John Waters gets Hollywood Walk of Fame star
Today, the famed Hollywood Walk of Fame became a little more rainbow than it had been before. With gilded star etchings depicting icons on every corner, the powers that be dedicated September 18 to a man who arguably helped thrust LGBTQ visibility into a culture that was probably not ready at the time to receive it.
The modern-day fascists amongst us might even call him a “groomer.” We call him John Waters. Waters first arrived in Hollywood in 1970.
He parked at Hollywood and Vine and received his first bit of Los Angeles recognition. He got a jaywalking ticket. Outspoken and brash, Waters introduced outsider culture and heralded gay and transgender visibility into American cinema when the Stonewall uprising was still a very recent memory.
His 1972 film “Pink Flamingos” was brazenly trans affirming. It powerfully and glamorously flew in the faces of audiences while trans people only faced marginalization and were stigmatized in the Nixon Vietnam and Watergate era.
