"A Costume Worn By a Performer"
Music creative Kid Cudi appeared on Saturday Night Live this month and had social media buzzing over his choice to wear a three-quarter length, floral, Off-White dress. He performed his song “Sad People” to commemorate the 27th anniversary of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain’s death on April 5, 1994, who had worn a similar dress on the cover of The Face Magazine in 1993.
Kid Cudi’s April 10 Saturday Night Live performance. Photo taken from a YouTube video of the performance.
While Cudi received largely positive feedback for his performance and inclusion of gender non-conforming fashion, members of the LGBTQ+ community pointed out a double standard. Hundreds responded online that trans people often face violence and bullying for wearing similar clothing, and although cisgender straight men embracing femininity through fashion is a great thing, it does not fully mitigate the cruelty queer folks face when wearing similar clothes.
On Instagram, model and trans activist Munroe Bergdorf responded to Cudi’s performance, saying “we can celebrate everyone's expression and creativity, but we need to bear in mind that where some are applauded, others are literally being heckled and scared to leave the house because of transphobic and homophobic violence.”
In the comments a follower wrote “it feels insulting that cis hetro men get praised for what trans people get bullied and killed for. For them it’s a trend, a costume … for trans people it’s life and death.” Sadly, so far this year, 15 transgender or gender non-conforming people have been fatally shot or killed by other violent means according to the Human Rights Campaign. This is a 333% increase from 2020 when three transgender people were killed.
Eden Loweth, who identifies by they/them pronouns and is the creative director of unisex fashion label Art School, also made remarks calling out Cudi’s performance. Loweth shared that Cudi “will manage to circumvent the day-to-day dangers that most people like myself would face when we wear a similar thing on the street.” Loweth added that Cudi’s wearing of a dress lacked the deeper political context needed during this time of unprecedented trans violence. “I really [didn’t] see it as a moment of allyship,” they said. “I don’t even see it as brave. It’s a costume worn by a performer.”
Dr. Kit Heyam, a queer and trans academic and activist from England, said he felt disappointed with what Kid Cudi did with his platform. “I do feel frustrated that Cudi chose to not acknowledge that the stakes for him, as a cis man wearing a dress, are so much lower than they are for trans women and trans femmes,” he said.
Heyam added: “While I wish we lived in a world where cis men and everyone could just wear dresses incidentally – without it being freighted with political significance, without it creating a huge political platform for them, and without them having a responsibility to talk about transmisogynistic violence when they do so – I’m not sure we’re there yet.”
Mitigating violence against trans people is essential to move forward as an equal and equitable society, but doing so cannot be done politically; there must be a humanized approach to having conversations about the spiraling violence against trans people, and the inequalities trans people face in all aspects of life.