Sitcom ‘Work It’ gets detractors all worked up

By Frazier Moore

AP Television Writer

NEW YORK

Viewers may find ABC’s new sitcom “Work It” to be cringingly awful from an entertainment standpoint.

But the show, which depicts two out-of-work chaps who dress as women to land jobs in a tough economy, has drawn fire from groups with a different complaint: They say “Work It” mocks the transgender community.

“Though the show is not about transgender people, it’s about the notion that men presenting as women is funny,” said Herndon Graddick of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

“It re-enforces inaccurate and tired stereotypes that are injurious to transgender Americans,” said Fred Sainz of the Human Rights Campaign, a civil rights organization working on behalf of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans.

HRC is joining GLAAD in urging supporters to ask ABC not to air the series, which is scheduled to premiere Jan. 3.

Last week, the two organizations placed a full-page ad in Daily Variety whose headline declares: “‘Work It’ will harm transgender people.”’ The ad continues, “By encouraging the audience to laugh at the characters’ attempts at womanhood, the show gives license to similar treatment of transgender women.”

But is the campaign that targets “Work It” also, by extension, a broad denunciation of one of entertainment’s most enduring devices: cross-dressing for comic effect?

This is a tradition that includes the late actor-drag queen Divine appearing in outrageous female roles in “Hairspray” and other John Waters films.

Robin Williams played a man who adopted a persona as a Scottish nanny in the 1993 comedy “Mrs. Doubtfire.” In 1982, “Tootsie” starred Dustin Hoffman as an out-of-work actor who dresses up as a soft-spoken actress to land a woman’s role on a soap opera.

Flash forward to “Work It,” which pairs what the network calls “two unrepentant guy’s guys” (Lee Standish, a family man, and Angel Ortiz, a ladies’ man) who lost their jobs at a car dealership and have gone a year without employment.

Soon, Lee (Ben Koldyke) hears of openings for sales reps at a pharmaceutical company. But the company is looking for women, not men, to fill the slots.