The difference between Gigi and her younger self is not only a transition: It’s better styling, a pricier camera, and a much greater sense of what it takes to become a star. Jumping through clips like these over time, as one does while watching this documentary, you realize that what you’re seeing is the making of an internet celebrity. The lighting carefully hits her hair and cheekbones just so, her shoulders tilted carefully to one side in a conspicuous pose, the way you’re told to contort yourself for a yearbook photo. In even her most intimate uploads, such as one of her more essential videos, “ I Am Transgender,” Gigi sits with poise. Whether style guide or diary entry, her posts are chances to perform. It satisfies our expectations of a story about transition, too - a narrative with growth and adversity built into its DNA.īut what sets the movie apart is Gigi herself, for whom there is no real divide between private life and public performance. The film satisfies this demand, going out of its way to look and feel the part: talking heads, chipper music cues, and neon-bright, can’t-miss-’em emotional beats. Indeed, it is an inspiring tale of how Gigi grew up a gay male named Gregory and eventually became an internet star. This Is Everything, which drops on YouTube Red on February 8 after a limited theatrical release, would appear to be your usual chronicle of life from childhood to adulthood. Acceptance, for a trans woman, isn’t universal. The scene in Dubai, which plays out like a last-minute coda, brings us back to reality. The documentary had otherwise ended on a high note: a triumphant Gigi walking her first runway in New York. When it comes up late in This Is Everything: Gigi Gorgeous, a documentary about Gigi’s life and persona, the moment hits like a sucker punch. That’s why the Dubai incident stands out. Over the years, her legion of followers, most of whom she says are teenage girls, have been privy to the pivots in her sexuality (she recently threw them for a loop and came out as lesbian), her breakups, and, most daringly, the multiple steps in her transition, including grace notes such as her first bra. Her YouTube channel, which has almost 2.5 million subscribers, is a compendium of practical style advice, personal confession, and - of course - self-promotion. I am very passionate about it and want to keep the ball rolling.” Gigi, who says she’s online 24/7, is happy to add to the noise: “From the moment I wake up, I am checking social media. “I wanted to get the word out there on this topic because it’s happening all the time.” She’s by some accounts one of those dreaded self- and image-obsessed millennials who uses the internet like it’s a churchly confessional. “It does make me really sad to talk about it,” she says in the video “ I Was Roofied,” a humorous account of a bad night out in Brooklyn with friends. Every one of her life experiences has the potential to be refashioned into a glammed-up life lesson for her subscribers. We were of course privy to this, and to Gigi’s feelings about it, almost as soon as it happened: Gigi is a child of the internet era. (Local police said it was a matter of her passport’s gender designation being out of date.) And she’s transgender - hence, she says, the holdup in Dubai. She’s Canadian, a former high diver with childhood Olympic aspirations. She’s Gigi Loren Lazzarato, a 24-year-old model and internet personality whose YouTube career began, almost 10 years ago, with makeup tutorials and a plethora of bitchy punch lines. It’s a real-time story, ’cause I’m still in it.” Gorgeous - a blond, statuesque YouTube sensation - had been detained for five hours at Dubai International Airport because, she says, of who she is. “Hi guys,” says Gigi Gorgeous, in a YouTube video dated August 11, 2016.
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