"We've learned the hard way that some things are more important than awards." (Jerrica Benton, aka JEM)

"We've learned the hard way that some things are more important than awards."

Me and my friends are Jem Girls.

Jem - Jem is my name.

Truly outrageous, that's a Jem Girl:

glamor, fashion and fame.

Those words still give me the goosebumps of nostalgia.  They're lyrics to one of the two theme songs of the animated television show Jem.

Being something of a cult figure, the character of Jem isn't likely familiar to a lot of people who weren't growing up in a very specific period of time - specifically, the mid-to-late 1980s.  

As a result of that, I'll provide one of those helpful Wikipedia page pieces for those who wish to familiarize themselves before we continue.

Thanks to wikipedia.org for this - 

So, let's set the stage.  The year is 1985.  I'm 13 years old.  I'm walking the road of adolescence, trying to figure out where I'm going in my life and looking for adult role-models on how to do what's necessary to live as an adult.

As you may or may not have guessed, this was something of a problem for transgirls growing up in the 1980s.  It was a different world then than it is now.  It was a different environment socially and politically at that time.  

We didn't have resources like Jazz's "A Corner for Transgender Kids."  We didn't have the Transkids Purple Rainbow Foundation.  

Heck, I didn't even consider the idea of a purple rainbow.

Now, I can't speak for other kids - how they did or didn't cope.  I can only speak for myself.  I didn't cope well. 

But I wasn't miserable, or even depressed. 

Rather, I always felt like I was swaying in the wind, unsure what every new day meant, unsure how I would keep myself together - but always telling myself that tomorrow was a new day.  

The biggest part of that struggle to keep going was in trying to figure out what I was, what was going in my life.  

As I've said before in other pieces, I knew that I saw myself as a girl - but I also knew that the rest of the world didn't see me that way, at least on the surface.

And this left me with what seemed like unanswerable questions about my life.  What did it all mean about my future?  What did it say about my identity?  What kind of person was I, and what kind of person would I be in the future?

I didn't have the answers - to any of those questions.  And it hurt, not knowing.  It hurt having no confidence in any kind of future, any kind of destiny.  

It felt aimless, leaving me with a sense of being mentally and emotionally adrift - and I didn't like how that felt, at all.

And this is where Jem came into the picture.

I remember that I hadn't tuned in on my bedroom television specifically to watch Jem.  Instead, I was simply switching channels back and forth between new shows, trying to decide which ones were worthy of my cereal-fueled attentions.  

In the days before DV-Rs - heck, even before VCRs for my family - the first few weeks of episodes of a new season of cartoons on Saturday and Sunday morning had me switching channels every weekend to decide which shows would earn my affections.

Jem did that - almost instantly.

And it was a fierce kind of affection, in the sense that Jem bridged a gap inside of my mind that nothing else had bridged.

Specifically, it bridged the gap between entertainment shows for kids that were targeted specifically toward girls and those that were targeted toward boys.

Here was a show that effortlessly backflipped through tropes and conventions, moving seamlessly from rugged adventure to romantic fantasy.  The MTV-style editing didn't hurt, as characters could leap into myriad roles within the story-within-a-story music video structure.

Most "cartoon shows for girls" in that day were consistently talky and focused on tea parties.

Not Jem.

Jem wasn't afraid to bring action scenes and wanton destruction into a given week's adventure.

And that was comforting for 13-year-old me, in so many ways, because it was a safe outlet for feelings I felt like I had to keep bottled.

By blending adventure with romance, my time watching Jem felt like a safe space for me.

It felt like a space where I could relax and be myself, at a time in my life where I felt like that wasn't something I could afford to do.

You see, by 1985 I'd given up on so much in order to survive adolescence.

In securing my own survival in what I understood was a hostile world, I'd abandoned a lot of elements of self-acceptance by then.  I wore a mask - in metaphor - at school, at home ... and pretty much everywhere else.

And Jem let me take off that mask for 30 minutes a week.

When I watched Jem and the Holograms, I could forget about my own struggles with my identity for brief periods.

Here was a character, in fact, whose existence was based on leading a life with two identities, and I imagine that a lot of transgirls my age felt an intense kinship to that idea.

So many of us have endured that same sequence of events that I don't pretend my story here is unique.  But I like to think I'm singing the tune in my own way, making it my own song.

