After reviewing Andrea Chu’s “The Pink”, I noticed that her message was change. She had difficulty explaining why she wanted to become transgender. Her best words to explain it was “i hoped a vagina would make me feel more like a woman”. Chu elaborates on the ideas of feminism. Being a feminist has a numerous amount of meanings, but feminism means advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of the equality of all sexes. The feminist movement and Chu’s physical changes related to each other because it was a process to get to both results. Transgenders changed the feminist movement because since they were transitioning to a woman, they would be a new addition to the feminist community.
I would relate a butterfly to Chu’s text. Butterflies are seen as a symbol of transformation and change. A butterfly begins as a caterpillar and transforms into an exquisite insect with unique colored wings. Andrea Chu was born a male and decided to transform into a woman.
Great response, Alexandra—can you please provide a link or an image, though, perhaps of a butterfly, or possibly a GIF of a caterpillar turning into a butterfly (if you so choose)? This is a nice image to think of as symbolizing the gender transformations involved in Chu’s story. It’s also striking to me that Chu is quite honest that “vagina-having” hasn’t necessarily resolved her desire to be a woman. But then there’s also her somewhat ironic (yet also serious) thought that to be a woman is to question what it means to be a woman. What do you think?
I agree. Being a woman means accepting your body as one that adapts and changes over time. The meaning of being a woman is exactly the process that Chu had to “create” since she was originally born a male. Chu had to accept her new body and get used to the transformation that she desired.