Although she was wealthy and famous, she dealt with
mockery in the media.
One of the larger photographs in the article depicts Jorgensen in a bathing suit sitting
on a diving board. The caption reads, “Soaking up Bermuda sun, Christine’s loveliness had
the men looking her way.”90 The author refers to Jorgensen’s “loveliness” as she bathes in
the sun. By mentioning that men were looking her way, the author is attempting to reinforce
Jorgensen’s heterosexual and therefore feminine appeal. Nowhere in this article does the
author allude to Jorgensen’s masculinity, or question her choice to undergo a sex change
operation. Overall, Pose represented Jorgensen as a beautiful woman who experienced
hardships due to the insensitivities of the public.
In 1953, People Today also published an article on a man in Jorgensen’s life that also
represented positive reactions. The article “Christine’s ‘EX’” focused on Sergeant Bill
Calhoun, a man Jorgensen had a relationship with before the media caught wind of her sex
87
Ibid.
88
Ibid.
89
Ibid.
90
Ibid.
24
change operation.91 The short article announced that Calhoun married Joyce Laws. When
mentioning Jorgensen, the reporter notes, “Christine (to whom some U.S. surgeons still refer
as ‘he,’ despite the reported surgical sex change).”92 The author’s parenthetical on Jorgensen
alludes to the fact that most people referred to her as a female; hinting that some U.S.
surgeons remained in a state of denial that sex could change with a surgical process. The
article featured a photograph of Calhoun with his new bride. The caption reads, “Sgt.
Calhoun (with wife Joyce): “Sure I kissed Christine.’”93 At first glance of this article, a
reader would know that Jorgensen’s ex was not embarrassed of his previous love affair.
Calhoun’s pride in his relationship may have sparked resentment with his new wife.
When the reporter asked Laws if she was jealous of Jorgensen she replied, “No, I’m grateful
to Christine. Because of her I met Bill, at a dance at his base. Everybody was kidding him. I
felt sorry for him.”94 Laws may have claimed that she was not jealous, but her
acknowledgement that she “felt sorry” for Calhoun is a sign of tension she had towards his
relationship with Jorgensen. If she had truly not been bothered by Calhoun’s previous
relationship, then she may not have mentioned feeling sympathy for him. Her sense of
sympathy could mean that she felt bad for a man who dated an individual that he assumed
was born female.
The fact that the reporter asked Laws if she was jealous is an interesting way to show
positivity towards Jorgensen’s sex and gender. In order for Laws (a woman from birth) to be
jealous of Jorgensen she would have had to perceive Jorgensen as a threat. In this question,
the reporter is acknowledging Jorgensen’s heterosexual appeal. When the reporter asked
Calhoun to comment on Jorgensen, he simply replied: “Christine is quite a woman, in every
way. I kissed her a number of times. What man wouldn’t?”95 Once again, Jorgensen’s
heterosexual appeal is acknowledged in this article. Calhoun (a military man and newlywed)
91
“Christine’s ‘EX,’” People Today, June 1953, accessed November 20, 2012,
http://www.christinejorgensen.org/MainPages/ Publications.html.
92
Ibid.
93
Ibid.
94
Ibid.
95
Ibid.
25
not only admits he had been intimate with Jorgensen but replies, “What man wouldn’t?”
when questioned. Calhoun is assuming that any man would be willing to kiss Jorgensen. This
assumption directly relates to the authenticity of Jorgensen’s femininity that is reaffirmed by
moderate magazine publications.
Not all publications adored Jorgensen and her very public life. Focus magazine
published negative reactions to Jorgensen’s celebrity in a short article on in 1954 titled,
“Focus Sneers at Christine Jorgensen.”96 The author notes that Focus magazine was offended
by Jorgensen’s contradictory lifestyle. Though Jorgensen claimed she wanted to live her life
privately, she was continuously interviewed and participated in public events. Focus noted its
disappointment with Jorgensen:
When she said all she wanted was to be left alone to live a normal life, Focus
politely took Christine at her word. Then Christine went about living the ‘quiet
life’: series of cheesecake shots; a nightclub stint in a Las Vegas hot-spot; low-cut
appearances at benefits. On top of that came a promise of marriage and rock-sized
diamond from a Texan.97
Throughout this piece, the author’s tone and language is biting and sarcastic. When
mentioning a possibility that Jorgensen would participate in a “semi-strip” act, the author
remarked, “…for a few dollars, any curiosity-seeker could come in and view medicine’s
somewhat mildewed marvel.”98 By referring to Jorgensen as a “mildewed marvel” in a strip
act, the author seems to convey to the reader that Jorgensen’s star was beginning to fade;
forcing her to participate in a demeaning burlesque show to earn some cash.
The critical view of Jorgensen only intensifies towards the end of the article.
Speaking for the entire magazine the author writes: “Focus doesn’t know whether Christine
is a disgrace to mankind of womankind, only wishes she’d stop. For making a public show
out of an unfortunate abnormality, for talking about leading a life of quiet and acting out a
life of riot…”99 The author insults Jorgensen by calling her a “disgrace,” and questions her
96
“Focus Sneers at Christine Jorgensen,” Focus, January 1954, accessed August 6, 2011,
http://www.christinejorgensen.org/ MainPages/Publications.html.
97
Ibid.
98
Ibid.
99
Ibid.
26
gender when stating that the magazine is unsure whether she shame to the male or female
population. Yet again, the mass media used femininity and masculinity in order to convey a
negative response. By using the magazine’s title instead of “I” the author is noting that the
following sentiment is a reaction of the magazine as a whole.
Accompanying this article was a photograph of Jorgensen at a press conference that
took place upon her arrival to the U.S. from Denmark. The picture is carefully cropped
making Jorgensen the central point, surrounded by large lights, reporters, and photographers.
She has a look of totally confidence on her face, standing tall looking over what one could
assume to be a sea of newsmen. Jorgensen’s hair and make-up are stage ready, she is wearing
long earrings, and wrapped in a fur coat. Focus chose to print this cropped photograph to
convey to the reader that Jorgensen loved the media attention she received, despite her
requests to lead a life of privacy.
The Focus piece is an interesting article on Jorgensen for its contradictory language.
The magazine claims to “sneer” at her for making a plea for privacy then acting out in an
opposing manner. However, within this article the magazine participates in the same type of
clashing language for what Jorgensen is condemned. The author claims that Focus “politely”
respected Jorgensen’s wishes for privacy and “…kept vow not to join in [on the] journalistic
orgy.”100 However, this civil vow turned brutal when the author referred to Jorgensen as
“mildewed,” and a “disgrace.” Ultimately Focus went back on their promise to not report on
Jorgensen. The magazine joined this “journalistic orgy,” writing on Jorgensen with a cruel
and sarcastic tone that could only be matched by the genre of sensationalist publications.
In 1953, Time magazine published two extremely negative articles on Jorgensen. The
first was a short article titled, “Homecoming,” carefully placed in the magazine’s “Manners
& Morals” section.101 A large photograph of Jorgensen at the top of the page grabs the
reader’s attention at first glance. The candid picture is from a press conference that Jorgensen
participated in shortly after her arrival into the U.S. Jorgensen is shown in her fur jacket
waving directly at the camera with a swarm of newsmen surrounding her. The caption (which
100
101
Ibid.
“Homecoming,” Time, February 23, 1953, accessed September 22, 2012,
http://www.christinejorgensen.org/MainPages/ Publications.html.
27
was a reprint from a different source published by the New York Daily News) reads:
“Christine Jorgensen meets the Press: A husky hello and a Bloody Mary.”102 The author
implies Jorgensen’s male attributes by using the word “husky” to describe the tone of her
voice. The cocktail reference is another way the author conveys this feeling of masculinity.
In the 1950s, men traditionally drank alcohol and smoked tobacco.103 These activities were
perceived as unladylike for women. Time’s reprint of this particular quote depicts the
magazines overall negative perception of Jorgensen’s celebrity.
The negative language in the Time photograph caption alluding to Jorgensen’s
maleness is a theme clear in both of the articles published in 1953. In the “Homecoming”
piece the author credits Jorgensen for her “outstanding contributions to tabloid titillation.”104
This remark reflects on Time’s opinion that the Jorgensen story should be reserved for tabloid
coverage for its sensationalist nature. Another quote from the News was used to describe the
crowd’s reaction to Jorgensen: “When Christine appeared, a woman in the crowd turned to
her little girl and said: ‘Look, Ruthie. She used to be a man.’”105 The author wrote that
according to the News, the child was startled, “‘all she needed was a bag of peanuts and a
bottle of soda.’”106 The author continued this circus theme by adding, “No sideshow mermaid
ever got closer scrutiny than Christine. Her technique with high heels, agreed the tabloids,
was poor.”107 This comment relates to the article’s theme, that Jorgensen was an oddity,
attracting curiosity from newsmen and the general public.
Though some of the words are not from a Time reporter, the reprint of cruel language
about Jorgensen was a sign of the magazine’s negative reaction to her presence. In 1953 Time
would have had an opportunity to reprint reports of Jorgensen’s arrival from various
perspectives. The reprint of a negative reaction itself offers a disapproving tone that this
publication did not react kindly to Jorgensen’s defiance of sex and gender.
102
Ibid.
103
Douglas, Where the Girls Are, 59.
104
“Homecoming”
105
Ibid.
106
Ibid.
107
Ibid.
28
Time’s second article in 1953 was equally as negative towards Jorgensen as the first,
but this time around the magazine did not use quotations from any other source. The article
“The Case of Christine,” denounces Jorgensen’s celebrity and femininity, continually
referring to her has male.108 The author proclaims, “Last week came the revelation that
Christine Jorgensen was no girl at all, only an altered male.”109 Time wanted their readers to
know that Jorgensen was born male with normal genitals. The magazine did not want to
acknowledge her new physical femininity and therefore referred to Jorgensen as an “altered
male.” The author continued to criticize Jorgensen’s womanhood by reporting, “…in an
attempt to accommodate his urge to transvestitism, his Danish doctors has simply amputated
penis and testes, left him a male castrate.”110 The language in this line presents the author’s
disregard for Jorgensen’s transformation. The author claims that her surgery was performed
in order to “accommodate” Jorgensen’s “urge” to be female. The author does not even
consider that Jorgensen was born female, trapped in the body of a male. Time’s negative
response is also clear in the author’s simplification of Jorgensen’s surgical procedures by
ignoring her on going hormone treatments and claiming that she was only a “male castrate.”
The Time article included a photograph of Jorgensen with a short caption stating,
“Jorgensen, No she, he.”111 Again, this language reinforces Time’s opinion that Jorgensen
was a male. In the middle section of the article the author asks the question, “Can
transvestites be cured?”112 The author responded with, “In relatively mild cases of
transvestitism, involving patients who actually want to be normal…psychiatric treatment,
sometimes accompanied by hormones of the patient’s own sex, often effect real cures.”113
Time magazine strongly denied the possibility of human transsexuality. The author
considered Jorgensen an individual who suffered from a mental illness. The author states in
108
“The Case of Christine.” Time, April 20, 1953, accessed November 3, 2011,
http://www.christinejorgensen.org/MainPages/Publications.html.
109
Ibid.
110
Ibid.
111
Ibid.
