I Just Read “Pageboy” and I’m So Done With Elliot Page
The title says it all. I am so over Elliot Page.
I’m over the white privilege, the whining, the grey-faced interviews where he talks about “trans joy” while looking like he wants to jump off a bridge…. I am so over it.
I’m done.
So a bit of background about me. I’m a trans femme, egg cracked 2020, on HRT for 26 months and still kind of finding my way in the world. I have a lot of problems which maybe I’ll talk about on this platform some day but right now I’m just existing.
I got a day off last week so I decided to chill at my favorite place: Barnes & Noble.
I picked up my iced mocha and grabbed a copy of Pageboy off a table. It looked like an easy read and a good way to spend an afternoon off.
Boy was I wrong! Wow!
So where to begin with Pageboy? First of all, the book is badly written. Page writes about his life in a non-sequential pattern so you’ll read a part about Page’s childhood and then the next chapter is about Page coming out as a lesbian when he was in his 30s. Oddly, the non-sequential style kind of works for the memoir. I’m not complaining about that. What I *am* complaining about is Page’s damnable habit of not being able to write a sentence! We learn this shit in the third grade: Every sentence has a subject, an object and a verb! Apparently such a structure is too good for Page. Instead Page writes these weird sentence fragments that he knits together with commas. I think the sentences are supposed to sound deep or profound but instead just read like some 12-year-old emo poetry shit.
Here’s an example paragraph:
I never would have had this life with her. I repeated his words to myself. This wonderful life. In that moment one thing was clear: He didn’t see it at all. He didn’t see me at all.
That’s Pageboy in a nutshell. I hope you love white upper middle class victimhood narratives if you pick up a copy of Elliot Page’s book cuz believe me, Pageboy is a couple hundred pages of exactly that.
Elliot Page talks so much about his trauma that you think he had grown up in an orphanage in Sierra Leone. Page, actually, grew up in an upper middle-class household in Canada. His mother was always loving and supportive. His dad appears to have had his flaws but also seems to have been a decent guy despite Page’s valiant efforts to paint him as an ogre. Page’s dad’s sin, apparently, was marrying a woman named “Linda.” Linda is a totally evil stepmother who….. honestly, seems like a decent woman too. We literally get passages where Linda takes care of Page when Page got badly sick as a child. Linda managed to help get Page to the hospital after Page suffered a bad injury roller-blading.
So why does Page hate Linda so much? Well, Page hates Linda because one time Linda (who no doubt had to wash all of Page’s laundry when Page was staying with his dad) made fun of Page for having a “skidmark” in his underwear.
Apparently this skidmark joke totally traumatized Page. He has devoted PAGES of his memoir to this incident. No, I kid you not. And to top it all off, Linda later apologized for this incident.
But nope, Page is still traumatized. And Page has cut off all contact with his dad and stepmom because of all this. Which is a totally, totally, totally reasonable and not-at-all adolescent way to deal with this.
It just rubs me the wrong way because there are some of us who have had REAL abuse in our lives but we are making it work. We know our parents are flawed beings who were in a rough way. We know we are also flawed people and have done some insensitive things in our lives. We know we need to give forgiveness in the same way that we expect forgiveness from others.
A day or two into (Page’s dad’s) visit we sat in the parking lot of a Whole Foods after grabbing groceries. He turned to me, face filled with contemplation.
“What I wanted to talk to you about, well, I’ve been thinkin a lot about it…” he began. “I feel I have carried guilt for so long and I have finally come to a place where I can let of it.”
It wasn’t exactly what I’d expected but I still clung to the hope that this was the reckoning that could help us move forward.
“I’ve always felt so guilty for leaving your mother when you were little” — my brain twisted in confusion- “but if all that hadn’t happened, I never would have been with Linda.” I didn’t understand why he was saying this, why he was expressing it to me. I had felt so small and powerless growing up in that house with her. He continued, “I never would have had this life with her. I never would have had the love and happiness I have. I love her so much” ….
My lungs stopped working, chest on fire but still, the car a trap. The last time I was home I’d finally been able to share some of my experience, of my pain and the impact of growing up in that house. Here, again, it seemed my feelings were pushed aside, erase, an emotional punch to the gut.
Even reading this passage again is making me angry. Yeah, it’s all about YOUR feelings isn’t it Page? You demand constant affirmation from family and friends but when your dad asks that you accept a truth about his life, you pretend he’s out of line. That he’s hurting you. “Your daughter you’ve loved all your life is GONE dad! Don’t you dare feel a certain way about that. Don’t you dare say that you feel hurt by that! And don’t you dare tell me you love your wife either cuz that’s totally hurting me and denying me in some way! It’s all about ME!”
And I say this as someone who is not out to her family yet. Yeah, I’ve been over two years on HRT. My mom knows something is different about me. She’s said to me “You look different” even though I go fairly boymode when I meet her. “I know,” I say, “I’m still figuring things out.” And I know she knows and I see the sadness in her eyes. She’s had a son for so long and I know this will hurt her so badly.
So yeah, I’m feeling a certain way. I’m feeling a certain way about a wealthy white Canadian dude who grew up with loving parents, and struck it rich in Hollywood talking about how his life is constant trauma.
In Pageboy even the most anodyne interaction that does not carry massive affirmation for Page is portrayed as a form of trauma. Page compares a director asking him to wear a skirt and heels (remember, this was back when Page was identifying as a woman and was playing a character who was a woman) with a black actor experiencing racism.
Are there ANY good parts of Pageboy? Well, yeah, when Page stops with his trauma boners and actually talks about what it was like acting in iconic movies like Juno the book becomes less torturous. Also, I admit one part where Page talks about giving a blow job to his high school classmate (back when Page had a biologically female body and identified as a girl) is funny. He describes the male classmate’s erection as “firm and perky.” Using female descriptors to portray a male sexual response is a clever inversion of the trope. I laughed at that scene.
These crumbs aside, I am still so over Elliot Page. Listen, God knows I understand being trans is hard. And no, it’s not entirely the fault of society or JK Rowling or women looking uncomfortable when you walk into their bathrooms. It’s a lifelong fight against your biology. And it’s hard. Even trans people who have been accepted by their families and have good jobs and good lives will have life-long mental health issues. The stats bear that out. Older trans folks have spoken about the fight to keep their inner peace, and it’s not all about blaming outside forces.
I’m just begging Elliot Page to stop writing like a spoiled white emo brat. He needs to stop getting interviewed by major outlets while gray-faced and on the verge of tears mumbling about how much “trans joy” he’s experiencing. Elliot, either be joyful or get your head in order so that you CAN legitimately experience joy. Looking like you want to kill yourself while talking to young trans kids about how much trans joy you’re feeling comes off as gaslighting. It gives the transphobes a field day while sending a message to younger trans kids that “Man, if Elliot Page is the happiest I can expect to be as a trans person, maybe none of this is worth it.”
In short Page, drink your water. Take your meds. Wipe your ass. Stay off social media and stop whining every time someone says or does something that doesn’t meet your stringent social standards. Being trans is all about growing a tough skin and God knows you haven’t done that yet.
So man up and do it.