Pageboy: A Memoir, by Elliott Page
There is a scene like this in Season 3 of Netflix very popular In The Umbrella Academy, Elliot Page’s character dons a new short hairdo and approaches the rest of the titular superhero team to propose a plan.
From one of them came a mocking response: “Who chose you, Vanya?”
Page looks around with some hesitation. “Oh, it’s Victor.”
“Who’s Victor?”
Subtitles describe “dramatic music playing” as the members of the group look at each other. Paige hesitates for a moment. “I. It’s always me.” “Well, does it matter to anyone?”
There is little hesitation to say, “No, that’s fine.” “Yeah, me too.”
The result is one of the most banal yet quietly empowering tales of gender transition in pop culture I’ve ever seen. Was Paige’s real-life transition journey plain and simple, or well-received?
Rather, as he recounts in his brutally honest memoir, Pageboy, his life was filled with fear, self-doubt, and reorientation until he finally took control of his story. , guilt, and shame.
A child actor from Canada, Paige burst onto the scene at the age of 20 after breaking out in the title role of Juno in 2007. I performed. ) to her blockbusters (Inception, X-Men: Days of Future Past).
But fame didn’t give him the freedom to explore his own identity. Instead, they locked him into the role the studio wanted him to play, both off-screen and on-screen, as a charming young star.
Much of the memoir is told in discontinuous flashbacks and flashforwards, set against a backdrop of bullying, eating disorders, stalking, sexual harassment, and assault on Paige’s journey to realizing who she really is. is centered on. Paige grew up in Nova Scotia, the child of divorced parents. His father was not affectionate, and her mother wanted a more traditional child, not the gender outlaw she seemed to be raising.
“Can I have a boy?” Paige asked her mother when she was six. He found escape in solitary play and a rich fantasy life that eventually blossomed into his acting career.
The non-linear structure makes it difficult to follow a clear narrative, but that’s more important than watching Paige slowly piece together a clear sense of himself through his eyes. In that regard, how we explore our identities, from Jennifer Finney-Boylan’s She’s Not There to Janet Mock’s Redefining Realness to Thomas Page McBee’s Man Alive. It follows the tradition of trance memoirs that explore what.
From a secret clandestine relationship — he said he held hands with his then-partner under a blanket as they traveled from location to location on the bus while filming the movie — in 2014 Until he came out as gay (“It was more a necessity than a decision,” he writes), Paige flirted with the idea that he might be transgender, but many times or withdrew it.
“It opened my shoulders, my heart was bare, and I was able to be in the world in a way that I had never felt possible before,” he wrote of coming out as gay. “However, emptiness lurked in the depths of his heart. That bass. That whisper is still ripe and in my ear. “
“Pageboy” is at its most powerful in its anguished, contradictory inner monologue that other transgender people are familiar with as they ponder unusual and unimaginable truths. Paige doesn’t delve too deeply into the issue of masculinity, or what it means to be a man, but he does say that the instinctive sense of gender dysphoria, or at least a form of dysphoria, that one’s body feels like one’s self. The feeling of betraying the For those who have never experienced it, it is a completely foreign feeling.
Imagine the most uncomfortable and humiliating thing you could wear. You squirm in your skin. It’s tight, I want to peel it off my body, I want to tear it off, but I can’t. Day after day. And if people could know the bottom line, who you are, without the pain, the shame would overflow and be unbearable. the voice was right you deserve to be humiliated. you are an abomination you are too emotional you are not real
The moment of joy also sticks to “page boy”. his first real queer kiss. Scenes of passionate sex. His relationship with his mother blossomed after coming out. His flat chest reflected in the mirror.
Page announced his move in December 2020, weeks before I did the same. I suspect he, like me, was prepared for a future in which the transgender way of life would be universally accepted, or at least tolerated, albeit with sporadic incidents of hate. We both live in left-leaning spaces (media, cinema) where showing support is a must.
Instead, how could we have expected the wave of anti-trans hostility swept over the right with hundreds of bills proposing, and some of them, passing in state legislatures, possibly banning them? adult from access to transcare; weaken private insurance; enabling healthcare professionals to discriminate against transgender patients; and possibly limiting performances by drag performers and transgender people, including Paige.
Transgender men and women are attacked in very different ways. Trans women are demonized as sex offenders. When people think of trans men, they are portrayed as misunderstood and misunderstood girls and women who are confused and unable to figure out their identity. “When I came out in 2014, most people believed me and didn’t ask for proof,” Page wrote. “But the hate and backlash I received was nothing compared to now.”
It was an unwanted throwback to an era when studios controlled his public persona. And it’s not just people online, on the street, or strangers at parties, but good acquaintances and friends. “
Still, Paige has quite a few fans. He’s a vocal advocate for perhaps the world’s most famous trans man, and a fan of playing superheroes on screen to present an alternative conception of masculinity that’s rooted in inner strength and delicacy rather than brawn and muscle. .
His character’s arc, from Vanya to Viktor, also gives hope for a world where transitions are both accepted and accidental in nature. “So many congratulations, Victor,” concluded another Umbrella Academy member.
Paige and the showrunner Stephen Blackman We took pains to ensure that his character’s journey reflected the nuances of real-life transgender life. In particular, being transgender is important. be rather than personality traits of define one.they brought McBee to create a true story We entered an already packed and carefully scripted season.
In her memoir, Page describes her complex relationship with store windows and her image of herself in those windows—pre-transition memories that remind her of the body and identity she saw but didn’t want to live in. Looking back McBee turns that memory into another memorable “Umbrella Academy” scene in which Paige’s Victor stops in front of a storefront and asks what she’s looking at.
“Myself.” I smile and shrug. “just me.”
I’m so happy for you, Elliott.
Gina Chua is the editor-in-chief of Semafor.
Pageboy: A Memoir | By Elliott Page | 271 Pages | Flatiron Books | $29.99