And I've heard similar words from men who were kids at the time Jem originally aired, that the show gave them an excuse to indulge a different side to themselves, even without identifying trans.  

They've told me about how they enjoyed the adventurous aspects of the series, but also found that they weren't turning away at the romantic elements.  It helped them cross over to a different way of thinking and explore a different perspective.

And then there were the dolls.

Jem dolls were, as you can see, far more articulated than Barbie dolls of the day - and they wore rock star fashions and had rock star hair.

But this was only a part of what made them awesome.  

What made them awesome was that they were so "out there" in their design that they didn't seem like Barbie dolls to my parents.

In the MTV era in which these dolls existed, there was a clear distinction that could be observed between the "old-fashioned" universe of Barbie dolls and the rock'n'roll "punk lite" aesthetic of the Jem line.

Because of this, parents - not just mine, but many boys' parents -  didn't see any problem or take any issue with giving the kids a Jem doll.

Now, you might be thinking a 13-year-old is too old for dolls, and you might be right.  I don't care, because I've always loved toys and I always will.

And my Jem dolls were a special treasure, because - like the show - they allowed me to slip into a framework where sex and gender didn't really matter so much - which was a welcome relief from the heavy weight of "hiding" my "secret" every day.

Jem's world, too, was a world of escape - glamor, glitter, fashion, fame ... all appealing to kids, even today.

And the toy line certainly promoted those core concepts.  

I owned a Jem/Jerrica doll, the Roadster (which had a working radio, providing me an additional excuse to ask for it for Christmas), two of the Misfits (Pizzazz and Roxy) and a Synergy doll.

Rio never made it into my collection.  I didn't like the sculpt on the doll, even though I liked Rio in the cartoon.  

And there were other considerations as well.  I mean, I did need to keep room on my Christmas list for The Inhumanoids.  

Girl or boy, trans or not - kids know that monsters are ALWAYS awesome.

They're also a good coping mechanism, when you're a transkid, because you so often feel like a monster, like someone who doesn't belong.

And Jem dealt with elements like that, as well.

I'm talking, of course, about the girls of the Starlight Foundation, featured in the bottom right of the picture just above this paragraph.

You see, Jem lived in a huge mansion that she won in a contest, and though it was the perfect home for a rock star like Jem, that's not what was important about it to her.

Jerrica thought differently than that, as a character - and that's what made her awesome.

Jem wasn't the type to simply content herself living the extravagant life of a rock star.

So the Starlight Mansion was also a home for runaways and orphans.

Jem, like so many characters who appealed to me as a young person, was someone who took in wayward people, who cared for them, who built her own family.

These orphans and runaways were known as the Starlight Girls, and their presence was very significant to me.

I felt like they were sort of my proxy into Jem's world, which was - from a literary standpoint - probably the point of their existence in the series.

But seeing Jerrica treat them with care and understanding - despite their flaws and biases - meant a lot to me, because it helped me to keep up a belief that this fiction didn't necessarily mean such attitudes weren't also present in the real world.

Seeing Jem treat the Starlight Girls work together for their mutual benefit was also important to me, because the bonds of friendship present amongst those characters were bonds I didn't have at that time in my real life.

I kept to myself, you see, for the most part.  I hid from friendship.  I shied away from closeness to other people.  I felt like I had to, with my "secret."  I felt like nobody could nor would understand me.  So what was the point, I'd ask myself, of making friends with people?

But for 30 minutes a week, watching Jem, I could see the power of friendship work its magic, and I could believe in that power again, however fleeting that belief would turn out to be once the show was over and I was backing to the real world - where I would've traded any glamor or glitter for friends like the Holograms or even frenemies like the Misfits.

I was crushed by loneliness at that point in my life, so even dysfunctional relationships were preferable to being entirely by myself on an emotional level when it came to my peers.

I craved friendship and community.

That's another reason why I'm glad modern transkids have an ever-growing series of community resources available to them.

We grow and we change, and we evolve.  

And evolution of people's perceptions has been a big part of my blog since I started writing it.

And Jem, too, has evolved.  A doll that began like this - 

- has transformed both in appearance and price.

The glitter and glamor that once cost $8.00 for my mother and father now goes for $125.00.

