Becoming Nicole

by

Amy Ellis Nutt

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on Becoming Nicole makes teaching easy.

Nicole/Wyatt Maines Character Analysis

The protagonist of the book. Nicole is a transgender young woman who was born a biological male named Wyatt. As an infant, Wyatt is adopted by Kelly and Wayne Maines at birth, along with his identical twin brother Jonas. From an early age, Wyatt recognizes that despite his male anatomy, he strongly identifies as a girl. He prefers feminine activities and roles when he and Jonas act out stories, and favors dolls over action figures. Wyatt prefers wearing dresses rather than the flannels that Kelly buys for Wyatt and Jonas. Wyatt is also obsessed with The Little Mermaid from a young age. Over the course of Wyatt’s childhood, despite not having the vocabulary to understand what he is going through, he has a very clear sense of himself and knows that he should not have to change herself to be accepted—rather, it is the people around her who have to adjust their ideas of who she is. Still, Wyatt faces a lot of challenges over her school years: his father struggles to accept his identity, he faces discrimination and bullying when she uses the girls’ restroom in elementary school, and he feels anxious at the prospect of going through puberty as a boy. But Wyatt is gradually able to expresses his feminine identity more openly, taking on female pronouns and changing his name to Nicole. With the support of her family and the help of pediatric specialist Dr. Norman Spack, Nicole is able to take puberty blockers and eventually receive sex reassignment surgery, a transition from a male to a female that is deeply gratifying and affirming to the identity she has longed to express for so many years. Nicole also wins several legal victories in the state of Maine: she wins a case that forces her school (and others) to create a more inclusive bathroom policy, she helps defeat a bill that would allow businesses to choose the restrooms its patrons can use, and she and Wayne help to change the policy at the University of Maine so that sex reassignment surgery is covered by its insurance. In these victories, Nicole not only demonstrates courage, but also the power of someone being out and proud of their identity. Only by living this way is Nicole able to advocate for her rights and the rights of others.

Nicole/Wyatt Maines Quotes in Becoming Nicole

The Becoming Nicole quotes below are all either spoken by Nicole/Wyatt Maines or refer to Nicole/Wyatt Maines. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Gender Identity, Expression, and Transformation Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

By the time Wayne reached home and embraced Kelly, he was smiling, thinking not about the added expenses but about the double joy: two baseball gloves, two basketballs, two rifles for his two baby boys!

Related Characters: Nicole/Wyatt Maines, Kelly Maines, Wayne Maines, Jonas Maines, Sarah
Page Number: 13
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

Part human, part fish, Ariel, with her shiny green scales, is decidedly a mermaid below the waist. But above it, with her long hair and luscious red lips, she is all girl.

Ariel’s problem, however, is that she lives in one world, under the sea, even as she yearns to be in another, on land. As she gazes at her image in a mirror beneath the waves, she feels comforted by the top half of her reflection. It’s the bottom that doesn’t make sense.

Related Characters: Nicole/Wyatt Maines, Jonas Maines
Related Symbols: The Little Mermaid
Page Number: 22
Explanation and Analysis:

“Daddy, I hate my penis.”

Jolted out of his reverie, Wayne tried to take in the words his precious son had just uttered. Then he reached down, scooped up the young boy, and hugged him fiercely. He kissed away the tears in Wyatt’s eyes. He kissed the tip of his nose, his cheeks, his lips, all the while fighting back his own tears.

Related Characters: Nicole/Wyatt Maines (speaker), Wayne Maines, Jonas Maines
Page Number: 23-24
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

Kelly was learning to do things pretty much on her own for both boys, but especially Wyatt. He clamored to wear the same colorful clothes as Leah, and rather than wear the flannel shirt his mother bought him to match Jonas’s, he would go bare chested. Kelly felt it was cruel to keep dressing Wyatt in clothes he hated, so she made the decision, without Wayne’s input, to shop every now and then for something less masculine for Wyatt to wear.

Related Characters: Nicole/Wyatt Maines, Kelly Maines, Wayne Maines, Jonas Maines, Leah
Page Number: 25
Explanation and Analysis:

One evening, when the twins were about three years old and had been tucked in for the night, Kelly sat down at the computer in the living room and typed five words into the search engine:

“Boys who like girls’ toys.”

It was both a question and a statement of fact. For Kelly, it was also a beginning. She scrolled through science articles, online forums, and medical sites. She read about homosexuality, transsexualism—wasn’t that what drag queens were?—and something called transgender. She read for hours.

