The comedian and podcast host has been getting ready for his Super Dummy Tour, a live show featuring a wild collection of filmed stunts. One planned stunt would have featured the now 50-year-old prankster attending the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota, disguised as a woman, to record video footage of male rally attendees ogling Steve-O and then reacting after he reveals his face and male gender.
Related:
In true Steve-O style, the stunt would feature a painful transformation, with the comedian getting temporary breast implant surgery to complete the look.
Never Miss a Beat
Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights.
“It involved me getting my whole body waxed, with airbrushing to remove all of my tattoos, and I lost literally 20 pounds to get really slender and petite. So I would be hairless, tattooless, with a pink bikini top and Daisy Duke shorts, and a motorcycle helmet covering my entire face and head,” he told Consequence.
“I would ride a pink Vespa around at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally completely in disguise, where nobody could tell who I was,” Steve-O explained. “And the plan I had was to film with hidden cameras as I rode up to big gangs of motorcycle riders, who would presumably be checking me out. And I would walk up to pull off my helmet and say, ‘Yeah, dude,’ and get this crazy reaction, which, predictably, would be contentious.”
But a “sign from the universe” led him to scrap the stunt, he said.
First, Steve-O got a call that the anesthesiologist backed out of the planned surgery “because he found out that it was me doing it as a stunt.” Then the surgeon followed suit.
Then Steve-O came face to face with the possible consequences of his planned actions.
“On the day that the scheduled surgery was supposed to happen, I was checking out at the supermarket. And the person ringing up my groceries was evidently transgender,” he recounted. “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.”
“My feeling that it was the ultimate statement of body autonomy, me saying my body, my choice… That part was okay [with the grocery clerk],” he said. “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.”
The trans employee “described how they weren’t allowed to use the bathroom at their place of work, that there were like maybe 28 states in the country that would arrest them for having an ID that said female on it. That there were politicians making concerted efforts to lock them up in internment camps. It was really pretty heartbreaking, the level of oppression that was described,” Steve-O said.
“Framed like that,” he added, “I thought about it in a way that I hadn’t before, where you know, wow, maybe it’s not all fun and games. 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.’”
Steve-O said he had plans “for hidden camera pranks in strip clubs as well. And I took my pole dancing training remarkably seriously. I was doing some seriously inverted pole dancing acrobatics.”
Footage of his stripper pole training will still be featured in the tour, along with early footage from his doctor’s office — “there’s some pretty shocking stuff,” he said.
But now he’ll explain to audiences why he ended up not going through with the surgery and the stunt: “I don’t really avoid the topic—I explain that I felt the universe intervened on my behalf.”
Steve-O admitted giving up the transformation “was difficult for me. Looking back on it, I’m extremely grateful that it didn’t happen. I’m really glad that I didn’t go through with it. But that didn’t make it any easier, because I was so vocal about my plans to do that, and I’ve never been the kind of artist to say I was going to do something and then not do it. That was what I had trouble with … not honoring my word.”
Ultimately, though, canceling the stunt “is a good thing,” he said. “The show still has a bunch of really good comedy from that whole episode. And the extent to which I was prepared to go through with that is hilarious in its own right.”
“I think it’s a very valuable trait,” he said, “to be able to admit when you’ve got things wrong.”
