Media Clearly Making Strides with "Transparent"

While watching the Golden Globes on Sunday, I was pleasantly surprised to see so many meaningful awards given out. For the first time in history, Golden Globe was awarded to a show with a leading transgender character. Amazon's Transparent ended up winning for both Best Comedy Series as well as Best Actor (Jeffrey Tambor). Now that Transparent has gained public attention and praise, more people are likely to check out the show. After all, 19 million people watched the Globes. It is almost guaranteed that at least some of those people will want to watch Transparent now that it "must be good".

Jeffrey Tambor winning Golden Globe for Transparent

If more people watch Transparent, Amazon's streaming service will also gain an influx of new viewers. Amazon now has its own Orange is the New Black, a popular show which also includes a transgender character. I hope Transparent isn't just Amazon's token show. Instead, with any luck, it might motivate more writers/directors to take risks with shows and not just to write a slight variation on the classic cop show.

Hopefully, Transparent will also inspire people to become more accepting of the transgender community. If the Hollywood foreign press can accept transgender people, why can't everyone? Leelah Alcorn, a 17-year old transgender girl, committed suicide on December 28 since her parents refused to accept her true identity. We need to prevent an incident like this from happening again. People don't have to understand, they just have to accept. After all, my cousins' father is transgender, and he only admitted his true identity years after getting married and having children. It is a concept that everyone in my family struggles to comprehend, especially my aunt and cousins. Nevertheless, they have chosen to be accepting simply because it's the right thing to do.