Chaz Bono: Dancing With the Stars, Giving Me the Creeps

Chaz Bono is giving me the creeps, and I fear that her -- err, his -- appearance on Dancing with the Stars will yield a sort of modern day freak show watching fest, like the bearded lady used to cultivate in the old traveling circus days.

Not that there's anything wrong with Bono, the daughter of Cher and Sonny Bono who became a man through sex change. At the age of 42, Bono is set to joing the upcoming season of the popular ABC show Dancing with the Stars. Born Chastity Bono, a girl, Chaz announced in 2009 his intentions to make the transition from female to male.

He has written a book and a documentary about the transition titled Becoming Chaz that will be aired on Oprah Winfrey's OWN network in May.

Bono says he has received considerably negative attention from critics after joining the upcoming Dancing with the Stars season, and is glad he's doing the television show to give America a good look it needs.

It's made me realize I'm really glad I'm doing this, because America really needs to see this, Bono told ABC News yesterday.

Even Cher, Bono's mother, has taken to Twitter to defend her son's sex change and Dancing with the Stars appearance amid complaints from some like the online group OneMillionMothers.com, which is calling for a boycott of the show, according to ABC News.

I don't go so far as saying people should boycott Dancing with the Stars. America is a free country. The show can program whatever it wants -- including a freakshow exploitation of transgender activist Chaz Bono. I just won't be watching. Millions will, however, likely including some who have never before seen the show.

That's what happens when you put bearded Chaz Bono on the set who America once knew as blonde, cute Chastity Bono from the set of the Sonny and Cher Show. People will perversely want to see, and they likely will, in high numbers.

Nobody can deny that curiosity gets the cat every time. And, there's no denying that Bono is one big curiosity. The reality, of course, is that one can only have deep compassion for Chaz. I certainly do. So many studies and insights have revealed that when a human feels stuck in the wrong gender as Chastity Bono did the result is usually tormenting.

Again, America is a free country. He wanted to have a sex change operation and did. He says it changed his life and I believe it did. So we can leave that at that.

But the public display flaunting it before the world is where I start to wonder. It's as if that sex change in and of itself is being used by Bono for celebrity -- and that's what gives me the creeps, if you will.

A woman becoming a man isn't the strangest thing that has happened in this world. But Bono seems eager to parlay that oddity -- and while it happens, it isn't the norm -- in any way possible. A documentary on the sex change is one thing, but a Dancing with the Stars appearance is another.

Sure, she -- he -- was born into show business. But this isn't the type of variety show I want to see, because I almost feel sorry for Bono. Not for the sex change, but for allowing himself to become the center of ABC's Dancing with the Stars freak show.