112
Ibid.
113
Ibid.
29
certain instances, “…of transvestitism, as in severe cases of homosexuality, cures are
exceptional at best.”114 The article continues to discredit Jorgensen’s sex change by claiming
that a “male transvestite” could not possibly lead a happy life as a female, “The castration
many of them crave may give them a temporary illusion of womanhood, but it can be nothing
more than an illusion…”115 Time’s conservative link with Cold War fears of homosexuality
and changing gender roles is evident in the rhetoric used throughout this article. Following
the post war prescription of proper sex and gender roles for all Americans, Time magazine
strongly disapproved of Jorgensen’s surgery and her celebrity status.
In a stark contrast to Time’s castigation of sex changes, American Weekly, a
supplement to Sunday newspapers around the country, published a series of conservative
articles that featured Jorgensen’s story. American Weekly paid her twenty thousand dollars
for this exclusive interview.116 The publication was influenced to report positively on
Jorgensen since she was the main author of each article. Jorgensen’s influence is evident
throughout the series as it safely follows her life story, avoiding questions involving her
personal life, and sexual orientation. In March of 1953 American Weekly published an article
on Jorgensen that featured safe but positive reactions. In many of the photographs she is
modeling her “new feminine attire.”117 Jorgensen’s model like build and beautifully colored
clothing all relate to the positivity of her feminine appeal. The publishers of American
Weekly kept all of their responses to Jorgensen in a positive tone by continuously mentioning
her femininity with no focus or questions regarding sex or masculinity.
The magnitude of Jorgensen’s celebrity forced dozens of publications to report
reactions and responses to her fascinating story. In America, tabloid media gained popularity
in the 1950s with stories of dreadful car crashes and horrific crimes. This shock media caught
the attention of readers and yielded large profits. Tabloids found a niche in Cold War
America for their ability to attract a large audience with simple language and outlandish tales
114
Ibid.
115
Ibid.
116
Jorgensen, Christine Jorgensen, i.
117
Christine Jorgensen, “The Story of My Life,” The American Weekly, March 8, 1953, accessed January
19, 2012, http://www.christinejorgensen.org/MainPages/Publications.html.
30
of love, hate, misery, and pain.118 These stories captivated American audiences and proved to
be a profitable endeavor for publishing firms. In the late 50s, publishers toned down the
coverage on some of the more gruesome topics and instead, focused on alien abductions and
celebrity lives. This effort was made in hopes of attracting more housewives in grocery store
aisles. With only a few exceptions, celebrity gossip completely took over sensational media
publications by the 1960s.119
Frank Mott provides a description of yellow journalism in his 1941 book American
Journalism. According to Mott, sensational journalism has the following traits, “large-print
headlines that was often intended to scare readers, heightened use of illustrations to
accompany stories, and misinformation, usually by using misleading headlines, false
‘experts’ claiming misinformation is correct, [and] interviews that never happened.” For
modern tabloids, these traits still ring true though the subject of interest for these publications
remains celebrity centered.120
Uncensored, Whisper, and Confidential were part of the tabloid magazine genre that became
popular in the 1950s. In these magazine pictorials Jorgensen was typically posed as a classic
pin-up model. With beautiful clothes, shiny blonde hair, and a stunning smile she physically
embodied the features of a 1950s bombshell.121 However, Jorgensen’s male birth
continuously left journalists in a limbo of positive and negative reactions as it surfaced
debates of sexuality and sexual orientation. Sensationalist magazines, however, also had a
reputation for stretching the truth behind their stories in order to create a more provocative
story.122 For tabloid papers like Uncensored, Whisper, and Confidential selling more
magazines was a higher priority than reporting the facts. Readers typically purchased these
118
Eva Chorazak, “A Brief History of Tabloid Journalism,” accessed July 12, 2012,
http://www.helium.com/items/1362082-brief-history-of-tabloid-journalism.
119
Kate Pickert, “A Brief History Of: Tabloids!,” Time, August 14, 2008, accessed June 10, 2012,
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1832868,00.html.
120
D. Pierce, “Supermarket Tabloids: More than Entertainment,” History Of Journalism, accessed June
10, 2012, http://historyofjournalism.onmason.com/2010/10/25/supermarket-tabloids-more-than-entertainment/.
121
Douglas, Where the Girls Are, 6.
122
Pierce, “Supermarket Tabloids.”
31
publications for their entertainment quality and may not have been concerned with the
reliability of the story.
SELLING CHRISTINE
The exact type of individuals who purchased sensationalist magazines featuring
stories on Jorgensen is difficult to access. However, advertisements surrounding articles
involving Jorgensen offer a glimpse as to the type of readership these magazines attempted to
reach. In the “Goodnight Christine” article, Whisper magazine featured three advertisements.
The largest ad focused specifically on “Men Past 40,” offering non-surgical treatments for
“Pains in the Back, Hips, Legs, Nervousness. Tiredness.” It also offered a free illustrated
book titled, Diseases of Men, which readers could receive by mail in order.123 By placing this
large advertisement next to a Jorgensen article, Whisper relied on men over the age of forty
to be purchasing their magazine and reading the Jorgensen piece.
The following page of the same Jorgensen article featured yet another advertisement
that would appeal to middle age men. The ad is for another send in offer but this time, for a
secret to successful bass fishing. The ad reads, “Bass fishermen will say I’m crazy until they
try my method! But after a 10 day trial, if you’re at all like the few other men to whom I’ve
told my secret, you’ll guard it with your last breath.”124 The author specifically addresses
males, the men who know the secret, and the men who will guard the secret with their lives.
The last advertisement addresses men and women in a book offering jobs overseas for
Americans.125 Though there is a picture of a man and a woman in the ad, it probably
appealed to more men because women in the 1950s were encouraged to stay at home and
care for children rather than find outside work.
One of the only sensationalist articles featuring Jorgensen that had advertisements
appealing to both men and women was the Confidential article on her top-secret romance
with Howard. The first ad featured a get rich quick scheme by sending in for a book with
123
“Goodnight Christine.”
124
Ibid.
125
Ibid.
32
instructions on how to become a hotel executive with no experience.126 Two personal success
stories (one male and one female) are in the center of the ad. Confidential may have been
anticipating that their readers were out of work, and lacked the experience to obtain a high
paying job. Two other smaller ads feature a three-way convertible bra from Fredrick’s, and a
portable garage car cover.127 The bra ad appeals to a female audience, while the car cover
would strike the attention of men.
These appeals through advertisements reveal possible as to the type individuals who
read sensationalist stories on Jorgensen. The magazines that tended to question Jorgensen’s
sex to the highest degree had male dominated ads. On the other hand, Confidential’s article
on Jorgensen’s romance featured an ad for a bra that would typically appeal to women.
Middle age men could have been the type to question the true sex of Jorgensen the most
since she was born male. Women however, were probably more interested in articles that
featured Jorgensen’s love life especially if it happened to be with a playboy millionaire.
Behind the gendered appeals there is also the type of item being sold in each
advertisement. Many of the ads offered mail in orders for items that were just as exaggerated
as the Jorgensen articles. The bass fishing secret and hotel executive book both offered
unpredictable products with questionable reliability. These ads relate to the type of
publications that tabloids produced. These larger than life accounts of Jorgensen were
accompanied by advertisements that were equally grand. Sensationalist magazines embodied
the dichotomy of Jorgensen’s heterosexual appeal with postwar concerns of gender ideals.
Tabloid magazines ultimately focused on questioning the authenticity of Jorgensen’s
femininity and provided biting language that cast her in a masculine light.
For other magazines, categorization proves difficult because there is a lack of sources
that identify 1950s magazines that are not tabloids. By examining these articles however,
there are a few characteristics that surface in some publications more than others. Moderate
and conservative publications are two possible categories for postwar magazines for their
ability to report on Jorgensen’s story without relying on exaggerated language and
126
Crane, “The Hush-Hush Romance.”
127
Ibid.
33
questionable source material. For example, while sensationalist media published articles on
the mythical ways of Jorgensen’s eating habits, other magazines chose to write on her in a
more respectful manner. Though moderate and conservative publications did at times report
on the personal life of Jorgensen, they chose to rely on more realistic stories of her life
instead of focusing on tantalizing tales of her alleged sexual affairs. Publications such as
Pose, People Today, and Focus magazines could all be considered moderate media because
they tend to focus more on Jorgensen’s personal life than conservative publications.
Magazines such as Time and American Weekly could be labeled as conservative publications
for their lack of interest in Jorgensen’s male relationships.
For those living in the 1950s, Jorgensen’s celebrity proved to be a shocking
contradiction to the perfect “cold women” and “manicured lawns” that were described in the
beginning of this chapter. Cold War popular culture struggled to clearly classify Jorgensen as
misfit or icon. In magazine pictorials Jorgensen was typically posed as a classic pin-up
model. With beautiful clothes, shiny blonde hair, and a stunning smile she physically
embodied the features of a 1950s bombshell.128 However, Jorgensen’s male birth
continuously left journalists in a limbo of mixed responses. By changing sex, Jorgensen
unleashed a slew of debates and insecurities surrounding sexuality and gender. Throughout
the decade, the mass media was unable to sway the public to love or hate this transgendered
beauty. By the end of the 1950s Christine Jorgensen, was one of the most sought out women
in America. The relationship between her celebrity and the mass media only becomes more
muddled in the next two decades as Americans reexamined social and sexual norms.
128
Douglas, Where the Girls Are, 6.
34
CHAPTER 3
SEXUAL UPRISING
In a 1962 interview, Life magazine editor Alexander King commented on the newly
celebrated idea that a woman should get some sort of pleasure out of her sexual contact. He
argued that this notion was taken too far; and that the 1960s American female demanded too
much equality with men in the bedroom and beyond. According to King, these desires of
equality left women in a constant state of penis envy.129 For King, the idea of a woman
enjoying her sexuality as much as her partner automatically deemed her envious of a
masculine lifestyle. King’s hostile feelings on these newly sexually liberated women possibly
stemmed from the success of Helen Brown’s Sex and the Single Girl. The tantalizing book
glorified sex before marriage, and encouraged women to enjoy sex, not be afraid of it.130
Brown’s book soon became a bestseller and created public forum for female sexuality. For
Americans living in the 1960s, debates like these sparked an entire movement that lasted
beyond the decade. No longer were housewives expected to remain silent and sexually
repressed. With feminists like Helen Brown and Betty Freidan publically questioning the
status quo, sexual norms changed for both men and women.
Though the revolution brought promise for middle class women, individuals who
challenged sexual norms lay in the crosshairs of this sexual uprising. As a woman, would
Christine Jorgensen have “penis envy” like King argued, and strive for the same sexual
freedom as men? Or would she attempt to pave her own path through the Sexual Revolution?
Although Jorgensen herself did not emerge as a full-fledged spokesperson for women’s
sexual freedom, the mass media continued its infatuation with changing sex and published a
variety of articles on transgender individuals. This influx of media coverage only cemented
Jorgensen’s celebrity in popular culture as the decade pressed on.
129
David Allyn, Make Love, Not War: The Sexual Revolution: An Unfettered History (New York:
Routledge, 2001), 21.
130
Ibid., 10.
