can i say something…. really not a bad tweet at all and only partially related to what i’m about to say (bear with me) but this reminds me of something i’ve found really difficult to express regarding el. i know it’s meant to be a jokey tweet that’s not supposed to be nitpicked so i apologise but . okay i am a byler through and through, this is NOT meant to be a mileven take but i kind of understand what el meant by this “you saw the real me” line ESPECIALLY in relation to her gender expression. like the clip of el being dressed up and wearing a wig actually made the line make More sense to me…
bc i’ve actually seen quite some people (not the op from the screenshot but others) headcanon el as agender which is fun and innocent on the surface but i really think in el’s specific case, her femininity is important to her. she’s shown on multiple occasions to yearn to look like other girls and to be seen as one but she feels so out of place, so different, because ALL HER LIFE any piece of identity, including gender, has been stripped away from her. she’s been literally forced to be a genderless THING, a weapon, an experiment. a thing. her hair was shaved to her scalp, she was obligated to wear a formless genderneutral hospital gown all her life and was basically visually indistinguishable from the boys in her lab. she didn’t even have a real NAME, she was just a number, like all the other lab kids, boys and girls alike… she had NO ownership over her own identity and her body, and she never got the opportunity to develop her own sense of self the way SHE wanted it. and during the course of the show, in multiple instances (eg where she looks at nancy’s picture and calls her pretty, when she goes shopping with max…) she’s clearly shown to long for an appearance and gender expression just like that of those other girls she looks at…
i think her struggles are actually quite similar to those of a trans girl in the sense that she has been robbed of the opportunity to express herself and her feminity… but then, when she was found by mike, it was clear by the sort of attention he gave her that he saw her as a girl, which to el must have felt like she was finally being SEEN in the way she liked to be seen. it afforded her the chance to express herself as a girl, and this choice she now had must have made her feel more like a person than she ever had before. yes, mike idolised her and saw her too much as a hero, but he was also the first person ever to give her a nickname, “el”, which is already one more piece of individuality than she’s ever been given before… and then with that dress and wig, she was given the means, for the first time ever, to look like other girls, something she clearly yearned for but was never given the chance to do! and she still feels alien and out of place, like she’s not quite doing it right, but then mike validates the way she looks and it must be one of the first times ever that someone validates her in her own gender expression. and you know what? even though it might not be healthy on the long term to look to a boy/man for validation, i think in that moment, it was an important first building block to her identity. it gave her something she’d never had before. recognition for her preferred gender/identity expression. granted, the implication that mike was the Only one ever who understood her was very stupid because there turned out to be quite big limits to his understanding of her, and max and will understood and saw her too, but i do get why el found mike so deeply important in her journey. he was. he validated one of the first pieces of identity she ever tried to build, at such a crucial but vulnerable time for her, when no one else ever had before. that must have felt profoundly transformative to her in that moment.
also i’m not saying you can’t headcanon her as agender, you can still do what you want, but i am saying it’s quite important she’s allowed to try out femininity (and any other gender expression if she’s so inclined, but i saw the most hints towards femininity) and that she’s Seen in this endeavour, because that makes her feel more like a person, like someone who’s allowed to have an identity, instead of making her feel like a thing… and i know we shouldn’t fully depend on someone else’s validation but to a certain degree we are social beings, we build our own identities in interaction with others, and we want to get recognition for who we are and who we want to be seen as. this is not a weakness. it’s true for everyone… and mike is one of the people who, at a certain point, seemed to have seen her in a way she wanted to be seen. i still don’t think on the long term this stayed healthy but i get what el’s line meant in relation to her presenting for the first time ever as a feminine girl … it’s all so transgender like she’s cis (in this interpretation) but i feel like her experience is so very reminiscent of that of a trans girl
