Becoming Nicole

Mirrors symbolize looking inward and searching for one’s self-identity in Becoming Nicole. When we first meet Wyatt, he’s dancing in front of the reflective window of an oven door, mesmerized by his image. Ariel the mermaid, one of Wyatt’s favorite heroines, grapples with the disconnect between her body and her inner self when she gazes into a mirror. When Wyatt is asked to draw what he sees in the mirror for a school project, he turns in a picture of a girl with long, curly hair and makeup, suggesting that he really does perceive himself to be a female. And at the end of the book, Nutt emphasizes how Nicole searched for her story in mirrors and in her mirror image: her identical twin brother, Jonas. Ironically, the boy who looks so much like her but is so different on the inside is integral to her process of finding herself and her place in the world.

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.