Becoming Nicole

Nicole’s sex reassignment surgery is supposed to take place the summer before she starts college. It’s expensive, about $20,000, but luckily, there is some money left over from the lawsuit against the school district. After the surgery is scheduled, it gets canceled because the Maineses don’t realize Nicole was supposed to stop taking estrogen a month before the procedure. Kelly scrambles to book her surgery with another doctor who has an opening that summer.

Once Nicole has healed from the surgery, it will be nearly impossible to tell that she hasn’t had female anatomy since birth. She is disappointed that she’ll never be able to become pregnant, and she worries that her new parts will feel alien, but she knows that surgery is the right choice for her. Though she is aware that she is not entirely defined by her physical form, she knows she will never feel connected to the world in a way that feels right unless she has a female body. She also feels that she promised Wyatt she’d have the surgery.

Nicole fears change despite wanting it desperately, and she is concerned that her gender dysphoria will return, but she knows she’ll be able to live life on her own terms after the surgery. She recovers from the procedure in Room 504 of the hospital. The number is ironic: It’s the same one printed on the policy the elementary school used to protect her and then marginalize her. Nicole’s best friend sends her a text telling her that she is like Ariel from the animated film The Little Mermaid, emerging from the sea in the form she desperately wants.

Nutt explains that the body holds stories and gives context to life experiences. She says Nicole searched for her story in mirrors, in Jonas, in the world surrounding her, and found it with help of family. At first, she wasn’t even able to describe the truth of her life in words, but her family members helped her find those words and even a new name for herself. With the surgery complete, things finally make sense and she finally feels free. Now she can move forward.

In the time since Becoming Nicole was written, rights for transgender people have expanded and gained recognition. Support for marriage equality has lent strength to the transgender movement. Nutt thinks there is no going back to the way things used to be. She also notes just how different things were roughly a half-century ago, citing a 1966 survey in which the medical and psychiatric professionals who responded believed transgender people were “severely neurotic” (260). When Becoming Nicole was published, bans on discrimination against transgender people existed in more than 200 cities, 18 states, and Washington, DC. Nutt also mentions how the Obama administration ended restrictions on transgender people serving in the military in July of 2015.

Nutt ends the book by explaining how children play an important role in the fight for equal rights. She says kids “spontaneously understand fairness and equality and accept differences in others,” something that never ceases to impress her (260). She also shares an anecdote from the elementary school Nicole and Jonas attended, and where Erhardt still works. Erhardt had the third graders draw pictures about a lesson on standing up for friends and classmates who are being bullied. One boy drew a picture of a giraffe. He colored it pink and teal. A little girl sitting near him asked why, and he told her that the giraffe was transgender, like a girl who went to their school. The little girl thinks this is cool, like frogs that can have more than one gender. The two children agree that being a transgender person isn’t a big deal, as long as that person is happy.