![]() ![]() Mistress Harley is no stranger to this sort of hostility. On the occasion that they let her speak, Harley will defend her work unemotionally - a stark contrast to the dramatics of The Doctors' firing squad. Penney catalog, nodding her head with a defiant smirk. For the majority of the segment, she'll sit, surrounded by a studio audience that looks plucked from a J.C. The panel of four health-care professionals will spend the better part of 10 minutes hurling accusations, pointed questions and mock compliments Harley's way. The segment begins with one of those nauseating quick-cut videos expertly exaggerating every aspect of Harley's work in an attempt to alert the audience that something sinister is just around the corner. ![]() During a taping of the Oprah-approved daytime talk show, in which she was accused of taking advantage of the poor and mentally unstable, she wore a flowy, high collared pirate's top, reminiscent of Seinfeld's iconic "puffy shirt." Her face tats have been covered in stage makeup, but her signature glossy lips and flaming-red hair are a beacon of eccentricity in a sea of uniformity. With her now-pink claws freshly coated, she looks nothing like the woman who appeared on The Doctors early that morning. NSFW Warning: This story may contain links to and descriptions or images of explicit sexual acts. An assortment of colorful, outsize tattoos runs the length of her seemingly infinite limbs. She wears platform boots to accentuate her already-imposing frame. Her unnaturally plump lips are so glossy and brightly colored they almost look lacquered. A shock of magenta hair frames the constellation of stars tattooed across her left temple. Today, the 6-foot-tall Silicon Valley expatriate is dressed in a leatherlike jumpsuit so short and low-cut that it feels like a mere suggestion of clothing. "They are teachers and leaders, though unwittingly, of a revolution in the search for identity.It's a mild but muggy September day in Beverly Hills, California, when Harley and I meet at her new neighborhood nail salon. They confront the issues that most of us keep hidden, but as time passes, their struggles will lead many of us to greater freedom in expressing ourselves," Allen said. "Gender variant people question gender roles not merely with their minds but with their lives. Her next book on the subject, Transcendents: Spirit Mediums in Burma and Thailand, comes out this fall. A photography book about that time, called TransCuba, followed in 2014.Īnd she continues to seek out marginalized trans communities around the world. "I was extremely fortunate to be able to travel to Cuba, and be welcomed by transgender women, most of whom are HIV positive street workers," she said. In 2005, The Gender Frontier won the Lambda Literary Award for best Transgender/GenderQueer book and Allen became unofficially known as the official photographer of the transgendered.Īfter The Gender Frontier, Allen decided it was time to look outside the U.S. Her next book, The Gender Frontier, published in 2003, captured this ripe moment in the history of LGBT rights - the evolution of political activism, the growing number of trans youth, as well as the protests and backlash. The 1990s marked the beginning of a new era for gender variant people and Allen was there to document the growing political movement. "The only representations of them were in porn shops, or medical papers, where they were presented as people with mental issues." "It was the book that crossdressers, and other transgender people, had been looking for all their lives," Allen said. In 1990, Allen published Transformations: Crossdressers and Those Who Love Them, a photography book documenting her decade of travels within this community and the people she met along the way. ![]() For Allen to ask crossdressers or trans people to step out so publicly was a matter of trust, which Allen was dedicated to gain. They lost their church communities if the church knew, and kept everything to do with their jobs secret."Īllen used her lens to reflect a more accurate reality - a positive, beautiful, even celebratory picture of a person who had finally found herself. There were many debates about telling their children, and if yes, at what age. When/if they told their wives, many marriages ended in divorce. "Some thought they were crazy and bad, guilty, unworthy. "Many people I met at that time thought they were the only person in the world that was 'that way,'" Allen said. ![]()
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