BLONDE BRILLIANCE FULL
By the time I discovered Legally Blonde, I had perfected a convincing-enough semblance of cisheteronormativity, knowing full well the fabulosity I was holding in. As early as four, I exhibited queer and gender-nonconfirming behaviour that was not only unaccepted but punished. “As early as four, I exhibited queer and gender-nonconfirming behaviour that was not only unaccepted but punished.”Īs a young Black child assigned male at birth, there were set expectations for how I was supposed to show up and move through the world. To see her sorority girl knowledge of perm maintenance used as a way to vindicate her client, proving that one’s looks and interests didn’t automatically correlate to their intellect and that one’s beauty and passion for fashion didn’t have to suffer for a job, was deeply affirming. After rejecting her signature colour for more somber and respectable (yet still fashionable!) duds earlier in the film, she reemerges as her most authentic self, bringing all of its fabulousness into a room in which she was once told it could never exist. Never mind the absurdity of the plot, I was mesmerized by Elle’s outfit: a deep pink, above-the-knee frock with matching heels and bag. Having almost quit the night before because she was sexually harassed by the lead attorney (her boss), their client replaces the lead attorney with Elle, a first-year law student. Then Elle tipped into the courtroom in one of the film’s penultimate scenes. And though my media consumption up to that point featured people and characters with various jobs, very few of them seemed right for me. Hungering for legit possibility models in media, especially those who reflected the essence of the non-binary bad bitch that was brewing in my spirit, I took what I consumed perhaps too seriously. By this time, perhaps five years after its initial release, I was feverishly considering what I wanted to study in college. But I do remember an early viewing of the original.
BLONDE BRILLIANCE MOVIE
I’m fairly sure I did not see it, or its 2003 sequel, in a movie theatre, instead likely stumbling upon them while watching cable television. I was 10 years old when Legally Blonde came out. And like that meme where Spider-Man is pointing at a version of himself, I was yet again confronted with the film’s excellence as a living, breathing manifestation of it. One day, while rationalizing to someone my love of these films, and in particular Legally Blonde (this process was so commonplace for me I had a script of sorts), I was reminded of the film’s protagonist Elle Woods and her struggle to be taken seriously by the less fabulous, more basic folks around her. If I really wanted to fuck the question-asker up, I’d open my box of alabaster: The Blues Brothers and Blues Brothers 2000 Miss Congeniality and Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous and Legally Blonde and Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde. When my answer received a confused face-which was often-I’d add Dreamgirls, The Great Debaters, Sister Act and Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit to the list. “ B.A.P.S.,” I’d say with my whole chest, referencing Robert Townsend’s iconic ’90s comedy starring a pre- Monster’s Ball Halle Berry and the amazing, late Natalie Desselle-Reid. “I grew up on Tyler Perry plays and Disney Channel Original Movies, so my favourite films were absolutely not going to be chock-full of white men.”
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