35
The 1960s produced a sense of individualism in which pleasure and the pursuit of
happiness centered on individual fulfillment. In America and the Pill, Elaine Tyler May
credits the sexual revolution for providing an increase in public acceptance of sex which
focused less on marriage and more on individual moral values.131 Similar to May, Hilary
Radner argues in Swinging Single, that this notion of sexual individualism is very different
from the 1950s, where family ties and security were believed to be the key to personal
success.132 She argued that the public acceptance of sexual individuality was largely
“heterocentric… in which masculine and feminine remain distinct categories.” Radner added
that an aspiring “third sex” still remained in the shadows, struggling for legitimacy.133 In the
60s, sex was became mainstream but only for those who fit into accepted roles of male and
female. Homosexuality and any other types of sexuality that deviated from the male female
norm failed to surface in popular culture. Jorgensen, however, did not easily fit into either of
these distinct categories. She blurred lines of biology and gender, exposing a gray area of
sexuality that peaked the curiosity of medical doctors, psychologists, and the public alike.
Though 1960s culture was based on “heterocentric” norms, popular magazines
continued to explore various forms of sexual practice and produced a variety of articles
examining the science behind sexual variations. Though the media was opening up to new
possibilities of sex and science, publishers still wrestled with validating the individuals who
represented these variations. This chapter will examine Jorgensen’s public persona in the
face of the radically changing social climate during the Sexual Revolution. Though one
might assume that a sexual revolution would only help bring more of an acceptance or
understanding of transgenderism, this was not the case. Many publications relating to
changing sex or gender were muddled by the shifting sexual environment of the decade. The
mass media continued to print sensational stories on Jorgensen and other transgender
individuals that overemphasized their sexual attributes, ultimately discrediting those who
sought to change sex. Though the 1960s did challenge gender norms that were carefully
131
Elaine Tyler May, America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation (New York: Basic
Books), 2010, 71.
132
Hilary Radner, Swinging Single (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 2.
133
Ibid., 3.
36
crafted in the 50s, the Sexual Revolution remained centered on heterosexuality. Leaving
Jorgensen and other transgender individuals in a struggle to gain legitimacy and identity in a
decade that offered much promise for social and sexual liberation.
A GLIMPSE OF 1960S SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE
By the 1960s, American culture was on the brink of massive social and political
change. The Cold War conservatism of the 1950s that shaped the private and public lives of
Americans began to shift by the end of the decade. The Civil Rights movement spawned a
legion of activists who pursued other avenues of social change. The Sexual Revolution
encouraged women to pursue their own liberation movement. Women who prescribed to
traditional gender roles in the 50s now struggled to discover themselves as the sexual ethos
shifted from procreative to individual pleasure. The mass production of the pill in the early
60s helped women celebrate their sexual individuality. With the pill, single women could
enjoy sex without worry of becoming an unwed mother, a stigma that haunted many women
throughout the 1950s. Married women even found benefits from use of the pill. By using it as
a tool to avoid perpetual pregnancy, women gained a new sense of freedom.134
The Sexual Revolution and use of the pill inspired feminist thinkers to seek liberation
beyond sex. Ruth Rosen’s, The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement
Changed America, identifies the feminists from the late 1960s as “Refugees from the
1950s.”135 She explains that publications like The Feminist Mystique influenced a decade of
women and helped housewives who felt the sting of domesticity to come together and vent
their unhappiness about traditional gender roles. For some women, the feminist movement
rooted deeper than the sexual revolution. Wini Breines explores the troubled female youth of
the 50s who grew up to create the Women’s Liberation Movement in, Young, White, and
Miserable: Growing Up Female in the Fifties. The feminist movement exposed a mythology
of feminine roles and gender expectations severely affected the girls of the decade.
According to Breines, the stress on femininity paired with glorifications of domestic life and
134
135
May, America and the Pill, 74.
Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America (New
York: Penguin Books, 2000), 6.
37
warnings about the danger of having a career undermined changes in women’s traditional
lifestyles.136 She notes “…young, white, middle-class women who grew up in the midst of
these contradictions were dry tinder for the spark of revolt.”137 Many middle class women led
lives that were extremely limited and tormented by social restraints, girls who grew up in the
50s ultimately rebelled against their parent’s restrictions.
Cold War housewives raised daughters in a culture that fixated on family life. Breines
suggests that fifties girls were socialized in families by mothers whose values reinforced the
notion of separate spheres and prescribed roles for gender.138 However, while mothers
reinforced female duty and safety in domesticity, they created negative experiences for
young women. These messages of safety in the home were overshadowed by the sexual and
romantic riddles that flooded the mass media. Breines argues, “…sex was commercialized,
glorified in movies, advertising, and movie magazines.”139 Teen girls were encouraged to
participate in consumerism through the promotion of sex and glamour. At the same time,
adolescent girls were also expected to remain virgins until marriage. Young women of the
fifties grew up in a culture of extreme contradiction.
This paradox became clear once women participated in various protest groups in the
1960s. In Personal Politics: The Roots of Women's Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement
and the New Left, Sara Evans argues that protests in the South for civil rights sparked an
overall awakening which helped students create a new feminist consciousness. She notes that
children of the 1950s whose parents enjoyed the material wealth of American prosperity felt
that their lives lacked meaning. As a result, young people participated in activism for
southern civil rights, the Peace Corps, and VISTA. Group participation, according to Evans,
“…sparked a resurgence of idealism and active involvement in social change.”140 This push
for social change was not a simple transition for women. While working in activist groups,
136
Breines, Young, White, and Miserable, 23.
137
Ibid.
138
Ibid., 49.
139
Ibid., 86.
140
Sara Evans, Personal Politics: The Roots of Women's Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the
New Left (New York: Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 1979), 15.
38
women began to realize that their positions in certain movements were subordinate. Some
felt personal discrimination by male activists, comrades, lovers, and coworkers as they
protested for civil rights and antiwar campaigns.141 This importance of activism would
ultimately be a precursor to feminist thinking. Breines argues that these experiences coupled
with the anxiety of growing up in postwar America, forced the young, white, middle-class
women of the 1950s to eventually form the Women’s Liberation Movement. These women
rejected the safety of domesticity embracing the social, racial, and sexual change that
occurred in the late 1960s.142
Though women became more politically active in the 60s, the mass media continued
to follow Cold War ideals of gender. Susan Douglas in, Where the Girls Are: Growing up
Female with the Mass Media explains that the population explosion of the baby boom created
millions of pre-teen and teenage girls. Within this population boom, young women became a
“market” for the mass media.143 Popular television shows possessed undertones of danger
centered on powerful women. For example, shows in the 1960s such as Bewitched and I
Dream of Jeannie featured female characters that possessed power through magic. These
women reinforced both positive and negative stereotypes about women. Douglas notes,
although these women had power to create change, the alterations needed to be confined in
the private sphere. Whenever these powers were used outside of the home, the male world
was disrupted and ultimately turned upside town.144 Though these TV figures held some sort
of power, it was only because of magic. Popular culture the early 1960s, continued to
reinforce a message of patriarchy, heterosexuality, and female subordination.
Though television shows and magazines still attempted to influence gender relations,
Douglas notes that there was a, “…level of rebellion in the 1960s that the media could
neither manage nor contain.”145 The media was in limbo, attempting to cover the social and
political struggles of the Gay Rights and Women’s Liberation movements while also sending
141
Ibid., 196.
142
Ibid., 49.
143
Douglas, Where the Girls Are, 9.
144
Ibid., 126.
145
Ibid., 141.
39
out messages of gender conformity. As a result, more and more young people became
political and joined different organizations that promoted change. Women who participated
politically were both embraced and criticized by the mass media. Though their message
gained media attention, Douglas notes that media also created the notion that feminists were,
“…overly aggressive, man-hating, ball-busting, selfish, hairy, extremist, deliberately
unattractive women …who see sexism at every turn.”146 Mass media tended to discount the
feminine attributes of political women.
Throughout 60s, the media simultaneously stripped political women of their
femininity, while over sexualizing the female form during the sexual revolution. In the
article, “Women, cheesecake, and borderline material: Responses to girlie pictures in the
mid-twentieth-century U.S” Joanne Meyerowitz examines the evolution of sexual marketing
of the female body in the mass media during the 1960s feminist movement. As a benefit to
women’s liberation she argues that, “…the rise of popular erotic images was one component
of a broader transformation toward a modern sexuality that assigned a heightened value to
nonprocreative heterosexuality.”147 Though the Sexual Revolution took sex outside of
marriage, it did not ease the media’s response to transgendered sexuality.
The mass media of the 1960s tended to constantly waver in opinion on changing sex
in spite of the advancements from the Feminist Movement and Sexual Revolution.
Jorgensen’s celebrity created a cultural firestorm in the 50s that continued to raise
questions about transforming sex in this new decade of social change. With Jorgensen’s
celebrity on the rise, publishers began to open their pages to articles including topics of
sexual variation. This chapter will follow articles on Jorgensen as her celebrity continued in
1959 though the 1960s. Whether she got engaged, or posed for the paparazzi, the media was
there to report on their favorite misfit. Jorgensen’s story also spawned other articles on
sexual variation that were published throughout the decade. These articles typically focused
on specific categories concerning, the physical body, sexuality, and medical practices. As
146
147
Ibid., 7.
Joanne Meyerowitz, “Women, Cheesecake, and Borderline Material: Responses to Girlie Pictures in
the Mid-Twentieth-Century U.S.” Journal of Women's History 8, no. 3 (1996): 9.
40
Americans embarked on a decade full of social uprisings, the mass media continued to
exhibit the lingering Cold War anxieties of shifting gender roles and changing sex.
JORGENSEN ATTEMPTS TO WED, MEDIA CRITICISM
FOLLOWS
In 1959, Jorgensen caught media attention once again by attempting to marry thirtythree year old Howard J. Knox. However, they were unsuccessful in their attempt because
Knox failed to provide documentation to prove he was in fact divorced from his previous
wife. Mirror magazine wrote a moderate piece on the event, only mentioning minimal facts
including the ages, occupations, and reason why the pair were unable to wed. The article
takes a slight stab at Jorgensen by noting that she would need to provide “womanly proof” in
the form of a blood test to establish that she was in fact a woman.148
Though the author notes Jorgensen must provide proof of her womanhood, the photo
chosen to accompany the article promoted her feminine qualities. Jorgensen and Knox
physically appeared to be ideal representations of their sex. In a long skirt, fur coat, heels,
and leather gloves, Jorgensen was polished and ready to have her picture taken. Not to be out
done, Knox wore a perfectly tailored suit and stood tall next to his fiancé. It would be
difficult for the readers of Mirror to doubt Jorgensen’s womanliness by simply looking at the
photography provided.
Mirror’s report on the marriage attempt could be considered a moderate reaction to
Jorgensen’s sex because it mainly sticks to the cold facts, making only a slight jab when
mentioning “womanly proof.” However, the accompanying photograph highlights
Jorgensen’s physical feminine, and Knox’s masculine qualities. Readers of this magazine
whether they were male or female would not get the exaggerated language that a more
sensationalist publication would provide. For example, another magazine covering the same
story chose to use more biting language towards Jorgensen. The photograph associated with
the article features Jorgensen and Knox sitting down. This photo captured the couple in a
candid moment at the courthouse.149 Knox is looking docile and fidgets with his hands while
148
“Ex-Man Christine’s Matrimony Delayed,” Mirror, March 31, 1959, 1.
