“The category is live, work, pose!” Billy Porter’s voice introduces the iconic show, Pose. The TV Show started with an amazing cast, such as Indya Moore, Dominique Jackson, Angel Curiel, Billy Porter, Evan Peters, and many more. The first season was released June 3rd, 2018 on FX, and it was nominated for numerous Golden Globe Awards. In 2019, after the second season was critically acclaimed to be just as great as the first, Billy Porter won an Emmy. He was the first gay Black man to have done so.
Based in the 80s, Pose is about the Black and Latino LGBTQ community in New York, who found a way to express themselves through the drag ballroom scene. The first season is about acceptance and family in an otherwise unaccepting society and ethnic communities. As well as within their own families, who disowned them because of their sexual orientation and identity.
The second season is about the community being hit with the AIDs pandemic and activists of all ethnicities demanding treatment and fighting against AIDs misconceptions. It’s also about the LGBTQ’s subculture, such as vogue and ballroom events, becoming mainstream for all of society to enjoy. In turn, society begins to change its viewpoint about AIDs.
Pose consists of a beautiful story about Black-trans and Afro-Latina-trans women, who are still advocating to be acknowledged within their own ethnic communities and White LGBTQ communities. Black-trans lives have always mattered since the moment the first stone was thrown by a Black-trans woman in 1969, igniting the Stonewall Riots and setting a precedent for the LGBTQ community to be recognized at the expense of Black people and people of color. Celebrate February by binge-watching the one of a kind show on Netflix with friends and family in honor of Black History Month.