Related Characters: Nicole/Wyatt Maines, Kelly Maines
Page Number: 27
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

“Are you going to let him wear that?” Wayne asked.

Kelly didn’t answer. Instead, she raced up to Wyatt, hot tears now streaking his face, took him by the hand, and led him back into his bedroom. It was, she knew right then and there, the worst moment of her life. It wasn’t so much the reaction of the people at the party, who were mostly stunned into silence—that was Wayne’s issue—but rather the hurt her son was experiencing, and for no good reason other than that he wanted to wear his princess dress to the family’s party.

Related Characters: Wayne Maines (speaker), Nicole/Wyatt Maines, Kelly Maines, Jonas Maines
Page Number: 37
Explanation and Analysis:

Wayne was also trying to make sense of Wyatt, in his own way, but mostly he was hoping these were all things his son would simply outgrow. He didn’t want to think about his son being gay. It was fine if the sons of other fathers were gay, because he had no problem working with gay people or his children having gay friends. He just didn’t want that for his son. It would be too hard his whole life, and Wayne was afraid he wouldn’t know how to be the kind of father Wyatt would want—or need.

Related Characters: Nicole/Wyatt Maines, Kelly Maines, Wayne Maines
Page Number: 40
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

You think you are the only person in the world that has this. In fact, we now know that there are tens and tens of thousands of people in this country alone who have this. One scholar says that it’s as common as multiple sclerosis, it’s as common as a cleft palate. It’s something that many people in the country and across the world have, but these people are living in silence and shame because they are afraid to speak the truth.

Related Characters: Jennifer Finney Boylan (speaker), Nicole/Wyatt Maines, Kelly Maines
Page Number: 47
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

Wyatt was flooded with relief, knowing there was someone out there just like him. Wayne couldn’t believe it. Wyatt, he realized, had all the same anger issues, and he and Kelly all the same anxieties, but Jazz’s parents were openly discussing them on national TV. Wayne fought back tears for the rest of the hour.

Related Characters: Nicole/Wyatt Maines, Kelly Maines, Wayne Maines, Jennifer Finney Boylan, Jazz Jennings
Page Number: 81
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

In other words, our genitals and our gender identity are not the same. Sexual anatomy and gender identity are the products of two different processes, occurring at distinctly different times and along different neural pathways before we are even born. Both are functions of genes as well as hormones, and while sexual anatomy and gender identity usually match, there are dozens of biological events that can affect the outcome of the latter and cause an incongruence between the two.

Related Characters: Nicole/Wyatt Maines
Page Number: 89
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 18 Quotes

For Wayne, this was the first time he’d shown any kind of public support for Wyatt being transgender. His instincts as a father had been tested without his even realizing it, and he’d responded to the challenge. The petition was granted, and in a matter of days Wyatt Benjamin Maines would officially and legally become Nicole Amber Maines.

Related Characters: Nicole/Wyatt Maines, Kelly Maines, Wayne Maines
Page Number: 118
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 23 Quotes

There was Jacob, staring her down. She knew exactly what was about to happen. The moment the door of the girls’ restroom closed behind her, it opened again and there he was. Later, in the principal’s office, Nicole was told she shouldn’t have been using the girls’ bathroom in the first place, which only made her feel like the school was pointing out: Here are all the normal kids, and here are you.

Related Characters: Nicole/Wyatt Maines, Jacob Melanson, Paul Melanson
Page Number: 140
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 26 Quotes

Their receptor gene for the male sex hormone testosterone was longer than in gender-conforming males and appeared to be less efficient at signaling the uptake of male hormones in utero, resulting in a more “feminized” brain.

Related Characters: Nicole/Wyatt Maines
Page Number: 160
Explanation and Analysis:

Researchers in epigenetics seek to explain the no-man’s-land between nature and nurture where environment influences a person’s genetic makeup. This happens when changes in the environment trigger some genes to activate and others to deactivate. Identical twins may have the exact same DNA, but not the exact same molecular switches. Those switches often depend not only on environmental influences outside the womb—what the mother does, how she feels, what she eats, drinks, or smokes—but inside the womb as well.

Related Characters: Nicole/Wyatt Maines, Wayne Maines, Jonas Maines
Page Number: 161
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 27 Quotes

“The only dependable test for gender is the truth of a person’s life, the lives we live each day,” Jennifer Finney Boylan once wrote. “Surely the best judge of a person’s gender is not a degrading, questionable examination. The best judge of a person’s gender is what lies within her, or his, heart. How do we test for the gender of the heart, then?”

