Elliot Page Reflects on Pre-Transition Pain: “I Could Not Picture Myself as a Woman Aging”
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Elliot Page is opening up about his experience since coming out as transgender and nonbinary toward the tail end of 2020.
In a guest column for Esquire published Wednesday, Page reflected on how he received love and support from many people after his announcement but also “hatred and cruelty and vitriol” from others.
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Page described transphobia as “just so, so, so extreme” and brought up the damaging consequences of jokes, explaining that while some people may think a joke is simply a joke, they have an impact and can cause harm. “It’s not a joke,” writes Page. “You believe what you’re saying. You believe it. It’s not a joke. They believe it. It’s clearly not a joke. And all we’re saying is: Can you just please listen and understand the harm that it causes? That’s all we’re trying to say. That is literally all we are trying to say.”
Page writes in the column that he can relate to the suicide problem among trans people, particularly during the time he himself lost significant amounts of weight and experienced panic attacks. “There were moments of wanting to not be here, but that was just the sensation that I was left with. It wasn’t a movement for action—other than the ways in which I was abusing my body, clearly. I would look out the window of my apartment and think, With everything going on right now and how incredible it all is, this is how I feel? And I’m twenty-two? It was like, I don’t know if I could do it.”
But in thinking about what he has learned from transitioning, Page, now 35, has a clear, positive answer: “I can’t overstate the biggest joy, which is really seeing yourself.” The actor says he knows that he looks different to others, “but to me I’m just starting to look like myself.” Page, who calls the feeling “indescribable,” writes that “the greatest joy is just being able to feel present, literally, just to be present.”
Recalling his time on the Juno publicity circuit, Page — who was nominated for an Academy Award in 2007 for the film — remembers how he was not permitted to choose his clothing for the premiere, while other castmembers, such as Michael Cera, were seemingly given more leniency.
“I remember the premiere of Juno at the Toronto International Film Festival,” Page recalls, adding that he grew up working in Canada and wasn’t accustomed to the idea of having a stylist. “I dressed how I wanted to dress — not dissimilar to now,” wrote Page, explaining that he came to understand “the degree of expectation of how fancy someone is supposed to look.” He recalls expressing that he wanted to wear a suit, and being told, “No, you need to wear a dress” by Fox Searchlight.
“And they took me in a big rush to one of those fancy stores on Bloor Street,” says Page. “They had me wear a dress, and . . . that was that. And then all the Juno press, all the photo shoots — Michael Cera was in slacks and sneakers. I look back at the photos, and I’m like . . .?”
Reflecting on the situation now, Page writes that it was “extremely fucked up,” and he shouldn’t have to treat it “like just this thing that happened — this somewhat normal thing.” The actor emphasizes: “It’s like: No. Regardless of me being trans! I’ve had people who’ve apologized about things: ‘Sorry, I didn’t know, I didn’t know at the time.’ It doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter if I’m trans or cis. Lots of cis women dress how I dress. That has nothing to fucking do with it.”
While Juno was obviously a massive success, both in terms of general popularity, people’s love (teenage girls especially) for the titular character, and the profits it brought in, Page recalls struggling with food, depression and anxiety during that time, and finds it “gross” that he was forced to dress in a way that wasn’t comfortable. “I wish I could go back and experience it now. As me.”
In a moment of reflection on his experience, Page, whose memoir, Pageboy is set to release next year, writes: “I could not picture myself as a woman aging. Obviously. It was just like, what is my future? There’s not a future. That’s kind of what it felt like. I would say, verbatim: I’ve never been a girl. I’ll never be a woman.”
The actor, who will be seen in season three of The Umbrella Academy when it debuts on Netflix on June 22, goes on to consider the possibility of being typecast in the future. Page asks: “You wouldn’t say to J-Law or Rooney Mara or someone, are they worried about getting typecast as cis straight women?” The actor says that, at the same time, of course he wants a space where trans people are getting cast as cis characters.
For Page, there is a sense of euphoria in the simple daily tasks of life, such as waking up, sitting down with a book and actually reading it — because, at one stage in his life, he experienced a “degree of discomfort” that “got in the way of everything.”
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