BitterSweet Reviews... What It Feels Like For A Girl
What It Feels Like For A Girl (2025) on BBC Three, based on Paris Lee's memoir of the same name.
“What's a transsexual?”
“You'll soon find out in here dickie.”
Spoilers for What It Feels Like For A Girl ahead…
Based on Paris Lee’s memoir, What It Feels Like for a Girl is an honest, fun, affirming, heartbreaking and brutally frank series. I’m still in quiet disbelief of it being aired by the BBC tbh, considering Tim Davie (Director-General) is a massive Tory and the beeb have done nothing to quell the rise of fascism in the UK, happily platforming Farage and his ilk. However, considering we’re halfway through the most severe year/decade for trans rights being rolled back, the fact the impartial broadcasting corporation (built to define and spew the moralistic virtues of the Great British public) have commissioned a series depicting a teenage boy sucking off a nonce in a public restroom (for a fiver), holding another nonce at ransom (for substantially more than a fiver), sucking off a policeman in a park (for four fivers) and shoving a toilet brush up a middle-aged drug dealers arse (for 8 pills), is a little slither of victory at least.
The show depicts the life of Byron (Lees is on record stating Byron’s pre-transition pronouns are they/them), a clever but “difficult” teen living in-between the homes of their Dad, Mum, Mommar and whoever their preferred lover/friend is at the time. The show is set at the turn of the millenium, when the UK was a couple of years into Tony Blair’s New Labour and there was a widespread shift towards inclusivity, as Section 28 was repealed, the Gender Recognition Act came into effect and, by the end of the series, we see Nadia Almada triumphantly winning season 5 of Big Brother. Incorporating Nadia’s iconic win parallel with Byron’s stint in prison in episode 7 was a genius piece of writing, so beautiful and affirming. Byron watches Nadia’s rise to glory from the tiny TV in their prison cell and it clearly has a tremendous effect on them. The support Nadia receives from the general public and her housemates provides a catalyst for self-affirmation and gives them the confidence they need to ensure that, when they leave prison, they can walk out as a very different person to who they were then they walked in, in more ways than one.
One of the many strengths of the show is the ease in which it successfully highlights the banality of heterosexual romance: Dates in ice-skating rinks, chinese takeaways on plates peeled out of the greasy kitchen corner cupboards, or just a night in with a home-cooked curry. None of the above are enough to satisfy Byron’s hedonistic pursuit of escaping such banalities. As a trans woman with substance abuse issues and years manoeuvring through the toxic hurdles of queer nightlife, Byron’s path is nothing but utterly relatable.
As for Byron’s dad, he is ripe with the tropes of unfettered masculinity: unshaven, an unfettered temper and a macho bravado with the emotional depth of a polo shirt. I noticed that both the Dad and love interest Liam shared more than a similar temperament, including an uncouth taste in interior design: their absent taste bleeding out through their armchairs and infiltrating their environment, both with routines utterly lacking in self-care. Byron has a tenacious temper similar to both Liam’s and their father’s, although Byron’s strength isn’t through sheer force but whatever acerbic wit spills from their tongue
One of my favourite nods to ‘00s culture (there were many) was having Byron text from a Nokia 3210, lovingly referred to as the brick phone, a coincidence or not-so-subtle acknowledgement of the term ‘brick’ being associated with a non-passing trans woman. This doubles up as a clever nod to Byron being in their egg phase: clocky but only due to not knowing any better. But it was only a matter of time before Byron’s shell cracked open and her phone also got an upgrade to the must-have phone for the Y2K IT-girlies: the Motorola neon-pink RAZR V3 flip-phone. She had truly arrived, even if she didn’t have a name… yet.
Although queer nightlife isn’t the main subject, the show’s depiction of it is the most authentic I’ve ever seen on screen. The way Lady Die had to prioritise her own wellbeing over Byron’s during their stint in prison — sacrificing their companionship when both needed it most — was integral to Byron learning to not be dependent on the toxic coping mechanisms she used to survive her traumatic upbringing. The lesson Lady Die inevitably taught her was accountability, which brought an emotional depth to Byron she didn’t have access to prior to prison.
Byron and the Fallen Divas love one another and their dynamic is built upon being competitive, judgemental, sassy and messy with one another. The nuclear family is never perfect, so why should a chosen family be? If a family appears to be perfect they’re not telling the truth. Family will shape you — blood or not — and your idea of what family looks like can shift too. However it’s intrinsically linked to finding your truth. For Byron, finding her truth depended on the route she took and if she would allow herself to be vulnerable enough to allow family to guide her, something the narcissistic parenting of her Dad never did for her.
What’s in a name? As the final episode draws to a close, Byron (with the help of her Mum) attains a place to study at Brighton University. At this point she’s still Byron, but it’s beginning to visibly cause her more discomfort than it did before. Working out your chosen name is… work. It takes time, it takes mistakes, triumphs, potential doomed friendships, lovers and family. But what makes What It Feels Like for a Girl a success is how it acknowledges the imperfections during this bumpy journey to find your truth.
Transitioning, at whatever stage in your life, is never the straightforward depiction people like to believe, as is often shown on screen: just waking up one day, having a shave, putting on a dress, and a wig, and being done with it. The process of transitioning is tied to so many complicated factors we have to absorb, process, acknowledge and live through. These lived experiences are the path we choose to become the shape we need, for ourselves, for our friends, for our lovers, for our family. So when you ask us our name, we can tell you with confidence through and through, the name we have chosen thanks to our experiences that helped bring to light the name for us to claim as our own, in our truth.
“Hi, I'm Paris”
— Xoey Fourr
 | A guest post by
|