Way to be! I transitioned 5 years ago best thing I ever did! People mostly suck but life is good if you find the right people.
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Wow, I still listen to some of Teddy's old music (For You I Will is so dreamy and takes me right back to my high school days) and had vaguely wondered what Teddy was up to now. Glad she's still working in the industry, on her own terms this time. Thanks for the lovely update, NYT.
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What a lovely article! A true testament as to why representation matters.
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She's little more and a footnote and person of marginal talent at best. Certainly not worth an article in the NYT, cmon.
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Would she get this coverage if she hadn’t transitioned? Likely not.
Good marketing move however given the current zeitgeist.
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All the best to her. She's helped write some cracking tunes. Shawn is a real darling, too.
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Growing up in Rochester was not what prevented Teddy from being more worldly about transgenders - she just needed to get out of her parents basement a little more. I've known several going back to the 90's. Rochester was ahead of its time in welcoming transgendered folks.
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Jean, yours is a really bad take.
I'm saying so as a former Rochesterian between 1996 and 1997 (and as someone who voiced in my teens as trans back in 1991).
[And gosh, could you not with the "transgenders/ed"? Our people are *transgender*, big adjective.]
The structural discrimination I'd already learnt from places prior to Rochester and upstate NY continued with aplomb in spaces like the long-gone Village Green Bookstore, and with the utter absence of family doctors who'd accept seeing a trans patient — forcing trans people to travel elsewhere for any kind of health care or to accept being deprived of health care entirely.
Perhaps had I voiced as trans long *after* setting up some white-collar career gig at a place like B&L, Kodak, RCSB, or Xerox, my experience may have been a more insulating one. But I was a more or less a kid, younger than Teddy now, and I only had a high school diploma.
Also, it's my understanding from old friends who stayed behind that RIT began pursuing an ongoing hostility toward the health and welfare of trans people these last couple of years, echoing what I dealt with back in the 1990s.
So yes, while it's kind of a bummer a younger Teddy didn't get to see the likes of someone like us back then, I think it's really fantastic she's found her stride now and is entering a less oblivious cis awareness of our people's existence and our validity.
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Living in Rochester for a year over 20 years ago and having some friends who went to RIT does not give anyone enough credibility to preach about anything concerning Rochester. Except perhaps the weather.
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Such a nice story. I love the ending.
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LOL. "While hundreds of songs she has written and recorded since exist only in an array of computer folders...." reminds me of Steve Allen, the late TV host who wrote 8,500 songs. Good luck, Ms. Geiger. I'm sure your songs are better.
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Transgenderism in Pop is nothing new, pioneered by artists who intentionally chose more androgynous personas, such as David Bowie. What counts is the quality and freshness, so to speak, of the music. Artists spend so much time on their persona and presentation these days, the quality of their music suffers. Lady Gaga was an outgrowth of Madonna. Madonna had decent natural talent, but increasingly became attacked to gimmicks and shock-and-awe antics to gain attention and notice in a crowded music industry beset by ever increasing competition. These days, the natural talent of Madonna is buried and almost unnoticeable and her music passe and blase. Lady Gaga is almost an afterthought today as well, well off her peak, having followed a similar course as Madonna. The artists that have staying power, such as Celine Dion, are the ones that focus more on the music itself, and have a purer passion for music, and are less distracted by the personas and fashions and vehicles of live and staged presentation. Hopefully, this artist's career follows Celine Dion's rather than Madonna's.
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Agreed!!
Literally not one of the artists you brought up is a trans person, so to construct a history of trans people in pop around them is very fully ahistorical
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