Welcome to Trans Tuesday! We’re gonna talk about something that kind of caught me completely off-guard, because I honestly never thought something like this could happen. Here’s THE PAST 2: THE NEW PAST aka FINDING OUR OWN REPRESENTATION 2, aka KJ AND PAPER GIRLS.
This is gonna be about life, and loss, and love, this is about Paper Girls, this is about KJ… and this is about me.
I can already feel myself getting emotional. Keep it together keep it together keep it together! No, it’s absolutely not the hormones, shut up I know what I’m talking about.
Mild spoilers ahead!
Some reading to start you off with the basics. Not required, but semi-related essays you might find interesting, and that are at least somewhat related. See BAD REPRESENTATION: LOVECRAFT COUNTRY and BAD REPRESENTATION: EMILIA PEREZ for what it does to us when trans rep goes very, very wrong.
And my essay on what GOOD REPRESENTATION: CYBERPUNK 2077 looks like and the great things it can do.
And see FINDING OUR OWN REPRESENTATION: P!NK, to learn about how good trans rep is so few and far between that we often have to get the rep we need from cis people who are making art about somewhat similar things.
The two that you should really read to fully grasp what I’m talking about are PHYSICAL REPRESENTATION AND THE HOLLYWOOD IDEAL (which is also about finding our own rep). Bonus: there’s talk of She-Hulk, well before the show happened!
And the most important one THE PAST AND WHY IT HAUNTS US, about how incredibly difficult it can be for trans people who transition as adults.
Okay, you’re up to speed. So let’s talk about KJ! KJ is a character from Paper Girls, which began life as a comic and then was adapted to a television series that sadly only got one season on Amazon Prime.
I knew nothing about it going in, other than it was sci-fi and there was maybe time travel and it starred four girls, and all of that was right in my wheelhouse. I hadn’t previously read the comics, though I heard great things. But I went in with no expectations.
I’m not going to spoil the show for you, unless some character details are enough to do that. See it for yourself though, it’s a great watch and we need a lot more media like it. Okay so… this is KJ on the right.
If you’re wondering what the connection is, let me direct you to this post I made as we were in the middle of watching the show.
I was stunned. I was speechless. Just… I don’t know, left breathless I guess? It’s so hard to describe even now, because it was so unexpected and so impossible to believe. And it didn’t hit me right away, it was halfway through the season when I realized what was happening.
To be clear, KJ is cisgender. She’s not trans. There are sadly no trans people to be found in Paper Girls, which is the case with most shows. Hey put more trans people in things, maybe? We exist. For more on that you can me reports on TRANS REPRESENTATION IN MEDIA 2022, 2023, and 2024.
I’ve talked multiple times about how much my hair has come to mean to me, figuring out the real me as it grew and I learned more about myself. See the essays on HAIR, and HAIR 2: MY FIRST HAIRCUT, when my hair started matching me and the person I am, and how overwhelming that was.
Even now, so much further into my transition, my hair remains my favorite physical feature. I cannot tell you how much I love it, if it’s not already apparent to you. And I’d never seen anyone else in anything we’ve watched with curly hair and curly bangs.
That alone was just wild. She looked like me! No, wait (here’s where the breath was knocked out of me): she looked like I might have, had I been allowed to be the real me in my own childhood.
I have no way to see old photos of myself with the real me in them. It’s a horrible, hurtful fact of my existence that will never ever change. There are no childhood photos of Tilly because she wasn’t allowed to exist when she was a child. You can see the follow-up to this very essay in THE NEW PAST 2: TRANS GRIEF, where I actually kind of got a glimpse of that and it kind of broke my brain and healed my heart. And you can see what joy there is to be found in grabbing onto a hint of your past here in the present in RECOVERING TRANS CHILDHOODS.
But thanks to a highly transphobic society and home life, my true self was kept from me without my consent. My truth was forced down, made to stay hidden. I didn’t get to be a little girl, or a pre-teen girl, or a teen girl, or a young adult woman. It was stolen from me. And if you don’t understand how that can happen, please see TRANS TRAUMA 2: SOCIETAL GASLIGHTING.
And so here with KJ was someone who looked like I might have, and that was so cool.
But I had no idea how much deeper it was gonna go.
Because, y’see, KJ is athletic and sporty. Just like me, even as a kid! She’s also really smart and cares about her friends a lot, just like me. She wants to help them, she wants to protect them, she feels her emotions deeply and has kindness in her core.
And then she learns a fact about her future identity (who she is as an adult) that she had no previous inkling of (as a kid)… that she’s gay and is attracted to ladies. Wait. I am attracted to ladies…
The way she struggled to accept this facet of herself, running through denial and curiosity and acceptance, mirrors so much about what I went through. There’s a moment she gets to talk to her future girlfriend, and asks her how she knew she was gay…
And KJ’s so eager to learn the answers, but is also scared about what it might mean and what people would think… and listen, listen. I know that’s something a whole lot of gay people go through. It is also what a whole lot of trans people go through.
Fina Strazza’s performance all the way through the series, but particularly in that moment, was so nuanced and beautiful and just touched my heart in so many ways.
KJ struggles with not wanting to be the person her parents want her to be. Ummm yes that’s me. She struggles with what they’ll think of her when they find out the truth, and has to hide it from them. Ummm yes also me. Are you ready for the kicker?
She wants to make movies when she grows up! She’s in awe of the art form and wants to create, and be part of it, and put new things into the world, in the hopes they’ll mean to others what those things meant to her. My wife and I are screenwriters! We wrote and directed a short film! C’mon!
Again, KJ is not trans, and I am. And she is Jewish, and I am not. But both are marginalized communities that face discrimination and violence, and while I am not saying the two are the same, there are some commonalities (that people of all marginalized communities share).
So what I’m getting at is that without any idea this was waiting for me going in, and without the creators of the comic and show having any indication this would be a possibility… they’ve given me a gift I can never repay.
Because in a sense, I feel like I really got to live vicariously through KJ. For those brief but glorious eight hours, I got to live a lifetime of missed experiences and memories through her. I got to see myself in her, in ways I’ve never been able to see myself in a character before.
It almost felt like a second childhood, in a way. Sure I never got to go on dangerous time travel adventures, but I also never got to hang out with cool friends who were girls, who accepted me and fought with me and loved me and argued with me in the way teens do.
I told you this was a story about life and loss and love, and that’s what it is. My own childhood was there, but it wasn’t really mine. It’s a loss I thought I’d never recover from. But through KJ, I found a small window into the life I could’ve had.
And though it’s bittersweet because it’s fiction, and it’s her story and not mine, it still gave me something I was missing, partially filled a longing that has always been with me and always will be. But I can always think of her and what could’ve been, and see myself in that story.
One day I hope there’s enough true trans representation in our media that I’ll be able to see a curly haired trans girl with curly bangs going on adventures and then… well, my heart just might explode. For now, we find it where we can get it. And KJ? She found me.
And for that I will love KJ with all my heart for the rest of my life. She’s important to me in ways few other characters are, and all entirely by chance. To Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang, thank you for creating her.
To Stephany Folsom and Fina Strazza, thank you thank you for healing part of my heart in a way I never thought possible, and in ways you likely never could have imagined. Thank you for giving me a piece of my life that was missing, if only for those sweet eight hours.
I keep saying it because it’s forever true: create, put your art and your heart out into the world.
You never know whose life you’re going to touch, right when they need it. Create, put your art and your heart out into the world. You never know whose life you’re going to touch.
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com