149
“Christine Seeks to Wed,” March 1959, Virginia Price Papers, Special Collections and Archives,
41
Jorgensen is looking at the camera dead on, with a half smile. The angle of the photograph
made Jorgensen look larger than Knox. This photo tended to highlight the reversal of gender
roles for the couple; Jorgensen looks quite masculine while Knox in the background appears
dainty.
Whether or not the photograph was deliberately chosen to make Jorgensen appear
more masculine is up for debate, however, the language in the article itself speaks to the
same notions provided in the photograph. The title of the article reads, “N. Y. Officials Eye
Law on Man-Woman, Christine Seeks to Wed.” References to Jorgensen’s sex continue in
the caption of the photograph where she is again referred as a “man-turned-woman,” and
“boy-turned-girl.” The author continually assures readers that Jorgensen changed her sex
whenever possible, commenting that this is an “unusual” case.150
In the fourth paragraph of the article the author provides a brief background on
Jorgensen mentioning her sex change in Denmark noting that she, “then announced that his
sex had been changed from male to female.” The author refers to her as a “he” rather than
“she,” undermining Jorgensen’s sex change altogether. The author’s tone shifts slightly in the
same paragraph by mentioning Jorgensen’s physical appearance at the court building “with
hair in a stylish coiffure and wearing a mink coat.”151 This final line of the paragraph is a
prime example of the convoluted language associated with Jorgensen’s sex. The author
continuously questions the authenticity of her sex and then comments on the “stylish” way
her hair was done. According to Meyerowitz in, How Sex Changed, this stylish, lady-like
representation of Jorgensen is an image she worked very hard to maintain in the media,
though “some observers read her as a cross-dressing man who dated other men.”152 This
author confirms Meyerowitz argument by highlighting Jorgensen’s feminine style, and
questioning her true gender.
California State University Northridge Oviatt Library.
150
Ibid.
151
Ibid.
152
Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed, 169.
42
JORGENSEN: SEX SYMBOL OR LAUGHING STOCK?
In 1961, Modern Man published an article by Morton Cooper titled, “What ever
became of Christine Jorgensen?”153 Throughout the article, Cooper sexualizes Jorgensen’s
physical body while making jokes about her transgender identity. The first page of the article
includes a bold printed statement, which sets the tone for the following paragraphs and
photos: “One-time boy, Danish-made pastry is now full-time girl, and claims to have the
measurements to prove it.”154 Since Modern Man is a men’s magazine one can assume that
the language and photographs within the publication would tend to have a sexual emphasis.
The cover of the March issue even features a large photograph of sex symbol Jayne
Mansfield wearing very little clothing. However, the Jorgensen article highlights the same
ambivalence seen in sensationalist articles written on her in the 1950s. Though this article is
similar in its wavering opinion, it is more sexually direct than its 50s counterparts.
Meyerowitz argues that this increase in sexual language occurred in the 1960s due to a lax in
censorship laws.155 In a single sentence, Cooper manages to highlight Jorgensen’s sexuality
while also making it clear that she was born male.
The photographs on the first page of the article also mirror this sexual dichotomy.
Two photos featuring Christine (before and after her procedures) catch the reader’s attention
even before the title. In Figure 2, the larger picture features a highly feminine Jorgensen in a
strapless gown holding a toy poodle. A smaller inset photo of Gorge Jorgensen is to the right.
The caption reads: “Putting ballet slippers on a pet toy poodle, Christine Jorgensen displays
curvy bosom in publicity still.”156 Cooper observed Jorgensen’s cleavage, but notes that she
was born as George and served in the army.
The photographs and subtle attacks continue throughout the article as Cooper
navigated his way through Jorgensen’s life since becoming female. While continuously
referring to her as a he, Cooper defends those who covered Jorgensen’s story “…the fact that
153
Morton Cooper, “What ever became of Christine Jorgensen?” Modern Man, March 1961, accessed
August 7, 2011, http://www.christinejorgensen.org.
154
Ibid.
155
Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed, 168.
156
Cooper, “What ever became,”.
43
Figure 2. What ever became of Christine Jorgensen? Source: Cooper, Morton.
“What ever became of Christine Jorgensen?” Modern Man, March 1961. Accessed
August 7, 2011. http://www.christinejorgensen.org.
he demanded privacy was incomprehensible, especially in the view of the fact that the press
was, on the whole, treating him affectionately.”157 The author suggests that the press was
more than fair to Jorgensen despite the fact that the language and photographs used in the
article were cutting jabs at her sex.
Cooper continues his hostility towards Jorgensen by informing the reader that “he”
accepted 30,000 dollars from American Weekly for a series of articles, and sarcastically noted
that she “…assured everyone the money was of little interest to him.”158 By questioning
Jorgensen’s motivation for privacy, Cooper creates a safe place to poke fun of her celebrity,
while validating the significance of her fame. Another example of this dichotomy is seen in
the photographs accompanying the paragraphs on the same page. Towards the bottom of the
page a man is pictured with a shocked look on his face, his hand is raised to his cheek and
eyes bulged. He is holding a picture of Jorgensen, she is posed like a doll, and arm stretched
holding a purse. The caption reads: “Mock Amazement” and explains that the man holding
the photo of Jorgensen is an old buddy of Georges, who is obviously troubled by the sex
157
Ibid.
158
Ibid.
44
change.159 This photograph sensationalized Jorgensen’s transgenderism. The man’s face
depicts an overdramatized look of shock and the photo caption only adds to the exaggerated
expression. The look of utter shock, translates to readers that Jorgensen’s “old buddy” did not
support the change of sex.
On the very same page, two other pictures of Jorgensen are featured. Both center on
Jorgensen with a celebrity, one photo is of Jorgensen and a top ice skater, in the other, she is
with Milton Berle, and other “big stars” at a benefit. In both of these photographs, Jorgensen
is classic and feminine. She is just as stunning as the ice skater she is pictured with. These
images could be considered more conservative though they are within a sensational article
because caption of the photograph mentions centers on Jorgensen’s celebrity and not her sex.
In a single four-page article, Cooper manages to present Jorgensen as a vixen, a man, a freak,
and a major celebrity.
Sensationalist publications that did not over sexualize Jorgensen tended to make her
out to be a social oddity even towards the end of the 1960s. In April of 1967, Uncensored,
covered a story on Jorgensen titled “Shockers in the News! Those Legal U.S. Sex Changes”
that included biting rhetoric and exaggerated photographs.160 The author notes in the first
paragraph transsexuals are “pathetic persons” and categorizes them as “sexual misfits.”161
This language sets the tone for the reader as Jorgensen is mocked throughout the article. The
caption a photo of Jorgensen and fiancé Knox, mentions that he wanted get married but she
“chose showbiz.” This line immediately feminizes Knox by expressing his desire to be
married while Jorgensen is painted in a masculine light because she simply chooses her
career.162 The author only mentions Jorgensen’s physical body once, noting that upon request
Denmark doctors transformed “…him into a shapely long-legged blonde.”163 Similar to
1950s tabloids, Jorgensen’s legs are mentioned in a sexual light, one part of her body that did
159
Ibid.
160
“Shockers in the News! Those Legal U.S. Sex Changes,” Uncensored, April 1967, accessed April 23,
2011, http://www.christinejorgensen.org/MainPages/Publications.html.
161
Ibid.
162
Ibid.
163
Ibid.
45
not undergo any type of surgery. Jorgensen’s body continued to be a point of speculation
throughout the 1960s. Even in 1967, publishers projected a contradictory view of Jorgensen
to the public. More than a decade after her celebrity emerged, the public still wrestled with
understanding who or what Jorgensen was.
1960S MASS MEDIA RESPONSES BEYOND JORGENSEN
Since Jorgensen’s body sparked such public interest, other magazines decided to
jump on the sex change bandwagon. Sensationalist articles written on these new debates of
sexuality tended to focus on the physical body and sexuality of a transgendered individual.
According to Meyerowitz, for transsexuals, “No matter how they behaved [they] could not
entirely dispel the aura of illicit sexuality.”164 This attitude is prevalent throughout the 1960s
in the Midnight magazine articles that centered on sensationalized visions of sexual variation.
In a 1962 October issue, reporter Don Jackson wrote an article titled “Stripper Hedy Jo Star’s
Amazing Story: I Changed My Sex From Man to Woman.”165 The title of this piece alone
screams out an almost larger than life notion, not only did “Hedy” change her sex, she is now
a stripper. Jackson continues his sensationalist tone by asking the reader, “Have you ever
envied the lot of the opposite sex, felt the life to be easier, more exciting or better suited to
your temperament?”166 The author undermines the woman’s sex change by simply stating
that becoming the opposite sex could lead to a more exciting life. Hedy, however, does her
part to help challenge sexual norms in her article. She notes, “…it would only be fair to state
that divergency from the ‘normal’ can and does exist.”167 Though the remainder of the article
mutes her advocacy for the norms of sexual variation when she informs readers that she is a
complete female in “every respect” and even includes her before and after measurements
(from male to female), including her bust, waist, and hips.168 Sensationalist articles
164
Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed, 168.
165
Don Jackson, “Stripper Hedy Jo Star’s Amazing Story,” Midnight, October 1962, 3.
166
Ibid.
167
Ibid.
168
Ibid.
46
continuously over sexualize transgender women while also poking fun at the idea of
changing sex.
In 1963, National Insider published another sensationalized story on transgenderism.
Unlike other articles on changing sex published in the 60s, “I’m a man, but…I want to be a
woman,”169 was written from the first person perspective of a transgender woman named
Gayle Sherman. However, like other sensationalized stories of transgenderism, Sherman over
sexualized her physical body while telling the story of her transformation. In the opening of
the article she almost challenges the reader to question the validity of her femininity: “touch
me and you’ll feel the velvet soft skin of a female. Look at me and you’ll see a grace that no
man can imitate.”170 This suggestive language is present throughout the article and is coupled
with photographs of Sherman in barely there clothing. Sherman leaves the reader wanting
more for the following week with the lure of more sexualized content, “Next Week: I
Discover My Sexual Nature,” is promised on the last page of the article.171 This particular
article is noteworthy because Sherman sexualizes herself throughout the piece. Sherman’s
own words put her in a sexual light, which is different from other sensationalist articles that
tended to over sexualize the physical bodies of their transgender subjects while also poking
fun at their masculinity. Meyerowitz notes that some transsexuals, “…projected a more
sexualized persona and rejected the coy image that Christine Jorgensen had invoked…”172
Whether or not National Insider encouraged Sherman to sex up her words, she does come
across to the reader as strong, confident, and sure of her new body. This perspective is a far
cry from 60’s sensationalist articles featuring Jorgensen since they tended to both mock and
sexualize her physical body.
In the late 1960s, Midnight magazine continued to report on changing sex. In the
1968 article titled, “I’m Sorry I Changed my Sex,” Vance Butterfield wrote about a man who
had second thoughts after his sex change operation. The article included a before and after
photograph of Donald Campbell. His female photograph pictured him in full hair and
169
Gayle Sherman, “I’m a Man, But…I Want to be a Woman,” National Insider, October 1963, 12.
