Elliot Page, From Shame to Self-Acceptance, in Hollywood’s Glare

PAGEBOY: A Memoir, by Elliot Page

There’s a scene within the third season of Netflix’s massively standard “The Umbrella Academy” the place Elliot Page’s character, sporting a brand new, quick haircut, walks as much as the opposite members of the titular superhero workforce to recommend a plan.

There’s a derisive response from considered one of them: “Who elected you, Vanya?”

Page glances round, barely tentative. “It’s, uh, Viktor.”

“Who’s Viktor?”

The subtitles describe “dramatic music playing” as members of the group eye each other. Page hesitates for a second. “I am. It’s who I’ve always been.” Another beat. “Uh, is that an issue for anyone?”

There’s little hesitation: “Nah, I’m good with it.” “Yeah, me too.” “Cool.”

And thus performs out what is perhaps probably the most mundane — and but quietly empowering — depiction of gender transition in standard tradition I’ve ever seen. Were Page’s real-life journey to transition solely as easy, easy or nicely acquired.

Instead, as he particulars in a brutally sincere memoir, “Pageboy,” his life story was marked by worry, self-doubt, U-turns, guilt and disgrace, earlier than he in the end seized management of his personal narrative.

A baby actor from Canada who burst onto the scene on the age of 20 with a breakout efficiency within the title function of “Juno” in 2007, Page went on to take roles in movies that ranged from indie (“Whip It,” “Freeheld”) to blockbusters (“Inception,” “X-Men: Days of Future Past”).

But fame didn’t free him to discover his id; as an alternative it trapped him into a task studios wished him to play, offscreen in addition to on, as a beautiful younger starlet.

Much of the memoir — informed in non-sequential flashbacks and flash-forwards — facilities on Page’s path to know who he actually was, in opposition to a backdrop of bullying, consuming issues, stalking, sexual harassment and assault. Page grew up in Nova Scotia, the kid of divorced mother and father — a lower than loving father and a mom hoping in opposition to hope for a extra standard baby than the gender outlaw she appeared to be elevating.

“Can I be a boy?” Page requested his mom on the age of 6. He discovered escape in solitary play and a wealthy fantasy life that in the end blossomed right into a profession as an actor.

The nonlinear construction makes following a transparent narrative troublesome, however that’s much less essential than seeing, via his eyes, how Page slowly items collectively a transparent sense of himself. In that, it follows a convention of trans memoirs, from Jennifer Finney Boylan’s “She’s Not There” to Janet Mock’s “Redefining Realness” to Thomas Page McBee’s “Man Alive,” amongst others, that discover how we discover our identities.

From furtive, closeted relationships — he relates how he held fingers below a blanket along with his then-partner as they have been bused from location to location whereas engaged on a movie collectively — to popping out as homosexual in 2014 (“more a necessity than a decision,” he writes), Page flirted with, however backed away a number of occasions from, the notion that he is perhaps trans.

“My shoulders opened, my heart was bare, I could be in the world in ways that felt impossible before,” he writes of popping out as homosexual. “But deep down an emptiness lurked. That undertone. Its whisper still ripe and in my ear.”

It’s in that tortured, contradictory inside monologue — acquainted to different trans individuals as we ponder what appears to be a rare, unimaginable fact — that “Pageboy” is strongest. Page doesn’t actually delve into questions of masculinity, or what it means to be a person, however he brings to life the visceral sense of gender dysphoria, or a minimum of one kind of dysphoria: the sense that your physique is betraying you. It’s an totally alien sensation for individuals who haven’t skilled it:

Imagine probably the most uncomfortable, mortifying factor you possibly can put on. You squirm in your pores and skin. It’s tight, you need to peel it out of your physique, tear it off, however you possibly can’t. Day in and time out. And if individuals are to study what’s beneath, who you’re with out all that ache, the disgrace would come flooding out, an excessive amount of to carry. The voice was proper, you deserve the humiliation. You are an abomination. You are too emotional. You usually are not actual.

Moments of pleasure pierce “Pageboy” as nicely: his first actual queer kiss; scenes of passionate intercourse; the blossoming of his relationship along with his mom after he got here out; the reflection of his flat chest within the mirror.

Page disclosed his transition in December 2020, a number of weeks earlier than I did the identical. I think he, like me, had been ready for a future the place trans lives can be broadly accepted, or a minimum of tolerated, albeit with sporadic incidents of hate. Both of us inhabit left-leaning areas (media, motion pictures) the place the looks of assist is de rigueur.

How might we’ve got anticipated as an alternative the tidal wave of anti-trans animus that’s surging throughout the correct, with tons of of payments proposed — and a few handed — in state legislatures that will in some instances bar adults from accessing trans care; undermine personal insurance coverage; enable medical personnel to discriminate in opposition to transgender sufferers; and limit performances by drag performers and trans individuals, together with probably Page.

Trans women and men are attacked in very alternative ways. Trans ladies are demonized as sexual predators; trans males, when individuals consider them in any respect, are portrayed as misguided and misled women and girls, confused and unable to know their very own id. “When I came out in 2014, the vast majority of people believed me, they did not ask for proof,” Page writes. “But the hate and backlash I received were nothing compared to now.”

It was an unwelcome regression to a time studios managed his public persona: “I am sick of the creepy focus on my body and compulsion to infantilize (which I have always experienced, but nothing like this). And it isn’t just people online, or on the street, or strangers at a party, but good acquaintances and friends.”

Still, Page has no scarcity of followers as nicely, vociferous defenders of probably probably the most well-known trans man on the earth, and one whose onscreen portrayal of a superhero provides another conception of masculinity rooted in interior power and sensitivity quite than brawn and muscle groups.

His character’s arc from Vanya to Viktor provides hope, too, of a world the place transition is matter-of-fact, accepted — and incidental. “Truly happy for you, Viktor,” one other “Umbrella Academy” member concludes.

Page and the showrunner Steven Blackman have been at pains to make sure his character’s journey mirrored the nuances of actual trans lives, not least that being trans was a character trait, not the defining one. They introduced in McBee to weave an genuine narrative into what was then an already tightly packed and punctiliously scripted season.

In the memoir, Page displays on his advanced relationship with retailer home windows, and his picture in them — a reminder, pre-transition, of a physique and id he noticed however didn’t need to inhabit. McBee crafted that reminiscence into one other telling “Umbrella Academy” scene, the place Page’s Viktor pauses in entrance of a storefront and is requested what he sees.

“Me.” A smile and a shrug. “Just me.”

Truly glad for you, Elliot.

Gina Chua is the chief editor at Semafor.

PAGEBOY: A Memoir | By Elliot Page | 271 pp. | Flatiron Books | $29.99