Becoming Nicole Themes

Becoming Nicole follows the childhood of a transgender girl named Nicole Maines (who is born with biologically male anatomy, as Wyatt Maines) and her journey to understand herself and fight discrimination. As Wyatt grows up, he innately understands that his gender identity does not match his outward appearance, nor does it seem to match how people treat or think of him. As Nutt tracks Wyatt’s transformation to Nicole and the change in Nicole’s family and…

As Wyatt is growing up, there is a fundamental lack of understanding about what it means to be transgender. The topic is generally taboo to speak about, and therefore there isn’t much information on transgender people—either anecdotally or scientifically. As Nutt recounts Kelly’s trials in attempting to find out more about what her son is experiencing, she proves that a lack of knowledge has led to ignorance, discrimination, and even dire consequences for transgender…

Nicole and other transgender people face an immense amount of discrimination, to the point that Nicole and her family decide that it is better to “go stealth” and not reveal her gender identity to her peers when she moves to a new middle school. But not only does this hurt her ability to be fully open with her new friends, it also prevents her from being her own advocate and working to gain the rights…

At the heart of Nicole Maines’s story is the Maines family. Part of the difficulties the family finds with Nicole growing up transgender is the fact that this disrupts her father Wayne’s idea of what a “normal” family looks like. But what her mother Kelly understands innately, and what Wayne eventually comes to realize, is that family is less about living up to social norms and more about unconditional love, support, and even…