Cris Miró (16 September 1965 – 1 June 1999) was an Argentine entertainer and media personality who had a brief but influential career as a top-billing vedette in Buenos Aires' revue theatre scene during the mid-to-late 1990s.
Miró began her acting career in the early 1990s in fringe theatre plays and later rose to fame as a vedette at the Teatro Maipo in 1995.
[3] As Jorge Perez Evelyn in the 70’s, Cris was also a travesti celebrity in Argentina,[3][4] she caused a media sensation[1][5] and paved the way for the visibility of the transgender community in local society.
[6][5] Nevertheless, her figure was initially questioned by some members of the burgeoning travesti activism movement, who resented the unequal treatment she received compared to most trans people.
[1] Working with them, Miró made her fringe theatre debut in the plays Fragmentos del infierno—based on a text by Antonin Artaud[3]—and Orgasmo apocalíptico, which focused on sexuality issues more explicitly.
[1][12] Prior to her career as a vedette, Miró made film appearances in Fernando Ayala's Dios los cría (1991) and Luis Puenzo's La peste (1992), based on Albert Camus' novel of the same name.
[13] Producer Lino Patalano immediately cast her as a vedette for his show Viva la revista en el Maipo, which premiered in 1995 and quickly made her a celebrity.
[3] Miró actually did live with HIV and had been hospitalized for this on previous occasions, choosing to hide it from the media out of fear that the stigma between homosexuality and the virus would affect her career and family relationships.
[9] This was confirmed when her brother Esteban Virguez disclosed it to journalist Carlos Sanzol in 2010, who later revealed it in his 2016 biography on Miró titled Hembra.
(...) The Cris Miró phenomenon had a great social impact, since it made public everything that was hidden about travestis, homosexuality, and managed to get it accepted.
After gaining popularity as a vedette, Miró became a national media sensation for the perceived gender bender aspects of her image,[1][5][15] and is considered a symbol of the postmodern era in Argentina.
[6] Miró's presence meant a change in the Argentine showbusiness of the era and popularized transgender and cross-dressing acts in Buenos Aires' revue theatrical scene.
"[16] In an interview with Revista NX in 1997, Miró reflected on her impact: I am very grateful for what is happening to me, and this has helped open doors for other people.
[3] In this sense, she evidenced the desire of thousands of men for the new travesti bodies, with anthropologist Josefina Fernández claiming that: "the exchange that Cris Miró makes while living from her job as a vedette, as a body inserted in a market, does not differ from the exchange that a [travesti street prostitute] is forced to make in order to survive.
"[3] Reflecting on her death, feminist scholar Mabel Bellucci argued in 1999 that Miró's acceptance was an attempt by "the system" to try to show that there was not so much discrimination, presenting her as "the exception to the rule" and encapsulating her in a role that prevented her from creating ties with her [travesti] peers.
[20] A portrait photograph of Miró is displayed since 2019 at the Museo Casa Rosada, as part of the exhibition Íconos Argentinos (English: "Argentine Icons").
[11] Her death is featured in the plot of Camila Sosa Villada's 2019 award-winning novel Las malas, being mourned by its trans main characters, who regard her as "the Evita of travestis".
[21] In June 2021, an Argentine producer announced that a biographical television series on Miró was in the making, potentially released via Netflix the following year.
[22] Miró identified as a travesti,[3][23] a loosely-defined term used in South American countries to designate people who have been assigned male at birth, but develop a gender identity according to different expressions of femininity.
"[30] In a 1996 television report for Chiche Gelblung, Miró explained her gender identity: "I am totally clear that biologically I was born a man.