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Kelly Rissman
US News Reporter
Jackass star Steve-O has said that he cancelled plans to get breast implants as part of a comedic stunt, after a conversation with a transgender person.
The entertainer, whose real name is Stephen Gilcrist Glover, was supposedly due to have the surgery as part of a skit, where he would trick men at a motorcycle rally into flirting with him by looking like a woman.
He planned to remove his tattoos, shave his body, lose twenty pounds and flaunt his fake breasts. Once men started flirting with him, he would remove his helmet and reveal his true gender.
However, the stuntman told Consequence that his scheduled surgery was cancelled after the surgeon found out the operation would be part of a stunt. On the same day, he had a fateful interaction with a transgender supermarket clerk.
“The person ringing up my groceries was evidently transgender, and it struck me as a sign from the universe,” he explained. “So I asked the transgender person if I could run something by them, and I had a conversation with this person that had a profound impact on me.”
Steve-O explained that he’d previously had no inclination to discuss the decision with anybody as he felt his heart was in the right place.
“I knew what my motivation was, I knew what my intention was, and it wasn’t to be hurtful to anybody,” he continued. “I was just trying to get laughs.”
He added, “I didn’t really have any dedicated meetings or conversations with trans people, because I didn’t really feel that I had to.”
The supermarket employee told the prankster that his “feeling that it was the ultimate statement of body autonomy, me saying my body, my choice… That part was okay.
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“But the part where I deliberately went out to trick people into thinking that I was a woman and then fooling them, and then kind of celebrating the idea of hate towards [trans people] — that was a thing.”
Steve-O describes hearing a “pretty heartbreaking” account of what life was like for the person, as they explained they were not allowed to use the bathroom at work, and that they would be arrested in 28 states for having ID that said “female” on it.
“Framed like that, I thought about it in a way that I hadn’t before, where you know, wow, maybe it’s not all fun and games,” he said. “Especially the pranks. Like, I would’ve considered it to be better footage if I was to be beaten up at the motorcycle rally.
“And just having that mentality was very flawed, because ultimately it would be an exercise in celebrating violence against trans people. At least, it would be interpreted that way by some, and when it was put to me that way, I thought, wow, maybe I missed the mark on that one.”
Jackass ran for three seasons on MTV, from 2000 to 2001, and spawned four films in total, with the most recent arriving in 2022.
