My Trixie Mattel Affinity
Trixie Mattel (Brian Firkus) is a drag queen, YouTube star, and independent make-up mogul (Trixie Cosmetics). I first became aware of Trixie Mattel when she was a contestant on RuPaul’s Drag Race season seven. Ultimately, that was not her real rise to fame. Mattel then starred in a World of Wonder YouTube series UNHhhh. She and Katya Zamolodchikova(a fellow RuPaul's drag race contestant) irreverently riff on random topics for twenty minutes. During COVID-19, Mattel then launched a solo YouTube channel in which she plays with make-up, makes cookies in easy bake ovens, and tells us about her doll collections, to name a few subjects. I find Mattel hilariously funny — multiple quotes send me into roll-on-the-floor laughter — but that’s not the reason I have such affinity for the All-Stars 3 winner. I see Mattel as a successful gay man that I did not get to see growing up. She truly does it all.
Social categorization theory states that the more important a particular category is to an individual, the greater their affinity towards the category. Further, the higher one identifies with a particular group, the greater the chance that the group will be reflected in one’s television choices and other related effects. (Dixon, 2019, p. 249)
Like Trixie Mattel, I am a gay man and around her age. As noted above, I am a big fan of Mattel — I plan to get tickets to her live shows when she tours again. But past that, I seek out Trixie Mattel every time I am browsing television in the evening. I finish studying, sit on the couch, and first check YouTube for any content with Trixie (and Katya) before deciding what to watch. That’s how I’ve begun to prioritize my viewing habits. Trixie has so much content out there. She has her own YouTube channel, stars in shows on World of Wonder’s and Netflix’s channels, and makes her own music. And I want it all. Mattel’s success as a gay millennial has grown my fandom to new heights.
On the other hand, I avoid many serious dramas that include a gay male representation. In recent years, there has been a trend in television towards the 80s. For gay men in particular, the 80's represents a dire time in which the HIV/AIDS epidemic decimated our community. Those two corollaries push me to avoid such dramas. It’s not that I want to avoid talking about such a historic failure of our society, but it’s that I don’t want to have an innate association of my identity and deadly disease. I know for a fact many people believe HIV is a “gay disease.” I don’t wish to think of gay men that way.
Social categorization theory adds that when ingroup members have bad outcomes in television selections than outgroup members, we may avoid them or explain why it is unimportant. There is strong evidence this is what I am doing with my television choices. Especially when television drama writing becomes so predictable, it is much easier for me to know what content to avoid. If I see a gay character in serious media, I immediately think they will be promiscuous, chaotic, and eventually die. In reality, gay men live much more fruitful lives than the media would have you believe.
Though LGBTQ+ media representation is at an all-time high, the “bury your gays” trope persists. Critics started to notice that LGBTQ+ characters faced death more often than their straight counterparts. (Dibdin) What is worse is that this happens after a moment of great happiness or a sexual encounter. This is teaching us that whenever anything positive happens to queer characters, they will die. That’s a gross misrepresentation of our lives.
It’s easy to see that I prefer to watch positive portrayals of my own identity over negative examples. As I said, it’s not an inability to criticize the LGBTQ+ community, but the media’s oversaturation of negative storylines for LGBTQ+ characters is unrepresentative. Imagine the majority of characters you related with were killed off. You would start to wish you were someone else. I’m in a phase of my life where I’m proud of who I am and what I’ve accomplished. I want to be a Mattel — a role model for other young gay boys. I hope the media will catch up and frame those characters in a more representative light.
Dibdin, E. (2017, August 9). TV Writers Need to Stop Killing Off Their Gay Characters. MarieClaire. https://www.marieclaire.com/culture/news/a28685/gay-lesbian-character-deaths-tv/
Dixon, T. L. (2019). Media Stereotypes Content, Effects, and Theory. https://missouri.instructure.com/courses/50790/files/8676049?module_item_id=2540285