As a child I often found myself watching cartoons and wondering “couldn’t this episode be a little more gender-neutral? Just because he’s He-Man doesn’t mean he has the right to force this outdated, toxic notion of masculinity into my pert, moist, ocular cavities.”
Just kidding. All I was really concerned with at the time was where my next box of Legos were coming from. But Australia knows better. Deep inside I was clearly (though unconsciously and inaudibly) yelling for a hero to smash through the gender barriers that were keeping me more concerned about Ninja Turtles than the makeup and pearls I probably unknowingly craved.
Well, thank goodness for ABC (the Australian one) having the balls to cut off their own balls and finally present a hero(ine) for the Aquarian age, Shezow!
At last that estimated 0.3% of the population (I was too lazy to hunt down the real numbers) will finally have a brave champion to rally round in 52 internationally syndicated episodes, as creator of Shezow, Obie Scott Wade, let’s us know in this post on a fetish forum.
Those of the sloped-brow and the gender-insensitives will bristle at the show’s agenda-less message of good will, but they should have expected no less from a country whose courts have been at the forefront of deconstructing the social construct of gender and reconstructing aesthetically pleasing (though completely nonoperational) genitals in their wake. Recent successes include a ten-year-old who’ll never have to know the shame of having a hard pee-pee (or even if it’s at all enjoyable) and a thirteen-year-old whose puberty will have to take a back seat until she’s ready to deal with it on her own terms.
So for those parental units and guardians out there troubled by the way little Bobby seems to prefer catching rather than pitching in his Little League games, at long last you’ll have a cartoon that does the talking for you. Letting your little (lady)boy know that sticking it out with the boring genitals that a cruel and possibly nonexistent God forced upon him without asking is no longer the only option. There’s a support system that’s just tickled pink to listen to him talk about herself for hours on end, whole teams of experts and physicians ready to pay attention to every body image problem a normally untroubled tween/teen has, and of course the eager lenses and microphones of the altruistic media standing by to capture every brave hormone injection and heroic surgery with bated breath and sweaty palms.
There’s a new way to be a hero, and it’s as easy as trying on a magical ring like Shezow: All you have to do is focus on making yourself feel “right” even if the “right” in your mind is a “right” you’ve never actually experienced. You can be a hero to a new generation by retelling your selfless efforts to reshape yourself on behalf of your hidden self again and again.
And again and again.
Until we all know what kind of reproductive organs you have, what you’ve done to them, and we learn to constantly applaud you for them.
—LAIR
As a gay pre-op christian male lesbian pseudo queer fifth degree black belt, this makes a lot of sense.
so well written. no, seriously, you are a good writer and the article reflected what the creator must have intended.