Fashion and fame has gotten more pricey in the internet age, becoming this - 

But I admit it - I've never wanted a doll more in my life.  It's not in the cards at the moment for me.  Maybe someday I'll be able to buy things like that, but not today. 

When I publish a book, maybe, I'll have enough money to buy knick-knacks like dolls again.  

Then, I'll have fame and will simply need to find the glamor and glitter and fashion.

Sometimes, the journey of a trans person can, indeed, feel like one of those old board games where dice are rolled or spinners spun.  The difference is that it's very difficult to play the game and follow the path on the board.  

Directional arrows seem to point the wrong way, and the instructions don't seem to apply to the players the way they should.  And even though you want to play a fashion game about rock star dolls, someone's telling you that you should want one with spaceships and rockets.

But characters like Jem can make that confusion go away - by making new rules and changing the game.

Integrity Toys has resurrected Jem - and all her friends and frenemies.  The whole collection would run a person about $2,000.00 - and I think that's unfortunate.

It's unfortunate because they're targeting the adult collector market, and the toys aren't really meant to be played with by kids.  And I think that's a shame.

It's a shame because of what an amazing character Jem is, and what an evolutionary leap she was when she first appeared - and what a benefit she can be to younger people who might need that kind of inspiration today.

Jem is a character who is even more relevant now than she was when she first appeared, despite her 1980s sensibilities and fashions.

She's relevant because of our modern notions of celebrity, where people who are "nobody" in the "real world" use electronics to become someone they're not.  Holograms and videos, deception and the blurring of the lines about what's real and what's fiction - those are part of reality now.

It's rather startling how much Jem predicted about what musical celebrities would become.

Is it so hard to believe that we're on the cusp of seeing regular appearances by virtual performers like the one on the right in the above picture?

Is it so hard to believe that humans and computers will create half-real/half-virtual rock stars like we saw in Jem?

Are we really that close to that kind of ... synergy?

I think we might be.  And when we get to that point, will our ideas of gender and sex be challenged, too?  

Will we have to accept that the person we see is the person as they, themselves, wish to be seen?

Will we trust our perceptions, or will we doubt the identity of everyone we see because they don't match our own way of thinking?

Jem is a character who reminds us of the artificiality of celebrity, but also reminds us that the power of wealth and fame could be used to a positive effect in the world if people only stopped and took the time to care.

Jem, as a character, isn't defined by her fame - throughout the series, Jerrica references Jem as an illusion, a non-existent person.  It's not some separate person from herself; it's a disguise, and nothing more.

But that doesn't change who Jerrica is.

At the core, Jerrica is a kind and loving person, someone who loves to entertain because of the reward of making the music and being part of that creative experience.  She loves to sing because singing is in her heart.  She doesn't compromise her integrity - and that integrity is core throughout the series.

And in a world as illusionary as Hollywood and the music industry, Jerrica is a markedly different representation of a celebrity from the modern music artist or famous celebrity - where so many of them are obsessed only with increasing their own fame.  For Jerrica, Jem's fame is simply a necessity - a means through which she can gain the wealth she needs to help others and to continue to create the music she loves.

What better lesson about the false illusions of the modern celebrity culture could kids have than to use their skills to help the world around them as well as themselves?  What more important lesson about the nature of fame could there be in a celebrity-obsessed world than to tell kids that celebrity isn't an end but a means to achieve one's true dreams?  What more important statement is there in our wealth-over-everything American culture than to tell people that wealth is meaningless by itself and the trappings of wealth might as well be illusions - projections?

Yeah, I want those dolls.  It's normal to want things.  It's not, in my opinion, a crime.  But the dolls weren't - and aren't - the important part of Jem to me.  

The vehicles and doll fashions and playsets don't matter.

The merchandising doesn't matter, no matter how awesome it is.

What matters to me are the lessons taught to me by the show in that vulnerable time in my life, when a young woman faced off against evil corporate executives and musical rivals and stood true to herself and to her voice, even though she had to wear a disguise to get the job done.

What matters to me are the adventurous stories of women who could be friends and have distinct lives and distinct personalities - all working together for each other's betterment, and to protect people from evil.

What matters to me is that in 1985 I became a Jem Girl - and I'll always be one.