Council house opera

What it feels like for a girl

If I hadn’t been stuck at home with Covid last week I doubt I would’ve gotten around to watching What It Feel Like For A Girl. At least not until Christmas or until I had a really pressing deadline to avoid. I rarely watch TV, it just doesn’t seem to catch my attention in the way cinema does. The Comeback, La Veneneo and I, Claudius they’re my big three. The through line isn't immediately apparent here, but you might say it’s some combination of knock-out performances and a real commitment to the bit. Certainly these are qualities WIFLFAG also shares but this doesn’t quite explain why I loved it so much. Especially considering that I went into watching it with a fair amount of scepticism.

The show, as you’re probably aware, is adapted from Paris Lees’ memoir of the same name. It follows Byron (who is becoming Paris) through their late teens as they navigate, well, the usual bullshit. The UK film and TV industry has a low-key psycho-sexual obsession with this particular narrative. F*ggoty little gay boy in the north¹ with a aggro dad, a tarty mum and understanding nana finds liberation through EDM to become the fierce cunty diva she/they were born to be.

Not only did it feel like I’d seen this show before I’d also actually lived it, and in the same period. I was rocking the Brian Molko metallic lipgloss and pet shop bondage gear to those same Basement Jaxx remixes myself - the millennial glam rock resurgence was strong stuff. Obviously I didn’t go into the show hoping to be told a tale I’d never heard, but what I wasn’t expecting at all was how hard that sense of familiarity would hit me.

The constant presence of sexual and phobic violence at home and in the street, the domestic tensions that arise when a parent finds a new partner (especially one who’s done well for themselves), the matrilineal disconnect that comes to the forefront when a woman is a great grandmother but a less than ideal mother, it all felt so real. In one scene a very young Byron refuses to be addressed as “lad”. In another they make an unnecessary cruel quip about their mother’s, let’s say warm heart, in front of her new fella. In another Byron and their parents are screaming in each other’s faces each holding back some from punching someone else. I found the verisimilitude with my own life almost unbearable.

Most of this doesn’t explicitly concern gender variance, though that is the inescapable subtext. In fact for a show which has transgender as its hook, transition is pretty low in the mix. For me it’s ultimately a show about class as much as queerness, if not more so. I think that’s important because (professional transsexuals aside) being transgender is not usually the big thing in any trans person’s life. It’s made to be a defining issue but certainly amongst the boys and girls I know it’s more of a fun fact than an ideology, like being a Liberal Democrat. (JK JK lib dems are ppl too!)

For the most part the only real visibility for trans people comes either through their presentation as criminal monsters or dolled up divas. Both representations move them further into a fantastical realm where they live alongside, but not amongst, the rest of humanity. WIFLFAG however plants these characters very firmly in reality, in a world where people take the coach not the train, and nobody has to explain why that is. These are people struggling with double disenfranchisement, intersectionality writ large. Intentionally or not transphobia is shown for what it is, a product of the capitalist nightmare.

I don’t think anyone who hasn't fucked up a university entrance interview, simply because they’d never known anyone who went to uni and so had no clue how to prepare or present themselves, can understand what that’s like. The look the tutors share between themselves when they ask where you did you A-Levels and you tell them “Blackpool and the Fylde college”. The dread that you’re making the same mistakes you watched your parents make, walking into the traps you swore you were too smart to fall into. Here you are, doing the same stupid things for the same stupid reasons, trying to console yourself for this dire situation in ways that only wed you closer to it. The knowledge that you need to flee pressed right up against the yearning to stay and the pain at the prospect of leaving. That self-loathing, that rage and frustration, the paranoia, the sense of injustice, the humiliation, WIFLFAG puts it all front and centre.

I would say it feels very by and for only that language has been so soundly co-opted by funding bodies that it sits a world away from the show now. Likewise when I’m talking about representation I’m talking about something a lot more nuanced than you might expect. Unlike say, POSE, in which every character has to be a hardworking street walking angel with a heart of gold (even the villains) WIFLFAG has a parade of characters who are pretty awful tbqh. Byron is a lying, manipulative train wreck, most of their friends (especially Sasha) are also wicked, wicked girls, and their family are somehow worse. Bryon’s mum’s mum (their Mommar) is probably the only one who is straight up “good”, though even she is revealed as flawed as the show wraps up. All of the characters (including the trans characters) get to be violent, untrustworthy, self-destructive in a way that allows them to be very human. Byron, Sasha, Lady Die and the gang are so much more real than the usual Sesame Street adjacent sort of rainbow twerps you get in Boy Meets Girl or (God forbid) Transaction.

Again, I think a lot of this is because WIFLFAG isn’t really about gender, it’s about class. I can't think of another drama which has handled this anywhere near as well, putting the realities of growing up queer and poor in the UK on-screen so unapologetically. Where shows like Sex Education and The End of the F***ing World ultimately toddled off into muddy Americana, What It Feels Like builds up a hyper-specific world which is therefore capable of holding the most outrageous behaviour. (I’d argue that the flights of fantasy the show takes are its weakest moments, precisely because they let the audience off the hook by allowing for a creative dissonance). The characters talk in Notts dialect but it’s not played for comedy, they move between their mum’s house to their dad’s house to their boyfriend’s house to their Mommar’s house and no-one asks why. There’s also a certain emotional temperature to the show, between Byron and their family but also between the central friend group itself, which I can only call council house opera.

Characters rag the head off each other, call each other two-faced slags, tell their mothers’ they’re a miserable excuse for a parent, steal each other’s boyfriends, deliberately humiliate the people they apparently love the most, in public, then ten minutes later ask, “What you ‘avin’ for your tea then, duckie?” The level of emotional volatility is so well observed and expressed, it hasn't been cleaned up at all or made any more palatable. I live life at a very different voltage now but watching those scenes really took me back to trying to explain to an old boyfriend that just because someone says, “I’m going to fucking kill you, you dickhead” that doesn’t mean they don't like you. They probably just can’t find their vape.

It’s a bold and often very bleak show but don't let that put you off. Ellis Howard is *extremely* good as Byron/Paris, as is Scouse queen Hannah Jones as Sasha, and I defy you not to weep over Hannah Walters’ final scenes as Mommar. The writing is clever and rarely feels like it’s overreaching or relying on engineered devices. Plus they’ve only got a bloody cameo from Charity Shop Sue, an’t they duckie? So yes watch it, right after liking and sharing this article. And consider this the beginning of my campaign to write on and/or appear in season two. Perhaps as sassy careers advice officer with a lusty for life and a pocket full Mkat. I’m happy to use my own lip liner and supply my own emotional baggage.

As always thanks for reading. It’s been a while since I last posted but I haven't been slacking, I promise! I’ve had commissions for Vittles, Granta and the RLF to file plus of course Covid =/ I do have some book recommendations for you though. Lucia Litmajer’s “Cautery” is one of my fave reads of ‘25 and is out now on Charco Press. Also Raymond Carver’s collection “Cathedral” which is just sublime. Soon I’ll be looking at books to pitch for review for Sept onwards, so if you have a suggestions lmk.

1. Honestly just anywhere that’s not London