Gays in Christina Aguilera's video "Beautiful"

Normally I don’t pay much attention to pop American culture, but someone directed me to download Christina Aguilera’s (sp?) music video for “Beautiful” and I was delighted by what I saw.

There are two males kissing in a loving manner and a transvestite.

You can see it at:

http://www.christinaaguilera.com/home.html

And?

maybe I’m a bit cynical, but I think that they were put in there less as a tribute and more as a way to garner attention for the video. It seems like something that X-Tina would do

I felt that artistically they were really out of place.

Everyone else in the video pretty much seems to be in a dark place emotionally at the outset, and then comes to a point where they realise they are beautiful. The guys kissing are just guys kissing. No emotional development for those characters at all.

So, I agree with Harborwolf that they just seem like they’re there so people can be excited about guys kissing on screen.

I hate to me too but…me too.
The transvestite seems to be fighting some demons…but the guys just seem to be…kissing. And good on 'em. I sense precious little angst there.

Her delight, I’m assuming, stems from the fact that there’s a video, shown widely on a pop station, by an extremely popular star, that features gays, transvestites, & etc. prominently and declares them to be beautiful, “no matter what they say.”

This is in a day and age where those who are outside of the ‘norm,’ while they may be accepted (to a degree), they’re still spat upon, looked down on, and discriminated against. While for the most part I stay outside of mainstream media, it seems that most pop icons either don’t bring up issues like this, or use them as an object of ridicule or a target.

Props to Aguilera. I may not be a fan, but I do give her points for actually -focusing- the video on this idea that even those that are ‘different’ in such ways (not race, which has been done to death). She may or may not lose fans over this; I’ve known people to like a star, then reject them forevermore because they did something, featured someone, stated a view publicly that they (the fan) did not agree with.