the Glow Up

once again. And she doesn’t need to wrap herself up in a cocoon or isolate herself to undergo this transformation; rather, there is a sense that life itself and active participation in it is at the core of her reinvention.

Unlike straight, white and cisgender reinvention, which chases and reinforces an already-established standard of beauty, trans reinvention is the creation of something new — an inside-out transformation rather than outside-in. While popular manifestations of reinvention (the stuff from TikTok) show us how to become something new, trans reinventions show us how to create something new. Becoming is just a replication of what’s already been done before; creating is an artistic process that comes from a reflection of one’s true self.

“creating” comes from none other than Bugs Bunny. In the Netflix documentary “Disclosure,” which explores Hollywood’s impact on trans identity, two trans creatives cite Bugs Bunny as a positive representation of being trans.

If you’re not familiar with Bugs, he spends much of his screen time eluding hunter Elmer Fudd. And one of his best defenses is dressing as a woman. Rather than criticizing or mocking femininity, though, it grants Bugs a unique type of power. Bugs can survive, so long as he is taken for a woman.

“When Bugs Bunny was doing ‘girl,’ Bugs Bunny was desirable and powerful,” historian Susan Stryker says in the documentary. She extols Bugs Bunny as being the only positive representation of trans femininity when she was growing up in the ‘60s.

In Bugs Bunny’s transformation, we can find an example of how breaking gender boundaries can enable survival. In the show, Bugs is only surviving Elmer Fudd. But in real life, survival can mean the emotional and spiritual peace that comes with living as your true self. And in creating a new expression for himself, Bugs also creates a new power that he wasn't able to access before. (In Bugs’ story, we can also find reflections of real pressures to “pass” as cisgender. What would happen if Elmer Fudd realized it was really Bugs all along? The cartoon is surprisingly illustrative of complex trans experiences.)

So if reinvention enables trans folks to “level up” and find new power, why do so many stories of reinvention fall short — not just in terms of cis reinvention but in media portrayals of trans reinvention, too?

Reinvention is too often seen as catching up to what’s already popular or as an angry abandonment of the self. But reinvention can be much more. Reinvention can be the uprooting of some truth that hides within us, buried beneath layers of constructs and expectations. Reinvention can be the creation of a new truth, one which expresses our individuality beyond what has been modeled before.

In a 2018 tweet that can be found across the internet, author Julian K. Jarboe wrote, “God blessed me by making me transsexual for the same reason he made wheat but not bread and fruit but not wine: because he wants humanity to share in the act of creation. I am only doing the Good Works here on Earth as intended!” Maybe reinvention is much more than how we’ve conceptualized it before — maybe it’s the stuff of gods.

Transforming yourself can be a freeing process,