170
Ibid.
171
Ibid., 14.
172
Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed, 170.
47
makeup, knitting with his legs crossed.173 Butterfield also noted that Campbell knitted as he
answered questions for the article. The knitting is an important factor in this scenario because
the article is centered on a man who hated his sex change. At the end of the article Campbell
mentioned, “The feminine impulses I use to have no longer exist inside me.”174 This
revelation is a bit of a contradiction since Campbell is pictured knitting which is traditionally
a feminine hobby. The author attempts to gain reader sympathy for Campbell who turned to a
life of prostitution and drugs after his sex change, but continues to reinforce his feminine
attributes by mentioning this knitting. Though Butterfield is not directly mocking Campbell’s
sex change, the extremes of sex, drugs, depression, and knitting take away from the
seriousness of changing sex.
A year later Midnight published another sensational article on sex changes titled, “He
Becomes a Woman With…Do-It-Yourself Sex Change Kit.” Paul Fuchs reported on Walter
Herscht, a man who took it upon himself to inject female hormones in order to become a
woman. Before and after photos proved that Herscht had transformed into a voluptuous
woman who went by the name of Ellen. Herscht saved money as a schoolteacher in order to
pay for the hormones and operation in order to become female.
Like many of the sensationalized sex change stories of the 1960s, once Walter
became Ellen, he pursued his dream of becoming a strip tease dancer in order to “express my
essential femininity and win applauses for doing it.”175 Once again, hyper sexualizing the
individual who underwent the operation undermines the seriousness of changing sex. For
magazines like Midnight that tended to sensationalize stories, it was not enough for Herscht
to simply change his sex; he needed to be transformed into a highly attractive and sexualized
female character.
2.
173
Vance Butterfield, “I’m Sorry I Changed my Sex,” Midnight, January 1968, 1.
174
Ibid.
175
Paul Fuchs, “He Becomes a Woman With…Do-It-Yourself Sex Change Kit,” Midnight, February 1969,
48
1960S MAGAZINE ADVERTISEMENTS
Corresponding advertisements to articles on Jorgensen provide a glimpse into the
type of audience that would be interested in reading about changing sex. As previously noted,
many articles written specifically on Jorgensen were found in men’s magazines. Naturally,
men would be the target audience for these publications. Jayne Mansfield’s magazine cover
in Modern Man is a clear example of a publication that was created for male consumption.
However, the advertisements in the 1967 Uncensored article featuring Jorgensen titled,
“Shockers in the News! Those Legal U.S. Sex Changes” also provide evidence of a male
dominated audience.176 Three ads appealing to men are featured in this article. The first is a
“8mm Motion Picture Projector” for under ten dollars. The ad provides much detail of the
high tech gadget and emphasizes the low price. Like the projector ad, Follies (a popular
men’s magazine in the 60s) published an advertisement in their November 1968 issue titled,
“Buy Below Wholesale!” This ad encouraged men to buy the newest gadgets such as
watches, cameras, and razors at a low price to start at home businesses.177 Though females
may have found some appeal in new electronic devices and starting their own businesses, it is
more likely that these ads were geared toward a male audience. Throughout the Cold War,
middle class men were encouraged to participate in the capitalistic rivalry with their
neighbors, which required them to be the breadwinners of the family and continuously have
the newest high tech devices.
Underneath the motion picture projector announcement is a second ad titled, “Male
Call,” which features men’s undergarments.178 The ad contains drawings of very muscular
males wearing various types of underwear. Again, this ad is an appeal to men, the male
models entice the reader to purchase the undergarments and be like the men in the drawings.
The final ad in this article is from the American Cancer Society and also draws male
appeal. The ad centers on a well-dressed man standing in front of the camera. A man and
woman casually chat near a desk in the background. This is an anti smoking ad which states
176
“Shockers in the News!”
177
“Buy Below Wholesale!” Follies, November 1968, accessed July 6, 2012,
http://girlmags.blogspot.com/search/label/1968.
178
“Shockers in the News!”
49
“Give your employees a real break”179 encouraging bosses to offer employees non-smoking
breaks in order to improve their health. This ad is interesting since it is not selling anything in
particular, but the photograph says much about the ads possible appeal. Since the photograph
centers a man in a suit readers can assume that he is the “boss” needing to give “his”
employees a break.
A similar ad is found in the 1965 November issue of Cavalier magazine (a popular
men’s publication in the 60s), which features an advertisement for accountant training. The
main photograph in the ad is of an older man shaking hands with a younger man in a suit
with a young eager looking woman in the background. The caption reads, “you will be
received with open arms if you are trained in Accounting.”180 These male figureheads
confirm the 1960s social struggle of women and power in the workplace. The American
Cancer Society is projecting the notion that the leader in a working environment is male, and
it is up to him to make the best decisions for his employees. While the Cavalier ad shows
that newly trained male employees are still more powerful than a female worker. Again,
these ads appeal to men but attempts to connect with women because there is a woman
pictured, though she is not in a position of power. These ads prescribe to the traditional
gender roles that were solidified in the 1950s with the male at the head of the workplace.
However, since the ads do depict female employees, they connect with the underlying social
unrest of the 1960s as women across the country struggled for equality and opportunity in the
workplace.
The social uprisings of the 1960s did not ease, but complicated the relationship
between Jorgensen and the mass media. Jorgensen and other transgendered women’s bodies
were over sexualized while women who were political and labeled “feminists” were reported
in a masculine light. It is interesting to look at these stories of sex changes that involve an
over sexualized idea of sexual transformation. Time and time again, individuals who
underwent sex changes ended up in headlines which put them in a hyper sexual state. In spite
179
180
Ibid.
“Be a Trained Accountant,” Cavalier, November 1965, accessed May 8, 2012,
http://girlmags.blogspot.com/search/label/1965.
50
of the “heterocentric” decade that Radner advocated in her work, 1960s media continued to
sexualize the transgender form. From Jorgensen’s cleavage to the countless numbers of
exotic dancers, male to female transformations peaked a sexual curiosity for the 1960s
public. Editors of popular magazines continually published stories of transgendered
individuals in sexual spaces.
Though Jorgensen faced much scrutiny in the 1960s press, her celebrity continued to
rise as she inspired other magazines to publish stories on changing sex. By over sexualizing
transgender individuals and discounting feminism of women’s rights activists, 60s media
contradicted Cold War ideals of gender norms. As the public struggled to cope with the
changing social climate of the time, Jorgensen continued to revel in the limelight of her
celebrity. Similar to the decade previous, 1960s mass media continued to produce conflicted
opinions on changing sex, however, the social movements of the time created a new level of
complexity. The Sexual Revolution opened up new ideas of individual sexuality that was not
dependent on family and marriage. This notion allowed publishers to over sexualize
transgender figures in spite of the fact that heterosexuality was the only commonly accepted
form of sexual preference. 1960s media reflected the contradictory ideas of sexuality and
shifting gender norms. Jorgensen continued to be a hot topic for sensationalized journalism
but her celebrity allowed for other transgender stories to emerge. Though transgender
individuals received more media coverage in the 1960s, their sexualized roles detracted from
the importance of their public presence. As America approached a new decade, little progress
had been made in the mass media towards understanding Christine Jorgensen, her celebrity,
and possibilities of changing sex.
51
CHAPTER 4
COMING OF AGE
For some, the 1970s are stereotyped as a decade full of frivolous behavior, void of
social ills and revolution. Author Sherrie Inness remarked, “Who had time to worry about
social change when the biggest priority was dancing until dawn at the disco or getting high
with your friends?”181 At first glance, this decade may seem to mirror a time in American
history where sex, drugs, and music was king, but that was hardly the case. Inness argues that
just beneath the surface, the 70s marked a distinct social shift “…many of the social
movements of the 1960s—including the youth movement and the movements for gay rights,
civil rights, and women’s rights—were alive and thriving in the 1970s.”182 The social and
political unrest that brewed in the late 60s overflowed into the subsequent decade. Inness
notes, “Many argue that it was in this era that these movements had their broadest impact.”183
In the 1970s, Christine Jorgensen’s celebrity gained credibility as her persona shifted
from social oddity to a person with a real message. This chapter will examine the journey of
Jorgensen’s celebrity in the mass media in the wake of 70s social revolutions. Though the
mass media and popular culture still did not fully embrace Jorgensen, the cultural climate of
the decade allowed for a more receptive audience. Advocates for gay and lesbian rights
gained a national following, which forced issues of sexual equality to the forefront of
political debate. Twenty years after Jorgensen became a public figure, the public was finally
ready to cope with changing sex.
181
Sherrie A. Inness, ed., “Strange Feverish Years: The 1970s and Women’s Changing Roles,” in Disco
Divas: Women and Popular Culture in the 1970s, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 4.
182
Ibid.
183
Ibid.
52
PAVING THE WAY FOR CHRISTINE: 1970S SOCIAL
HISTORY
As a whole, the 1970s represented a loss of innocence for many Americans. The
shocking 1968 assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert Kennedy still haunted
the nation while televised horrors of the Vietnam War, fueled vicious anti-war protests. The
Watergate scandal would forever shake the trust that citizens placed in their government.184
Civil Rights leaders, feminists, and gay rights activists continued to publicize their plight in
hopes of gaining a political voice in mainstream America. Though the 1970s were plagued
with social distress, hope in the form of legislation and organizations emerged from the
shadows, making it one of the most progressive decades in American history.185
Throughout the decade, Women’s Rights movements continued to flourish in spite of
the feminist backlash that followed from the 1960s. In The World Split Open: How the
Modern Women’s Movement Changed America, Ruth Rosen suggests that “…images of the
‘bra burner’ as well as ‘the women’s libber’ left many women feeling that they wanted to
distance themselves from such a movement.”186 According to Inness, feminism yielded a mix
reactions, “some media resources helped advance feminist issues, while others sought to limit
their impact.”187 Either way, media outlets could not ignore the social unrest that women felt.
Susan Douglas in, Where the Girls Are, argues that the relationship between feminism and
mainstream media was “vexed.” She notes, “What radical feminists presented as
revolutionary and utopian, the mainstream media saw as a bad acid trip.”188 However,
negative media responses did not discourage feminists. NOW, (The National Organization
for Women) which was founded in 1966 became exceedingly noticeable throughout the 70s
as members protested media events that it considered sexist.189 In “Beyond Declension:
Feminist Radicalism in the 1970s and 1980s,” Sara Evans adds that NOW continued to
184
Ibid.
185
Kelly Boyer Sagert, The 1970s (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2007), xiii.
186
Rosen, The World Split Open, 301.
187
Inness, “Strange Feverish Years,” 6.
188
Douglas, Where the Girls Are, 174.
189
Inness, “Strange Feverish Years,” 4.
53
advocate for gender equality as feminists moved into academia and the professional world.190
Feminists not only protested media events, but media advertising as well. By asserting their
consumer powers, feminists encouraged advertising agencies to reconsider their target
audience and avoid sexist language. NOW began criticizing ad campaigns that belittled
women in order to sell products. Whether or not these criticisms made an economic dent for
companies is unknown but the language in advertisements began to shift as firms turned to
focus groups of feminists to help with avoid discrimination.191
Woman also gained social and sexual freedom with the legalization of abortion in
1973, and the growing power of the birth control pill that was introduced in 1960s.192 Evans
argues that second wave feminism was even a force behind the shift in language and double
standards that discredited the possibility of working women in previous decades.
