ABSTRACT
In 2014, an influential Time magazine cover story declared the arrival of ‘the transgender tipping point’, a moment in which the rights and representation of trans people had seemingly taken up a permanent and highly visible presence in American cultural and political life. As a number of theorists have argued, and the visibility of the Kardashians demonstrates, reality television is critical to the production of celebrity culture, and celebrity culture, in turn, pervades contemporary media to a hitherto unseen degree. While by no means an exhaustive catalogue, it is worth noting some of Transparent’s plot twists and character arcs in order to capture some of the discursive messiness the series deploys. The emergence of Transparent and I Am Cait at a similar historical moment is certainly, in the context of trans representation on television, extraordinary. Alongside the high-profile media presence of people it suggests that the emergence of a ‘tipping point’ seems, at least, a welcome possibility.
