Beyond the Glow Up

Trans stories of reinvention constitute an artistic creation of the self

When you hear the word “reinvention,” what comes to mind? A caterpillar, hanging itself up and wrapping itself in silk, waiting to emerge as something more beautiful (or perhaps more palatable to society) as if by a miracle. A lonely teenager donning thick black eyeliner and new clothes like Kat in “Euphoria,” who shows up to high school dressed like a dominatrix. “You look different," Kat's love interest tells her, and she responds: “I changed.” An endless stream of “glow up transformation” videos, pretty-thin-cisgender-white girls who dye their hair blonder and drink nothing but juice for a few days. They buy trending makeup products and monochromatic Aritzia outfits, appearing on screen at the end of a 15-minute video as something aspirational, something ostensibly better than before.

Transformation, for many of us, is optional. We might hope to reinvent and rebrand ourselves, especially as social media pushes micro-trend cycles, encouraging the grouping of ourselves into aesthetics and enforcing an unattainable standard of beauty. Reinvention is a choice we might make out of curiosity, or even insecurity. If you relate to what’s been written here thus far, you might belong to a privileged group for which reinvention is optional.

And if you aren’t part of this privileged group, reinvention is much more than a fun activity or a meandering self-exploration. Reinvention can also be a necessity: it can breathe life into one’s physical body and bring truth to the way they are seen. 

There still aren’t many complex representations of transness in the media, and the transgender characters we do see often fall into transphobic tropes or, at the very least, tropes which minimize the complexity of the human experience. But in some trans media, we are privy to the type of reinvention that constitutes an art form: the creation of the self. 

The most recent and perhaps most popular representation of trans identity is Jules from “Euphoria.” As in most shows with trans characters, her characterization feels incomplete. But as far as representation goes, Jules — and her actress Hunter Schafer, who has equally taken the world by storm — is certainly notable. 

In the third episode of “Euphoria,” protagonist Rue says, “I’ve never met anyone in my entire life like Jules.” It’s clear to the viewer too that Jules is unique. Jules’ style stands out from the conventional fashion sense of the girls around her. She exhibits hyperfemininity through pastels, mini skirts, cropped tees and long blonde hair, bringing to mind a type of artistic self-creation that the other characters lack.  And where trans characters are typically placed on either side of a harsh line — pre-transition (not cis-passing) or post-transition (cis-passing) — Jules pushes against this binary view of transness. There’s never an explicit discussion of Jules’ gender or transition, she just says she’s “leveling up.” With each level, she gets a little further in her great masterpiece: herself.

“So what level are you at now?” her friend Anna asks near the end of Season 1. “I don’t know,” Jules says. “But I definitely haven’t reached my full power.”

She gets closer to her “full power” in the show’s second season. She cuts her hair and wears more androgynous pieces. Lest we think Jules is a fixed manic-pixie-dream-girl, she goes through reinvention once again. And she doesn’t need to wrap herself up in a cocoon or isolate herself to undergo this transformation; rather, there is a sense that life itself and active participation in it is at the core of her reinvention. 

Unlike straight, white and cisgender reinvention, which chases and reinforces an already-established standard of beauty, trans reinvention is the creation of something new — an inside-out transformation rather than outside-in. While popular manifestations of reinvention (the stuff from TikTok) show us how to become something new, trans reinventions show us how to create something new. Becoming is just a replication of what’s already been done before; creating is an artistic process that comes from a reflection of one’s true self.

An interesting example of this “creating” comes from none other than Bugs Bunny. In the Netflix documentary “Disclosure,” which explores Hollywood’s impact on trans identity, two trans creatives cite Bugs Bunny as a positive representation of being trans. 

If you’re not familiar with Bugs, he spends much of his screen time eluding hunter Elmer Fudd. And one of his best defenses is dressing as a woman. Rather than criticizing or mocking femininity, though, it grants Bugs a unique type of power. Bugs can survive, so long as he is taken for a woman. 

“When Bugs Bunny was doing ‘girl,’ Bugs Bunny was desirable and powerful,” historian Susan Stryker says in the documentary. She extols Bugs Bunny as being the only positive representation of trans femininity when she was growing up in the ‘60s.

In Bugs Bunny’s transformation, we can find an example of how breaking gender boundaries can enable survival. In the show, Bugs is only surviving Elmer Fudd. But in real life, survival can mean the emotional and spiritual peace that comes with living as your true self. And in creating a new expression for himself, Bugs also creates a new power that he wasn't able to access before. (In Bugs’ story, we can also find reflections of real pressures to “pass” as cisgender. What would happen if Elmer Fudd realized it was really Bugs all along? The cartoon is surprisingly illustrative of complex trans experiences.)

So if reinvention enables trans folks to “level up” and find new power, why do so many stories of reinvention fall short — not just in terms of cis reinvention but in media portrayals of trans reinvention, too?

Reinvention is too often seen as catching up to what’s already popular or as an angry abandonment of the self. But reinvention can be much more. Reinvention can be the uprooting of some truth that hides within us, buried beneath layers of constructs and expectations. Reinvention can be the creation of a new truth, one which expresses our individuality beyond what has been modeled before. 

In a 2018 tweet that can be found across the internet, author Julian K. Jarboe wrote, “God blessed me by making me transsexual for the same reason he made wheat but not bread and fruit but not wine: because he wants humanity to share in the act of creation. I am only doing the Good Works here on Earth as intended!” Maybe reinvention is much more than how we’ve conceptualized it before — maybe it’s the stuff of gods.