“Occupations are no longer linguistically coded male and female (e.g., “firefighter replaces
“fireman”). The double standard for sexual behavior no longer has the power to destroy
women’s lives.”193 However, for some feminists the sexual revolution objectified women by
popularizing pornography and casual sex.194 This sentiment coupled with the increasing
popularity of the pill led some feminists to believe that an increase of domestic violence and
rape towards women would occur.195 These fears were supported when editors for Playboy
magazine supported use of the pill for sexual pleasure especially for men. However,
women’s magazines like Redbook argued that the pill took the power to ‘give’ his part in
order to create a child, therefore robbing him of his masculinity.196
190
Sara M. Evans, “Beyond Declension: Feminist Radicalism in the 1970s and 1980s,” in The World the
60s Made: Politics and Culture in Recent America, ed. Van Gosse and Richard Moser (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 2003), 52.
191
Steve Craig, “Madison Avenue Versus The Feminine Mystique: The Advertising Industry’s Response
to the Women’s Movement,” in Disco Divas: Women and Popular Culture in the 1970s, ed. Sherrie A. Inness
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 14.
192
Inness, “Strange Feverish Years,” 5.
193
Evans, “Beyond Declension,” 64.
194
Sagert, The 1970s, 64.
195
Ibid.
196
May, America and the Pill, 67.
54
Social consequence for either sex was not enough to slow down the demand for
contraception, by 1973 10 million American women were using the pill.197 The pill that
allowed women to take control of their lives and sexuality in the 60s continued its influence
in the subsequent decade. In America and the Pill, Elaine Tyler May argues that the use of
the pill in the late 60s and early 70s marked a dramatic change on society by increasing
sexual activity (before marriage), and encouraged the public to open up to discussions on
sex.198
Throughout the 1970s, the Supreme Court shifted its attention from abortion and the
pill to address charges of obscenity that seemed to be growing in number. With the Sexual
Revolution on the rise, advertisements, film, and art began to provide highly sexualized
products for public consumption. The standards by which these possible obscene productions
were judged originated in the 1973 case Miller v. California in which the Supreme Court
ruled on criminal charges brought up on mailing ads depicting men and women in groups
engaging in sex acts.199 Chief Justice Warren Burger ultimately decided to limit state
regulations of obscenity. He provided a definition for obscenity which included “works
which, taken as a whole, appeal to the prurient interest in sex, which portray sexual conduct
in a patently offensive way…” Burger added that these works would also have to provide
little or no scientific, political, artistic, or literary value in order to be charged with
obscenity.200 This definition changed the previous regulations that allowed states to restrict
works based on a broad definition of being “utterly without redeeming social value.” This
previous definition of obscenity left too much power in the hands of the state to strike down
any work that may have been considered even slightly offensive. Though Miller v. California
was unable to provide a black and white definition for obscenity, it did allow for specific
guidelines as to what a work needed in order to avoid the label of being “utterly without”
significance. This ruling at last left the power of judgment in the hands of the communities in
197
Ibid.
198
Ibid., 75.
199
Donald E. Lively and Russell L. Weaver, Contemporary Supreme Court Cases: Landmark Decisions
since Roe v. Wade, (Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2006), 82.
200
Ibid., 83.
55
which these works effected.201 Ultimately, Miller v. California paved the way for a larger
discourse of sexuality through film and art. This discourse led to an increase in risqué films
and pornography now that moviemakers were allowed to publicize images that would have
been too taboo to be released in previous decades.
In the late 1960s and early 70s the Sexual Revolution encouraged the courts to further
sexual freedom for the public with access to the pill and less regulations of obscenity.
However, mainstream America still considered the Sexual Revolution to be geared
exclusively towards heterosexuality, and homosexuality continued to be a distinctly
ostracized way of life. Despite the lack of public and political coverage, gay and lesbian
groups continued to thrive underground throughout the United States. In 1969, homosexual
anonymity reached a boiling point in America when police in Greenwich Village raided the
Stonewall Inn, a popular gay hangout. This incident was the catalyst for a series of riots and
protests for gay rights across that would greatly change the American social climate.202
After decades of marginalization, gay and lesbian groups influenced by previous Civil
Rights and war protests were ready to aggressively to mobilize for sexual equality.203 In his
chapter, “Fabulous Politics: Gay, Lesbian, and Queer Movements, 1969-1999,” Jeffery
Escoffier argues that these individuals represented a new generation of liberal gays that
provided a political meaning for “coming out.”204 Activists empowered groups of gays and
lesbians to make their sexual orientation public and ban together in order to gain political
recognition.
Political recognition however would only become available to homosexual groups if
the public were made aware of their widespread existence. Gays were not small groups of
outsiders waiting in the shadows, and it was time for mainstream America to acknowledge
their power. In An American Revolution: Gay Power, author, David Eisencach argues, “gay
rights activists in the 1960s and 1970s understood that only after the public saw that
201
Ibid.
202
Jeffrey Escoffier, “Fabulous Politics: Gay, Lesbian, and Queer Movements, 1969-1999,” in The World
the 60s Made: Politics and Culture in Recent America, ed. Van Gosse and Richard Moser (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 2003), 192.
203
Ibid.
204
Ibid.,193.
56
homosexuals were not threats to society could gay rights make any political and legal
progress.”205 Activists worked to break old stereotypes of closeted gays in past decades in
hopes of recreating a new image for homosexuality.206
By publicizing their sexuality homosexual protesters stood in stark contrast to their 50s and
60s counterparts who advocated for the secrecy of their sexual orientation.207 Soon after
Stonewall, the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) formed. Though it only lasted about two years, it
allowed for groups of gays and lesbians to band together and splinter off into sub groups,
“focused on specific goals, such as newspaper publication, cultural projects, [and]
transvestite support groups…”208 These groups and several others fueled the Gay Liberation
movement and forced popular culture to acknowledge aspects of gender and sexuality that
challenged heterosexual norms.
In 1980, Doctors Chris Gosselin and Glen Wilson published Sexual Variations: Fetishism,
Sadomasochism, and Transvestism. Their study centers on sexual research conducted
throughout the 1970s. Though the authors do not discuss transgenderism in length, they do
make special note that despite common misclassification, “…there seems to be little doubt
that transvestism and transsexualism are different entities and not merely different intensities
of the same desire to experience femaleness.”209 By acknowledging the difference in
language, actions, and desired results of transvestites versus transgendered individuals marks
a distinct understanding of sexual variation that was rare in decades prior. (It was not until
1979 that the term “transgender” became popular to the general public, ultimately replacing
the word transsexual).210 Gosselin and Wilson also challenged previous research on sexuality
claiming that “…[researchers] have tended to foster an assumption that people whose sexual
205
David Eisenbach, An American Revolution: Gay Power (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2006),
206
Ibid., viii.
207
Escoffier, “Fabulous Politics,” 193.
208
Ibid., 194.
vii.
209
Chris Gosselin and Glenn Wilson, Sexual Variations: Fetishism, Sadomasochism, and Transvestism,
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980), 64.
210
“Transgender,” Merriam-Webster Online, accessed October 11, 2012, http://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/transgender.
57
patterns do not conform to a rather ill-defined idea of the ‘conventional’ are automatically
people with problems.”211 Gosselin and Wilson’s arguments represent openness to sex and
gender diversity that developed in the 1970s. At last, conventional America was ready to
recognize the presence of sexual variation and gender diversity thrived on the underbelly of
American culture. The theories of sex and sexuality that Jorgensen preached to magazines
and radio stations in past decades finally gained a mainstream audience.
CHRISTINE’S STORY HITS THE BIG SCREEN
The changing social, sexual and political climate of the late 60s and early 70s created
the perfect storm for the release of The Christine Jorgensen Story.212 This full-length feature
film was released to major theaters across the country in 1970. In previous decades, this film
would not have been produced due to censorship codes. In the 50s and 60s, Americans were
not ready to face an unthinkable subject as transgenderism on the big screen.213 Though
obscenity charges were not fully revised in the courts until 1973, the 1970 film release of
Jorgensen’s story was a perfect time since her autobiography achieved its own popularity
with the public. With social revolutions peaking public curiosity for changing sex, audiences
were now ready to experience Jorgensen’s story as an R rated feature, and moviemakers
prepared to cash in on this opportunity.
Despite the fact that the movie posters look as if it could have been advertising a
comedy (see Figures 3 and 4), director Irving Rapper attempted to portray Jorgensen in a
sympathetic light. He really wanted the subject matter to be taken seriously, in order to
accurately portray Jorgensen’s transgendered plight. 214 However, with headlines such as
“Did the surgeon's knife make me a woman or a freak?” splashed across movie posters, it is
clear that the film would include highly sensationalized scenes, regardless of its original
intensions. Jorgensen herself assisted in writing the storyline, which is surprising because
211
Gosselin and Wilson, Sexual Variations, 7.
212
The Christine Jorgensen Story, dir. by Irving Rapper, (Century City: United Artists, 1970).
213
“The Christine Jorgensen Movie,” The Unknown Movies Page, accessed June 10, 2012,
http://www.badmovieplanet.com/unknownmovies/reviews/rev452.html.
214
Ibid.
58
Figure 3. The Christine Jorgensen Story, movie poster 1. Amazon. “The Christine
Jorgensen Story.” Accessed July 6, 2012. http://www.amazon.com/ChristineJorgenson-Story-Poster-Inches/dp/B004UP2LW6.
Figure 4. The Christine Jorgensen Story, movie poster 2. Source: Film Affinity. “The
Christine Jorgensen Story.” Accessed July 6, 2012. http://www.filmaffinity.com/en/
movieimage.php?imageId=194133031.
59
several major events in the film (such as cross dressing as a child) completely contradict her
autobiography.215 clear to the audience the strict gender roles for men and women in the 30s,
and 40s. By drawing a very clear gender line for Jorgensen’s parents, the audience is able to
relate to George’s internal anguish.
As the film continues it depicts the battles George faces as an adult. Working as a
commercial photographer, George is taunted by and aggressive model who refers to him as a
“fag.” George is almost pushed to suicide when his male boss alludes to his homosexuality
and attempts to molest him. The molestation scene is particularly interesting because George
is so disgusted by the idea that people thought of him as a homosexual. The director made
this scene a turning point in the film where Jorgensen finds the courage to research his
problem. Jorgensen herself never admitted to any molestation, but was very adamant
(especially in the 50s) that she did not have any sort of relationships with men before her sex
change.216 Since she did not want to be associated with homosexuality, the molestation scene
confirms Jorgensen’s real life disassociation with the topic.
Though the film was slightly controversial for its time, it received a favorable review
by the New York Times. The magazine published Roger Greenspun’s review of the film in
July 1970. Greenspun seemed to be quite enchanted with everything about the movie, from
its storyline to the characters themselves. He notes, “Here is a quiet, even dignified little
picture, handled professionally and tastefully, minus a touch of sensationalism.”217
Greenspun adds that John Hansen who played the role of Jorgensen acted with “absolute
sincerity and a soft effusiveness,” and refers to Jorgensen’s character as a “heroine.”