Related Characters: Jennifer Finney Boylan (speaker), Nicole/Wyatt Maines, Jonas Maines
Page Number: 166
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 28 Quotes

Kelly and the kids would move to Portland, and Wayne would commute on weekends and holidays to be with them. They’d always thought they were on an upward trajectory in their lives, with success and promotions at work fueling an increasingly better lifestyle, but Jacob and his grandfather Paul Melanson had bizarrely changed all that. Suddenly, Wayne and Kelly were downsizing and their lives were in reverse.

Related Characters: Nicole/Wyatt Maines, Kelly Maines, Wayne Maines, Jonas Maines, Jacob Melanson, Paul Melanson
Page Number: 173
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 30 Quotes

The hardest times were keeping her mouth shut when she’d hear someone say “Oh, that’s so gay,” which kids often did. She knew if she tried to object, the other person would only say, “Why do you care? Are you gay?” And then she’d be stuck. She had good reason to challenge others’ prejudices, but she couldn’t because they hit too close to home. So she kept her mouth shut, buttoned down her anger, and sealed off her sense of self-righteousness.

Related Characters: Nicole/Wyatt Maines, Jonas Maines
Page Number: 184
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 31 Quotes

It was impossible for the Maineses not to feel the importance of their case among these hardworking people, and they realized that their lawsuit wasn’t just about Nicole or their family. It wasn’t even just their story anymore. The lawsuit, even though it was just a state case, had meaning and significance for many others. And now Wayne, Kelly, Nicole, and Jonas would carry the hopes of those others with them as they sought affirmation from the courts.

Related Characters: Nicole/Wyatt Maines, Kelly Maines, Wayne Maines, Jonas Maines
Page Number: 195
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 37 Quotes

Jonas said, “Dad, should 1go get her?” It was always his instinct to shepherd his sister. Wayne and Kelly had asked a lot of their only son, and sometimes they forgot the sacrifices he’d had to make being Nicole’s brother. Wayne hugged him and told him how proud he was of him for looking out for Nicole all these years, for worrying about her, and for stepping up whenever and wherever he was needed.

Related Characters: Jonas Maines (speaker), Nicole/Wyatt Maines, Wayne Maines
Page Number: 219
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 42 Quotes

He always remembered that there was something to be gained from putting up with everyone else’s nonsense—he was going to have the body that he always felt like he deserved and was meant to have. And that made it all—the harassment and the bad feelings and the discomfort and the awkwardness—worth it.

I feel like I need to have surgery because I promised him.

Related Characters: Nicole/Wyatt Maines (speaker)
Page Number: 254
Explanation and Analysis:

Her good friend Lexie texted, “HOW U FEELIN?” And then, “YOU’RE LIKE ARIEL,” the little mermaid who emerged from the sea in the form she’d always longed for.

Nicole’s transition was now complete. She would still need to take female hormones the rest of her life, and she would never be able to have her own children, but she knew she wanted to marry a man some day and adopt.

Related Characters: Nicole/Wyatt Maines
Related Symbols: The Little Mermaid
Page Number: 259
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Becoming Nicole LitChart as a printable PDF.
Becoming Nicole PDF

Nicole/Wyatt Maines Quotes in Becoming Nicole

The Becoming Nicole quotes below are all either spoken by Nicole/Wyatt Maines or refer to Nicole/Wyatt Maines. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Gender Identity, Expression, and Transformation Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

By the time Wayne reached home and embraced Kelly, he was smiling, thinking not about the added expenses but about the double joy: two baseball gloves, two basketballs, two rifles for his two baby boys!

Related Characters: Nicole/Wyatt Maines, Kelly Maines, Wayne Maines, Jonas Maines, Sarah
Page Number: 13
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

Part human, part fish, Ariel, with her shiny green scales, is decidedly a mermaid below the waist. But above it, with her long hair and luscious red lips, she is all girl.

Ariel’s problem, however, is that she lives in one world, under the sea, even as she yearns to be in another, on land. As she gazes at her image in a mirror beneath the waves, she feels comforted by the top half of her reflection. It’s the bottom that doesn’t make sense.

Related Characters: Nicole/Wyatt Maines, Jonas Maines
Related Symbols: The Little Mermaid
Page Number: 22
Explanation and Analysis:

“Daddy, I hate my penis.”

