Palacios 1
Kiara Palacios
Calkin
COMM 150
03/18/16
How to Be a Girl: A Mother and Her Transgender Daughter Explore Gender
The video I chose, “How to Be a Girl: A Mother and Her Transgender Daughter Explore
Gender,” is about a mother and her son whom ultimately figured out that he is a little girl rather
than a little boy. The message of this video strongly emphasized the concept of identity. The
mother’s son started off his life wearing dresses and skirts to playing with Barbie’s until it
eventually shifted to him simply stating that he was a girl. At first, I do not think the mother
accepted the fact that he wanted to be a girl, not in a bad way but rather shocked. She started
telling him that he could be a boy but do all the things he liked that little girls do. A few years
passed and she realized that it wasn’t just a phase, it was him, it was his identity. He was a her,
not a him. At that moment she told him that it was okay to say he was a girl and they told
everyone from friends to family members that she was a girl. I personally think this video can be
reflected on for two audiences: confused individuals who are scared of their identity because of
what society will think of them, and parents who are currently stumbling upon the fact that their
child is transgender. Either way, it sends an extremely positive message. It helps transgender
individuals because they can understand that it is a life choice from any point of one’s life, even
with the child in the video who concluded that he was a girl at the age of three. Additionally, I
think it sends an even more positive message to parents with transgender children because the
mother in the video accepted her transgender son and she knew that would make him happy. She
never tried to resist what he wanted as a girl or tried to push other identities on him. Which
brings me to the first topic I think the video relates to that we talked in class about,
ascribed identities, which means that there are identities that are society puts on you. In this
Palacios 2
case, the little boy in the video concluded his own avowed identity, meaning that he put his
on identity on himself.
This video was definitely created because it is now an everyday occurrence that a child
