Chris Crocker

Biography

Crocker “raised eyebrows” by bringing Barbie dolls to kindergarten for show-and-tell rather than the toys or action figures usually associated with boys.8 He lives in the Southern United States2 and was homeschooled in response to constant “death threats, bullying and glares at his clothes and makeup”,8 and specifically after allegedly being “harassed by a homophobic high school gym coach”.1 Crocker lives with his fundamentalist24 Pentecostal grandparents who continued raising him when his teenage parents were not able;25 while his grandfather reportedly knows little about his Internet fame, his grandmother has reluctantly appeared in some of his videos.2 His uncensored and “unfiltered” work has been attributed to his isolation as an “effeminate, Southern, flamboyantly gay”2 adolescent in a “small-minded town” in the Bible Belt.2 His sexual orientation and outspokenness have been described as a “subtext… rarely addressed directly and never completely accepted” in his hometown.2 According to Crocker, when his grandmother found out that he was gay, she initially “said that he needed an exorcism”.2 Crocker, who laments his town’s lack of gay culture, said, “The only gay pride parade where I live is in my bedroom.”26 He added, “We don’t have pride and rainbows here. We have MySpace. We don’t have bathhouses. We have outhouses.”27