Jolted out of his reverie, Wayne tried to take in the words his precious son had just uttered. Then he reached down, scooped up the young boy, and hugged him fiercely. He kissed away the tears in Wyatt’s eyes. He kissed the tip of his nose, his cheeks, his lips, all the while fighting back his own tears.

Related Characters: Nicole/Wyatt Maines (speaker), Wayne Maines, Jonas Maines
Page Number: 23-24
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

Kelly was learning to do things pretty much on her own for both boys, but especially Wyatt. He clamored to wear the same colorful clothes as Leah, and rather than wear the flannel shirt his mother bought him to match Jonas’s, he would go bare chested. Kelly felt it was cruel to keep dressing Wyatt in clothes he hated, so she made the decision, without Wayne’s input, to shop every now and then for something less masculine for Wyatt to wear.

Related Characters: Nicole/Wyatt Maines, Kelly Maines, Wayne Maines, Jonas Maines, Leah
Page Number: 25
Explanation and Analysis:

One evening, when the twins were about three years old and had been tucked in for the night, Kelly sat down at the computer in the living room and typed five words into the search engine:

“Boys who like girls’ toys.”

It was both a question and a statement of fact. For Kelly, it was also a beginning. She scrolled through science articles, online forums, and medical sites. She read about homosexuality, transsexualism—wasn’t that what drag queens were?—and something called transgender. She read for hours.

Related Characters: Nicole/Wyatt Maines, Kelly Maines
Page Number: 27
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

“Are you going to let him wear that?” Wayne asked.

Kelly didn’t answer. Instead, she raced up to Wyatt, hot tears now streaking his face, took him by the hand, and led him back into his bedroom. It was, she knew right then and there, the worst moment of her life. It wasn’t so much the reaction of the people at the party, who were mostly stunned into silence—that was Wayne’s issue—but rather the hurt her son was experiencing, and for no good reason other than that he wanted to wear his princess dress to the family’s party.

Related Characters: Wayne Maines (speaker), Nicole/Wyatt Maines, Kelly Maines, Jonas Maines
Page Number: 37
Explanation and Analysis:

Wayne was also trying to make sense of Wyatt, in his own way, but mostly he was hoping these were all things his son would simply outgrow. He didn’t want to think about his son being gay. It was fine if the sons of other fathers were gay, because he had no problem working with gay people or his children having gay friends. He just didn’t want that for his son. It would be too hard his whole life, and Wayne was afraid he wouldn’t know how to be the kind of father Wyatt would want—or need.

Related Characters: Nicole/Wyatt Maines, Kelly Maines, Wayne Maines
Page Number: 40
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

You think you are the only person in the world that has this. In fact, we now know that there are tens and tens of thousands of people in this country alone who have this. One scholar says that it’s as common as multiple sclerosis, it’s as common as a cleft palate. It’s something that many people in the country and across the world have, but these people are living in silence and shame because they are afraid to speak the truth.

Related Characters: Jennifer Finney Boylan (speaker), Nicole/Wyatt Maines, Kelly Maines
Page Number: 47
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

Wyatt was flooded with relief, knowing there was someone out there just like him. Wayne couldn’t believe it. Wyatt, he realized, had all the same anger issues, and he and Kelly all the same anxieties, but Jazz’s parents were openly discussing them on national TV. Wayne fought back tears for the rest of the hour.

Related Characters: Nicole/Wyatt Maines, Kelly Maines, Wayne Maines, Jennifer Finney Boylan, Jazz Jennings
Page Number: 81
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

In other words, our genitals and our gender identity are not the same. Sexual anatomy and gender identity are the products of two different processes, occurring at distinctly different times and along different neural pathways before we are even born. Both are functions of genes as well as hormones, and while sexual anatomy and gender identity usually match, there are dozens of biological events that can affect the outcome of the latter and cause an incongruence between the two.

Related Characters: Nicole/Wyatt Maines
Page Number: 89
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 18 Quotes

For Wayne, this was the first time he’d shown any kind of public support for Wyatt being transgender. His instincts as a father had been tested without his even realizing it, and he’d responded to the challenge. The petition was granted, and in a matter of days Wyatt Benjamin Maines would officially and legally become Nicole Amber Maines.

Related Characters: Nicole/Wyatt Maines, Kelly Maines, Wayne Maines
Page Number: 118
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 23 Quotes

There was Jacob, staring her down. She knew exactly what was about to happen. The moment the door of the girls’ restroom closed behind her, it opened again and there he was. Later, in the principal’s office, Nicole was told she shouldn’t have been using the girls’ bathroom in the first place, which only made her feel like the school was pointing out: Here are all the normal kids, and here are you.

