Having previously written a little bit about Against Me! frontwoman Laura Jane Grace’s recent appearance on MTV’s House of Style, I finally got around to watching it.

And, you know what, I really am impressed.

Grace makes the most of every moment of air time: she seems determined to convey a whole series of positive messages. It seems like the editing team who put together the short were pretty respectful of this. The whole programme is also largely free of the usual transphobic tropes, which is an achievement in and of itself.

I’m not normally a fan of this kind of thing. I don’t care how celebrities dress. I don’t care how they “choose” their “style”. I associate such programmes with shallow consumerism and damagingly limited ideas about how people should and shouldn’t express themselves.

But the messages that come from Grace are powerful, important and – to my mind – broadly feminist. Be true to your tastes and interests (“You can see like the texture of it? That’s real dirt”). Dress in a way that makes you feel good. Passing doesn’t need to be an end in and of itself. If you’re a young trans people, it’s okay – other trans people exist, in public!

Grace is self-consciously making herself into a role model. That’s not always a good thing, but the message here isn’t “be like me”, it’s “be yourself”. Sod the naysayers: this is punk as fuck.

Video embedded for readers who (like me) aren’t based in the US, and hence can’t watch this on the MTV website.