Greenspun, who clearly enjoyed the film, concludes his review with, “this is essentially a
decent film that says a bit and implies much about human courage, sensitivity, and plain
pluck.”218 Greenspun’s complimentary review provides credibility for not only Jorgensen’s
movie, but also her life itself. Instead of mocking ideas of changing sex and challenging
215
Jorgensen, Christine Jorgensen, 8.
216
Ibid., 21.
217
Roger Greenspun, “The Christine Jorgensen Story,” New York Times, July 25, 1970, accessed June 10,
2012, http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9E0CEEDB143EE336A05756C2A9619C946190D6CF.
218
Ibid.
60
gender norms, Greenspun embraces the film and recognizes the seriousness that the director
conveyed.
Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times also wrote a review on the film in June
1970. Thomas notes from the beginning that any “successful” film biography of Jorgensen
must accurately portray her “…harrowing quest for sexual identity [which] demands being
told with taste and compassion.” 219 As a whole, Thomas was unsure if the film lived up to
his standard. He mentions that there are many ways the film could have been “10 times
better,” but then adds that there were countless ways it could have turned out worse.220
Though Thomas is less enthusiastic about the film than Greenspun, he applauds the director
for casting a masculine man as Christine in order to “drive home visually the distinction
between transsexuals and homosexuals.”221 This distinction is important because the word
transsexual had a muddled definition in previous decades. By creating a distinct difference
between the categories, the film is able to educate audiences through verbal and visual
methods.
Thomas appreciates that the film, “defines clearly, what transsexualism is and deftly
strikes out at the backwardness of our attitudes toward sex and our antiquated concepts of
what masculinity and femininity consist of.”222 Despite the fact that it was 1970, Thomas still
felt that Americans viewed sex through a prehistoric lens. Overall, Thomas was disappointed
with the film’s lack of editing and mostly mediocre cast, but appreciated its ability to handle
Jorgensen’s story with seriousness and respect.
MASS MEDIA PUBLISHING ON SEXUAL VARIATION AFTER
JORGENSEN FILM
After the release of “The Christine Jorgensen Movie,” sexual variation continued to
be a hot topic for many Americans. In October 1970, People magazine briefly reported
Jorgensen’s reaction to a joke made by current Vice President Spiro Agnew. He remarked
219
Kevin Thomas, “Christine Story in Film,” Los Angeles Times, June 1970.
220
Ibid.
221
Ibid.
222
Ibid.
61
that Senator Charles Goodell was the, “Christine Jorgensen of the Republican Party.”223
Spiro’s comment not only publically questioned Goodell’s political alliances but also his
masculinity.224 Since Jorgensen’s movie released earlier that same year, her story was likely
to be on pop culture’s radar, even for politicians. People, however, reported that Jorgensen
“nevertheless did her best to be ladylike,” in her response to the crude joke. The magazine
later described her as “the blond pioneer of sex-switchery.”225 In these descriptions of
Jorgensen, the article appears to have a sympathetic tone. Instead of feeding into the Vice
President’s joke, People commented on the gracefulness of her response. This simple shift in
tone and language is a trend that marks many mass media publications throughout the 70s.
The Los Angeles Times also weighed in on the Agnew scandal in 1970. Jorgensen
publically asked the politician to apologize for his remark noting that it was “’rather
degrading to what I’ve represented for 20 years, which is a medical problem.’”226 In her
outrage over the comment, Jorgensen asserted herself as a sex change pioneer, a label she
shied away from in previous decades. In the same interview, Jorgensen plainly calls out the
senator stating, “’A gentlemen would apologize.’”227 Her disappointment is clear in the
quotes throughout the article. She later admits that playing on gender is “’old comedy
material’” but it becomes “’tasteless’” when dirty politics are involved. Jorgensen was able to
roll with the punches with most of the jokes about her sex change, but decided to put her foot
down when politicians were involved. This Times article provides a sympathetic forum for
Jorgensen to defend her name to the public.
As the Sexual Revolution and Gay Liberation Movements pressed on, articles
focusing on serious transgender stories began to emerge. These articles demonstrated a sense
of cultural understanding that was lacking in previous decades. For example, the 1972 news
article, “Austin Becomes Deborah; a New Sex and a New Life,” marked the triumph of
223
“People: October 26, 1970,” Time, October 26, 1970, accessed August 18, 2012,
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,904407,00.html#ixzz1RMcHUdRh.
224
Garber, Vested Interests, 73.
225
Ibid.
226
Paul Houston, “Christine Jorgensen Brands Agnew’s Remark Degrading,” Los Angeles Times, October
1970, 1.
227
Ibid.
62
Deborah Hartin, a transgender female.228 Hartin underwent sexual reassignment surgery and
was granted both a name change and decree of divorce by a Supreme Court Justice. The
authors noted that Hartin was “made a woman out of a man,” both medically and legally.229
As seen in previous decades, the authors exaggerate Hartin’s femininity by including a
physical description of her “slim figure” and “black miniskirt.”230 What makes this article
different from previous decades is the neutral language, and use of “she” when referring to
Hartin after her legal name change. If this article was published in the previous decade, it is
likely that the authors would have mocked the legal success and intermittently used “he” or
“she” for Hartin.
In the 60s and 70s, San Francisco grew as a hub for homosexuality and sexual
variation. It is no surprise that an article promoting transgender issues would emerge from
this city. However, in 1974, the San Francisco Sunday Examiner, the cities’ major daily
newspaper published Susan Berman’s, “The Ultimate Sexual Conflict,” a comprehensive
look into transgender life. Within the first paragraph, Berman provides definition for
transsexuals as, “…born with their sex (physical characteristics) and gender (state of mind) in
conflict.” 231 She notes that previous attempts to match the mind and body with drugs or
psychotherapy failed, leaving the only hope to medical intervention.232 Berman interviews
different transgender individuals after their surgeries. Their lives greatly improved once they
were able to move forward in a new body. Scott, a transgender man claimed, “I was reborn
the day I had surgery. It was like remodeling your house so at last you could live in it.”233
The Sunday Examiner article is pivotal for the progression in understanding mass
media reactions to changing sex for several reasons. First, the fact that the Examiner is one of
the top newspapers in the city reveals that the audience for this particular audience is large in
scope. Therefore hundreds of thousands of San Francisco residents would have access to this
228
Albelli and Abelman. “Austin Becomes Deborah,” 1.
229
Ibid.
230
Ibid.
231
Susan Berman, “The Ultimate Sexual Conflict,” San Francisco Examiner, May 12, 1974, 1.
232
Ibid.
233
Ibid.
63
article. In addition, smaller newspapers in surrounding cities that sometimes borrow stories
from larger publications. Second, the informative nature of this article is different from other
reports on transgenderism. Though Jorgensen’s American Weekly articles were just as
mainstream in the 1950s, those tended to focus on her time in the army, and fashion sense.
Berman’s article seeks to inform the everyday American about transgenderism, and even
provides examples of individuals who changed their sex and live ‘normal’ lives.234
This article also works to dispel any rumors or inaccurate judgments placed on
transgenderism. For example, Berman’s argument that the transsexual problem is one to be
solved my medical intervention instead of psychiatric care allows readers to see transgender
individuals as real people instead of mental patients. Berman also notes that transgenderism
is not a result of childhood trauma, nor is it contagious. Of his children, Scott, a transgender
male, remarks “None of the children (two are now adults and have married) have expressed
any confusion over their own sexuality.”235
Lastly, Berman’s article further educates the public on the rigorous psychological
counseling, hormone treatments, and cross dressing that is required if a transgender person
hopes to have a sex change operation through Stanford medical.236 Though many of the
sensationalist publications written on transgender issues lead readers to the assumption that
anyone can wake up in the morning and chose to have a sex change this is simply not the
case. The progressive nature of Berman’s article was only possible due to the vast social
changes of the decade. Inness argues that American society had to come to terms with
cultural and social shifts that forced them to renegotiate changing gender roles.237 Berman
notes that it was twenty-three years after Jorgensen’s sex change that San Francisco became a
center for transsexuals.238 Ironically, the language and information that seems so progressive
in Berman’s article is the same message Jorgensen attempted to send to American audiences
since the mid 1950s.
234
Ibid.
235
Ibid.
236
Ibid.
237
Inness, “Strange Feverish Years,” 3.
238
Berman, “The Ultimate Sexual Conflict,” 2.
64
SENSATIONALIST MEDIA PERSISTS
In spite of the many social and political progressions of the 1970s, certain
publications continued to mock ideas of challenging sex and gender norms. Midnight
magazine remained consistent with its sensationalized language in the 1971 article, “Man
Wears Skirts Only—He Hates Pants.”239 The article is a light hearted as the author explains
the gender bending of a fifty-year-old Englishmen Frank Williamson who recently gave up
on wearing trousers for the comfort of long skirts. He argues, “…if women are going to be
equal with men, we should have some of their advantages too. And I like the freedom of a
skirt.”240 The author notes that his new choice in clothing affected both his working and
personal relationships by embarrassing a client’s husband, and his own girlfriend.
Williamson is left with only with acceptance from his five cats as he continued to refuse to
wear trousers.241
Though Midnight does not directly comment on Williamson’s sexuality, the article
alludes to the fact that any lack of masculinity (even in the form of dressing) could lead an
individual to lose their professional and personal integrity. Since he is English and not
American, readers of Midnight possibility had an easier time poking fun at a feminized man
left alone with cats (not dogs because a dog is man’s best friend). Though this article seems
lighthearted, it could be read as a warning for the negative effects of challenging gender
norms.
A California newspaper in 1972 published a farfetched article on changing sex titled,
“Divorced Father of Nine Undergoes Sex Change—So He Can Be a Mother to His
Children!”242 The author details the story of German father, Kurt Heinrich, who simply
decides to have a sex change in order to mother his nine children after his wife abandons the
family. Similar to Jorgensen, Heinrich seeks a Danish sex change specialist in order to
239
“Man Wears Skirts Only—He Hates Pants.” Midnight, February 8, 1971, 12.
240
Ibid.
241
Ibid.
242
“Divorced Father of Nine Undergoes Sex Change—So He Can Be a Mother to His Children!” 1972,
Virginia Price Papers, Special Collections and Archives, California State University Northridge Oviatt Library,
1.
65
complete the process. The article reports that after six months of surgery and rehabilitation
both Heinrich and his children were happy with the change.243 Though the newspaper that
published this article is unknown, the sentiment in the article should not be ignored.
Heinrich’s story directly undermines the seriousness of transgenderism by reporting
how easily an individual could decide to switch their sex and receive an operation. The
author alludes to the fact that countries outside of the U.S. are almost eager to accept sex
changes no matter how unrealistic the circumstance may be. Though the happiness of
Heinrich and his nine children is impossible to measure, one could assume that if a father left
his children for six months only to return to them as their mother, both parties would have
other feelings besides immediate happiness.
In 1976, Jorgensen celebrated her fiftieth birthday. To acknowledge this special
occasion, People magazine published, “At 50, Christine Jorgensen Still Enjoys Being a
Girl.”244 While it is unlikely that People magazine was blatantly attempting to undermine the
seriousness of changing sex, the language in this article lacked the progressive feel that
earlier publications achieved. For example, the title of the article itself is a bit questionable.
The notion of Jorgensen “still” enjoying her time as a “girl” discredits her transgender
identity. The author is clearly making play on words since Jorgensen recorded a song titled “I
enjoy being a girl” that was released in 1958.245 However, the song reference also alludes
that Jorgensen was simply playing dress up her entire life, and at fifty still embraces the
charade. People magazine could have taken a more progressive approach in titling its article
but chose to play on words instead. This article shows that some popular culture publications
continued to lack an understanding or sensitivity to changing sex even during the second half
of the decade.
As America approached the end of the 1970s, Jorgensen’s career began to dry up.
She attempted a revival of her nightclub act that earned her big numbers in the 60s, but she
was unable to reach the same level of success. A decade later, Jorgensen’s celebrity was less
243
Ibid.
244
“At 50, Christine Jorgensen Still Enjoys Being a Girl,” People, May 3, 1976, accessed October 12,
2012, http://www.christinejorgensen.org/ReadPubs/People1/People1P1.html.
245
Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed, 282.
66
in demand and so were her bookings. In order to supplement her income, Jorgensen planned
to rerelease her film, publish a candid version of her autobiography, and create a
Scandinavian cookbook. 246 She even posed for partially nude photos to send to Playboy.247
Though most of these projects ever came to fruition for Christine, she continued to keep her
career alive in the early 80s by videotaping interviews and lecturing on college campuses.248
As a whole, the 1970s proved to be a decade full of social and political progress for
groups of Americans that had previously lived life on the backburner of society. Feminist and
gay rights activists worked to push the envelope on gender and sexuality. These groups and
others challenged ideas of normality in popular culture. For Jorgensen, these challenges
allowed for her story and celebrity to reach new heights as Americans watched her life
unfold on the big screen. Though not every media outlet reacted favorably to Jorgensen and
ideas of changing sex. Politicians and other media outlets continued to make light of
changing sex and gender. On the other hand, doctors and scientists worked to create a new
language for transgenderism. Furthering the publics understanding of sexual variation. It is
within the decade of the 70s that progress towards social and sexual revolution can truly be
seen.
Though transgender individuals did not find clear acceptance in mainstream America
during this time, the 1970s proved to be the decade to produce proper definitions and
identities for transgenderism. Doctors created the term Gender Dysphoria Syndrome (later
redefined as Gender Identity Disorder) to help classify transgenderism early on in the decade.
Since medical professionals backed this terminology, it provided credibility for the
transgender movement, and encouraged doctors to take on more trans patients. In 1975,
doctors on an international level joined to form a committee to produce a strategy to serve as
medical standards for the diagnosis and treatment of transsexual individuals.249 A few years
later, American doctors formed the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria
246
Ibid.
247
Jorgensen, Christine Jorgensen, xi.
248
Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed, 282.
249
Ibid., 254.
67
Association, a professional organization that supported sexual reassignment surgery.250
Though it was first published in medical journals over a decade before, it was not until 1979
that the term “transgender” made its way to the general public.
Without Jorgensen’s public attention, social advances in the 1970s for transgenderism
would have been much slower if they had even happened within the decade. Although the
mass media never fully embraced Jorgensen’s identity, America was ready to legitimize the
existence of transgender individuals. This progression is seen not only through the release of
The Christine Jorgensen Story but also in court rulings, medical publications, and an overall
increase in serious media coverage of changing sex. The 1970s proved to be more than just
sex drugs and rock music. It was a time in American popular culture when social revolutions
touched almost every race, class, and gender. It is within these conditions that transgenderism
began to find a place of legitimacy in mainstream America. Though Christine Jorgensen’s
star faded in the 1970s, her celebrity paved the way for public discourse on sexual biology
and gender that ultimately founded the modern day transgender movement.
250
Ibid., 8.
68
CHAPTER 5
CONCLUSION: REMEMBERING CHRISTINE
In 1984, Christine Jorgensen wrote to her friend Dr. Hamburger “We didn’t start the
Sexual Revolution, but I think we gave it a good kick in the pants.”251 Thirty years after
shocking Cold War America with her sex change operation, she reflected on the impact of
her life and the work of her progressive doctor. She became a pioneer in the history of
sexuality by simply being herself, “I did my own thing, in a period when people were not
doing their own thing.”252 Though her life was not by any means easy, she always maintained
a positive outlook. In a 1980s interview with Hour Magazine Jorgensen spoke fondly of her
years, “What a life I’ve had! If I died tomorrow, life wouldn’t owe me a thing.”253
In September 1988, the Los Angeles Times published an article that discussed
Jorgensen’s battle, with cancer. The author, Richard Beene opened the article by
acknowledging the difficult journey of Jorgensen’s celebrity: “Christine Jorgensen has
evolved from being an object of ridicule to a respected advocate of sexual tolerance.”254
Though she may have been subject to ridicule in the media, Jorgensen was very satisfied with
life, despite the cancer diagnosis. She found strength in herself with laughter and a positive
attitude towards life. These strengths seem to be the driving forces that helped her face the
hostility of the media glare when she first stepped into the limelight. Now, over three decades
later, Jorgensen continued to love who she was and the life she created. Beene noted that
there were many dreams Jorgensen still wanted to fulfill, including a guest-starring role on
251
“Christine Jorgensen in Denmark 1,” last modified August 11, 2009,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Kf-dP8iSqQ.
252
“Christine Jorgensen- Hour Magazine,” last modified July 26, 2010,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDlGUeF1Bg0.
253
254
Ibid.
Richard Beene, “Christine Jorgensen is Fighting a New Battle,” Los Angeles Times, September 3, 1988,
accessed March 20, 2012, http://articles.latimes.com/1988-09-03/local/me-3079_1_christine-jorgensen.
69
Murder, She Wrote. Jorgensen added, “I could be the murderess or the corpse!”255 This
article is important for Jorgensen’s celebrity because it acknowledges both her struggle with
media ridicule and her success as an influential figure in the sexual revolution. For a woman
who was always ahead of her time, it is ironic that in her final years, the media finally
validated the progress she made for publicizing sexual variation.
For better or worse, Jorgensen embraced her time in the public eye up until her death.
As she aged, Jorgensen remarked, “Let’s hope I die on a slow news day.”256 After battling
lung and bladder cancer for two years, Christine Jorgensen died on May 3rd, 1989.257 Several
magazines and newspapers published obituaries, outlining her unusual rise to fame. The New
York Times published a very dry obituary listing facts and dates about Jorgensen, concluding
with her surviving family members. Other publications noted that she had sadness in her life,
something that Jorgensen would have likely disagreed with.258 Throughout her life,
Jorgensen maintained that she was happy with her choices and was always true to herself.259
Christine Jorgensen’s story laid the groundwork for the larger transgender movements
that are visible today. In the early 1990s, transgender groups started their own liberation
movements.260 Though this was after Jorgensen’s death, she is recognized as a pioneer for
sexual variation. Transgenderism continues to be redefined in the modern world as it gains
public visibility. It is estimated that over 700,000 Americans identify as transgender.261
Though this is a large number, most Americans still lack a proper understanding what
transgender actually means. Trans individuals are commonly targets of violence and even
murder.262 However, transgender groups continue to become more powerful in politics and
255
Ibid.
256
Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed, 282.
257
Ibid.
258
Ibid.
259
Beene, “Christine Jorgensen Is Fighting a New Battle.”
260
Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed, 12.
261
Katy Steinmetz, “Being Trans is Still Widely Misunderstood,” New York Times, November 18, 2011,
accessed August 19, 2012, http://healthland.time.com/2011/11/18/being-transgender-is-still-widelymisunderstood/.
262
Ibid.
70
business. In a 2011 discrimination case, a federal court ruled in favor of Elizabeth Glenn (a
trans woman) who was fired from her state job in Georgia. In addition, recent studies have
reported that a growing number of American companies are offering coverage for gender
reassignment surgery for employees.263 With support from businesses and the federal
government, transgender Americans have the possibility to take their movement mainstream.
While transgender liberation is a concept that would not have been possible during
Christine Jorgensen’s lifetime, her celebrity laid the groundwork and provided a vocabulary
for the movement. Though her journey throughout the Cold War and social revolutions was
not an easy one, Jorgensen managed to leave her mark on history by simply being herself. In
the 1950s, Jorgensen faced much scrutiny when she first appeared on the media radar.
Considering this was during the height of Cold War conservatism, it seemed improbable that
she could reach such popularity in the mass media. Christine Jorgensen became a household
name, and mainstream Americans were introduced to concepts of changing biological sex
and gender. Sensationalist media jumped at the chance to expose Jorgensen as a man, while
other magazines hailed her as a classic bombshell.
Media reactions continued to muddle in the 1960s as the Sexual Revolution and
Women’s Rights Movements began to shape in light of the Cold War backdrop. Topics of
sex and sexuality that had previously been taboo were now influencing the personal lives and
media outlets of mainstream America. Jorgensen remained in the public eye and her celebrity
inspired a legion of articles focusing on sexual variation. Though there was an increase in
media coverage on changing sex, Jorgensen and other trans individuals struggled to be taken
seriously in the media. The Sexual Revolution in the mass media focused mainly on
heterosexuality, leaving little room for legitimacy in variation. Many articles on trans people
were sensationalized, as transgender bodies were simultaneously over sexualized and
criticized throughout the decade.
As the social revolutions from the 60s blossomed into the 1970s, public discourse on
sexuality and sexual variation increased. Federal courts restricted the power of harsh
263
Adam Cohen, “Transgender People: The Next Frontier in Civil Rights,” New York Times, December
12, 2011, accessed August 18, 2012, http://ideas.time.com/2011/12/12/transgender-the-next-frontier-in-humanrights/#ixzz23kX96dIZ.
71
censorship laws, allowing for a wider array of topics that could be discussed in television and
film. Contraception options offered women their own freedom while the gay rights
movement gained popularity. These revolutions allowed for more tolerance in the media
towards Jorgensen and others who represented sexual variation. This understanding is seen in
several media publications and the release of The Christine Jorgensen Story. Though
Jorgensen did not receive full acceptance in the 70s, it is within this decade that the mass
media was receptive enough to somewhat legitimize transgenderism.
Christine Jorgensen was a pioneer for transgenderism and continues to be an
influential spokesperson for gender nonconformity even after her death. Publications
reporting on Jorgensen voiced the confused and at times bewildered state of the American
public as they learned that with modern technology biological sex could be altered. Jorgensen
challenged the very core of Cold War American society by redefining sex and gender. This
notion of course came as a great shock for some, and an inspiration to others. Naturally, these
revelations and challenges to social norms resulted in ambivalent responses from media
publications. This struggle to classify Jorgensen as an authentic female forced some living in
postwar America to reevaluate the highly prescribed ideals for men and women.
In a time when sexual variation was viewed as a threat to national security, Jorgensen
found stardom. She was a living contradiction to Cold War social ideals, yet, managed to
make a lasting impression on the American social landscape. Jorgensen’s celebrity took her
through over three decades of social and political unrest in the United States. Though the
public and mass media incessantly struggled to understand this blonde beauty, Christine
Jorgensen remained comfortable in the body she created, always knowing the woman she
truly was.
72
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