Related Characters: Nicole/Wyatt Maines, Jacob Melanson, Paul Melanson
Page Number: 140
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 26 Quotes

Their receptor gene for the male sex hormone testosterone was longer than in gender-conforming males and appeared to be less efficient at signaling the uptake of male hormones in utero, resulting in a more “feminized” brain.

Related Characters: Nicole/Wyatt Maines
Page Number: 160
Explanation and Analysis:

Researchers in epigenetics seek to explain the no-man’s-land between nature and nurture where environment influences a person’s genetic makeup. This happens when changes in the environment trigger some genes to activate and others to deactivate. Identical twins may have the exact same DNA, but not the exact same molecular switches. Those switches often depend not only on environmental influences outside the womb—what the mother does, how she feels, what she eats, drinks, or smokes—but inside the womb as well.

Related Characters: Nicole/Wyatt Maines, Wayne Maines, Jonas Maines
Page Number: 161
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 27 Quotes

“The only dependable test for gender is the truth of a person’s life, the lives we live each day,” Jennifer Finney Boylan once wrote. “Surely the best judge of a person’s gender is not a degrading, questionable examination. The best judge of a person’s gender is what lies within her, or his, heart. How do we test for the gender of the heart, then?”

Related Characters: Jennifer Finney Boylan (speaker), Nicole/Wyatt Maines, Jonas Maines
Page Number: 166
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 28 Quotes

Kelly and the kids would move to Portland, and Wayne would commute on weekends and holidays to be with them. They’d always thought they were on an upward trajectory in their lives, with success and promotions at work fueling an increasingly better lifestyle, but Jacob and his grandfather Paul Melanson had bizarrely changed all that. Suddenly, Wayne and Kelly were downsizing and their lives were in reverse.

Related Characters: Nicole/Wyatt Maines, Kelly Maines, Wayne Maines, Jonas Maines, Jacob Melanson, Paul Melanson
Page Number: 173
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 30 Quotes

The hardest times were keeping her mouth shut when she’d hear someone say “Oh, that’s so gay,” which kids often did. She knew if she tried to object, the other person would only say, “Why do you care? Are you gay?” And then she’d be stuck. She had good reason to challenge others’ prejudices, but she couldn’t because they hit too close to home. So she kept her mouth shut, buttoned down her anger, and sealed off her sense of self-righteousness.

Related Characters: Nicole/Wyatt Maines, Jonas Maines
Page Number: 184
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 31 Quotes

It was impossible for the Maineses not to feel the importance of their case among these hardworking people, and they realized that their lawsuit wasn’t just about Nicole or their family. It wasn’t even just their story anymore. The lawsuit, even though it was just a state case, had meaning and significance for many others. And now Wayne, Kelly, Nicole, and Jonas would carry the hopes of those others with them as they sought affirmation from the courts.

Related Characters: Nicole/Wyatt Maines, Kelly Maines, Wayne Maines, Jonas Maines
Page Number: 195
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 37 Quotes

Jonas said, “Dad, should 1go get her?” It was always his instinct to shepherd his sister. Wayne and Kelly had asked a lot of their only son, and sometimes they forgot the sacrifices he’d had to make being Nicole’s brother. Wayne hugged him and told him how proud he was of him for looking out for Nicole all these years, for worrying about her, and for stepping up whenever and wherever he was needed.

Related Characters: Jonas Maines (speaker), Nicole/Wyatt Maines, Wayne Maines
Page Number: 219
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 42 Quotes

He always remembered that there was something to be gained from putting up with everyone else’s nonsense—he was going to have the body that he always felt like he deserved and was meant to have. And that made it all—the harassment and the bad feelings and the discomfort and the awkwardness—worth it.

I feel like I need to have surgery because I promised him.

Related Characters: Nicole/Wyatt Maines (speaker)
Page Number: 254
Explanation and Analysis:

Her good friend Lexie texted, “HOW U FEELIN?” And then, “YOU’RE LIKE ARIEL,” the little mermaid who emerged from the sea in the form she’d always longed for.

Nicole’s transition was now complete. She would still need to take female hormones the rest of her life, and she would never be able to have her own children, but she knew she wanted to marry a man some day and adopt.

Related Characters: Nicole/Wyatt Maines
Related Symbols: The Little Mermaid
Page Number: 259
Explanation and Analysis: