Tomboy (2011)

In mid-October, a bill was introduced by Republican Representative Mike Johnson, known as the ‘Stop the Sexualization of Children Act’. The bill defines “sexually-oriented material” as “any depiction, description, or simulation of sexual activity, any lewd or lascivious depiction or description of human genitals, .”. The underlined part of that definition includes topics that are not inherently sexual, as has been pointed out by those who oppose the bill. Heteronormativity and the gender roles it has created affect a child from birth, so this is just a veiled attack on the queer community specifically and not an act to actually give children the protection they deserve.Instead of being protected from the concepts of gender and sexuality, children need to be introduced to them. Four to five-year-olds are all told fairy tales including and similar to Snow White and Cinderella, the likes of which hinge on central heterosexual relationships and the male-female binary. Those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or asexual, remain so despite only being introduced to cishet stories, and similarly, those who are transgender, non-binary, and genderqueer remain so. It follows then, that queer stories wouldn’t “convert” cishet children. In fact, they could give solace to a queer child who doesn’t find their feelings reflected in the people around them or the stories they’re generally told. So, on this Transgender Day of Remembrance, let us take a look at six films that depict the experiences, coming-out or otherwise, of transgender children grappling with their identity in a heteronormative world that despises their kind and tries its best to invalidate their feelings.

Directed by Alain Berliner, My Life in Pink follows seven-year-old transgender girl Ludovic Fabre (Georges Du Fresne). She is surprisingly aware of her identity and expresses herself by putting on makeup and dressing up, even in public. The film starts with her family recently moving to a new locality. On the day of their housewarming party, when her parents introduce their children, she shows up wearing a dress and heavy makeup. Her parents react by telling the guests that their son is sometimes very whimsy and gets these urges to dress up as a girl and that it’s no big deal. The rest of My Life in Pink tells the story of how the child is invalidated at every step of the way, no matter how many different ways she tries to tell her parents and other adults in her life that she is essentially female despite having a male physiology.

The parents themselves aren’t really accepting, and to make matters worse, the neighbors start ostracizing them for not keeping Ludovic in line. Her only real friend, her father’s boss’ son, turns on her after a while, and there comes a point where Ludovic is without support from anyone. Even then, she persists and keeps trying to explain her situation in her own way. After she learns about X and Y chromosomes from her sister, she tells her parents that God dropped X and Y chromosomes from heaven through their chimney when she was born. With childlike innocence, Ludovic insists that instead of her two X chromosomes coming through to make her a woman, one of the X’s fell in the trash by accident, and a Y made it through instead, trapping her in the body of a boy. My Life in Pink may at times feel like it caters to a cis audience, but given the time period it was made in, it has aged relatively well. Watching a narrative about transgender children that does not feature dysphoria on the part of the child herself is a liberating experience. So whatever its flaws, especially in the way it ends by apparently transforming the parents into fully supportive people out of nowhere, it’s still an empowering watch.

My Life in Pink is available to rent on Google Play Movies, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, and Apple TV.