Listen to Your Kids
A tendency exists among adults to discount what children insist they are feeling and to tell them that they are wrong. This is a strange phenomenon that may exist widely but seem to be inordinately applied to kids. Jazz is insistent about how she is a girl despite all outward appearances to contrary. She knows better than anyone else, but the reaction in almost similar case is instant denial or rejection by adults, especially parents.
Watch For Mermaids
Literally the first image of Jazz in the narrative is on portraying her with a mermaid doll. Just a page later she is herself portrayed as a mermaid and she professes her love for the legendary creature. As the story progresses, images and references to mermaids recur again. Jazz’s story is far from the only transgender narrative to prominently feature mermaids. (Most are very heavy on the specific example of Ariel.) The mermaid features again in stories of transcended girls because it is so perfectly symbolic of the trans experience: looking female from the waist up, but gender ambiguity below the waist. The subtle recurrence of mermaid imagery reflects the subtlety of the hints about potential gender issues in little bits who express an interest in mermaids of a type usually expected in little girls. Non-appropriate gender terms used for clarification.
Transphobia and Fashion
This book points out yet again how the main issue with transphobia seems to related to clothing. At an age when it really doesn’t matter whether she looks like a boy or girl, Jazz wants to wear female clothes but is discouraged from doing so in public. At first, she is prohibited from dressing like a girl at school. All this while girls all around her are wearing pants and T-shirts and baseball caps and all manner of so-called boys’ fashions without raising an eyebrow. The double standard of fashion seems to be the foundation of transphobia and what makes this all the more absurd is that once upon a time the standard cut both ways. Joan of Arc was executed for wearing pants. So, at least there is opportunity to hope things even back out again in another 500 years or so.
