Baptize me in that purple-pink girlypop glow.

Once one pushes past the initial fear, starting transition is exciting. It’s time to start hormones, buy new clothes, try a new hairstyle, learn makeup, and get a piercing or two. Eventually, though, some time passes and one has checked all those little boxes, and now there’s not much left to do but wait.

Five months into my transition, I’m feeling the lull set in. Of course, I can still work on my wardrobe and makeup skills and so on. But the initial rush of euphoria that comes along with all those “firsts” has come and gone. Now I’m left to slowly watch myself change in the mirror. It’s tough. I didn’t realize how heavily I’d been relying on the highs of that initial transition period, so as I move into this next phase of my transition, I’ve found myself feeling especially dysphoric. Many a day has gone by where I’m at the verge of tears at every hour of the day.

Frustrated and wanting to do something to further my progress, I was playing around with FaceApp’s feminization filter, hoping it would provide pointers on what I should focus on. (Yes, consulting an AI-powered filters app for tips on my transition is almost certainly a bad idea, but I was feeling desperate.) After feeding it a few pictures of myself from the past year, I came to a curious realization: in recent pictures, the filter barely touched my face at all and just gave me longer hair. But in pictures from the start of my transition, the filter changed my whole face. This made me feel a bit better about my progress. It helped me to see the genuinely substantial changes I’ve undergone in a mere five months. Of course, I’m still not anywhere near where I want to be—hell, the app itself assumes my gender as male—but it was nice to be able to recognize the progress I’ve made.

Even so, the filter’s recommendation was to grow my hair out longer. Fair enough. I’d already been considering doing so, however this meant more waiting around for things to happen… not exactly the brilliant action-packed plan I was hoping for.

I was feeling lost. I felt myself beginning to slip as doubt crept in. You’ll never be a girl. You’ll always just be a dude in makeup.

I needed guidance, and there was only one place I could think of to go: I Saw the TV Glow.

I pushed play. Let’s go to church.

Two minutes into the runtime, a gym class parachute lined with white, blue, pink, and purple stripes billows through the air as Anthems For A Seventeen Year-Old Girl by yeule hums in the background. I can feel it hitting already. My face is scrunched up, I’m sniffling, tears running down my cheek. It’s an ugly sight, I’m sure, but no one is around. It’s just me, my cat plushie, and TV Glow.

Soon, Caroline Polachek sings of girls with makeup in Starburned and Unkissed as Owen strolls through his high school’s hallways. I’m losing it. In my first viewing, I cried here, too—albeit with far fewer tears, as I was emotionally stunted then. But tonight, with testosterone eradicated, my lips are wet and taste of salt. Tonight, I am one of the girls in makeup.

Ere long, it’s time for Maddy’s monologue, and I swear this is the greatest monologue ever committed to film and I will fight anyone who says otherwise. Maddy literally looks into the camera and says they pissed and shit their pants and it somehow works. I don’t understand how it works, only that it does. Bravo, Jack Haven.

(For the steaming pile of dog shit that is Emilia Pérez to have been nominated for Best Picture and not this is perhaps one of the greatest travesties of our times. Then again, maybe no one should care about an award show that only started requiring its judges to actually watch the films they vote on after 97 whole-ass years. I digress.)

(Actually, one more thing. Did you know Zoe Saldaña’s Oscar statue is trans? It goes by they/them. Yes, the statue. Thank you, Zoe Saldaña, very cool. Next time you want to give a nod to the marginalized community that the film you won an award for centers around, try doing so in your acceptance speech. You know, the place where you’ll have the most eyeballs? I. Digress.)

As Maddy delivers their speech in the planetarium, I feel something welling up inside of me. So many emotions. Fear? Hopelessness? Denial? No. Once, these were the things I felt in response to this film, but no longer. Tonight, I feel happy. Hopeful. Grateful for having seen this film and absorbed its teachings. Joyful for having finally discovered myself; for starting season six.

The tears are rushing down my face now. My nose is oozing down my upper lip, and I taste a rather off-putting concoction of salty tears and bitter mucus. My eyes feel swollen. I’m going through it, girl.

I start shaking. I can’t control it. I’m squeezing this plushie within an inch of its nonexistent life and I’m wildly shaking. In this moment, I feel Maddy’s every word. Every breath. Every step. This feeling is so intense I feel like I might burst. It’s overwhelming. I can barely handle it.

The monologue ends. My heart feels like it’s about to burst out of my chest but I slowly calm down.

Now Owen is screaming in the Fun Center’s party room. Last year, this scene shook me to my core. Tonight, I watch in sadness for Owen, but feel at ease knowing that I’ve spared myself this fate.

Words cannot begin to express how much this film means to me. I know because I’ve been trying to put its impact on me into words ever since I first saw this film back in October. I wrote an 8,000 word personal essay using TV Glow as a framework for my own coming out story, and much to my chagrin it completely fails at communicating the transcendent power this film holds for me. The English language simply doesn’t possess the verbiage—and I, the writing prowess—to convey these emotions.

Nonetheless, here I am trying to convey them yet again. Despite having seen TV Glow six times now and having poured over its script countless times when writing that aforementioned essay, this most recent viewing drew out an emotional response in me greater than ever before. Its magic isn’t fading. Not even a little.

I’m just… so fucking happy to be where I am now. I’m learning to love myself, and I owe it all to this film—to Jane Schoenbrun, to Jack Haven, to Justice Smith; everyone who made this work of art possible. This film birthed me a new life.

I Saw the TV Glow and trembled before God while she smiled back at me. Nothing was the same since.

June 16, 2025