By Olive Dausinas
As August skims away into September, so does the summer season inevitably fade. With holidays ending and other people heading again to highschool, maybe it will make sense to have a look at a just lately launched graphic novel about college. And with a social local weather not so conducive to the rights of transgender folks, Crystal Frasier’s Cheer Up! is a story about gender id, sexuality, and the way cisgender folks can have a look at trans folks.
Annie is the neatest woman within the senior class at her highschool, with nobody coming near her grades. The one drawback is her anti-social nature, introduced upon by years of bullying, which has induced bodily altercations between her and her classmates. On the request of her mom and the principal, Annie decides to check out for the cheerleading group the place she meets a former pal named Bebe. The latter is a transgirl. She is a folks pleaser to the purpose of harming her personal emotional wants, all as a way to preserve her mother and father appeased to her transition. Annie and Bebe’s story is one in every of bonding, studying. We see how Annie is simply very socially anxious whereas Bebe feels she is compelled to be one of many “good ones” or concern retribution for being a “dangerous” trans particular person. They usually surprise if their relationship is powerful sufficient to face up to Bebe’s fears.
Cheer Up! has its roots within the bonds of various relationships: familial, platonic, and romantic. As well as, it additionally focuses on the eye that being trans can push onto an individual who merely needs to exist. Bebe would love nothing greater than to simply be handled like some other woman, however as a substitute her classmates and the state at giant “others” her. This othering ends in Bebe changing into extraordinarily uncomfortable and forcibly changing into a folks pleaser. Moments the place she does get indignant ends in mockery of her placing on her “man voice” or being continuously sexually harassed by a well-liked male pupil. It’s solely via altering relationships that she is ready to lastly start altering for herself. From Annie, a lesbian, seeing her romantically as a girl to her mother and father slowly accepting their daughter to the remainder of the cheerleaders realizing they have been objectifying her by referring their group because the one with a trans cheer captain.
Authors much like Crystal Fraiser embody Lilah Sturges and Kay O’Neil, prolific trans authors for the brief story medium. One among Sturges’ most up-to-date releases, Woman Haven, additionally has heavy deal with trans themes and people of gender id. Extraordinarily necessary in a time the place trans folks appear to be continuously beneath assault. O’Neil has written loads of queer-related graphic novels, most notably the Dragon Tea Society trilogy and Princess Princess Ever After, a seemingly widespread fairy story that turns tropes on their heads.
Cheer Up! is comparatively brief in comparison with modern graphic novels, however that simply implies that it accomplishes what it must with out occurring for too lengthy. The principle relationship is between Annie and Bebe, and it is rather plausible to see them slowly reconnect, as if that they had by no means misplaced their friendship within the first place. The best way that Bebe’s cis classmates react to her range, in ways in which do fully make sense to trans folks. Not everyone seems to be focusing on her, however the consideration she has obtained magnifies her fears of everybody ready to harass her. Her fellow cheerleaders are seemingly supportive, however in addition they face their very own interior biases towards Bebe, to the purpose of purposefully leaving her out from non-school actions that all of them take part in. They usually do all this towards a woman who does nothing however try to placate them solely so she will be able to really feel like it’s okay for her to exist as a human.
I extremely advocate this story for anybody, genuinely. The significance of humanizing trans folks, particularly transwomen, has by no means been extra vital than now. One might imagine they’re being an ally, however inherent biases can mirror how they might truly act to a trans particular person. Even Annie, who lovingly helps Bebe, steps over the road in her makes an attempt to defend Bebe from anti-trans rhetoric. It does go to lengths to point out how this negatively impacts trans folks, who on the finish of the day are folks and worthy of respect from others with no caveats.
Whereas brief, the story of Annie and Bebe is the right strategy to begin off the college 12 months and the autumn. In any case, they’re commencing their very own senior 12 months firstly of the story. Even exterior of its personal romance, there’s rather more to know from it than simply the bottom story. It’s one other glorious launch from Oni Press that appears to all the time knock it out with what they publish.
