Becoming Nicole

Though Kelly believes that there is no such thing as a “normal” family, she notices that the transgender women she sees in the media tend to be presented as unusual and even frightening. When she first sees Jennifer Finney Boylan, a transgender woman who is also an author and an English professor, she reexamines her assumptions. Boylan is attractive, articulate, and professional. To Kelly, she represents normalcy. Though Boylan has had a difficult life, she seems well-adjusted and healthy. After seeing Boylan on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Kelly reads her memoir, She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders.

Swimming represents escape and relief for Wayne, who often retreats from the house to do laps in the lake. Wayne spends hours doing this because he finds it so jarring to see Wyatt assert his femininity, and because he has trouble coping with the way these actions make him feel. At one point, the local police ask him to stop spending so much time in the lake at night because it’s making some of the town’s residents worry about his safety.

For Wyatt/Nicole, swimming sometimes represents longing and progress. Going to the community pool in a bathing suit designed for a girl is an important moment that affirms her female identity. She also identifies with Ariel, the protagonist of The Little Mermaid, who feels a disconnect between the top of her body, which looks human, and the bottom half, which looks like a fish. Ariel swims to the surface of the sea to glimpse the human world she desperately wants to join. As she gets closer to the surface, she feels closer to being human and reaching her goal.

Both Wayne and Kelly grew up in small towns, and they love them so much that they decide to raise their children in a similar environment. Nutt clearly equates small-town life with a certain kind of social conservatism, one that involves patriotism and a strong focus on family. She also illustrates how privacy can be a challenge in a town so small that nearly all of the residents know each other’s business. Sometimes, when privacy is needed—for instance when a child is trying to figure out her gender identity—it can be hard to find in such an environment. This is one reason the Maineses lobby to have Nicole’s name change kept out of the local newspapers. In addition to noting small towns’ conservatism and lack of privacy, Nutt highlights how they can be insular. She makes a point of this when discussing the small towns of Maine, explaining how families who have inhabited the area for centuries tend to see people who move there as outsiders, even if they live there for the rest of their lives. This provides a segue to a discussion of other types of marginalization.