Maaaaa'am???? What are these coley taylor headcanons, could you share? The public demands it! (if you'd like to ofc)
Oh boy. Two (2) of you actually asked for this so faced with this overwhelming demand i can only oblige.
Look. The thing about Coley is that we only know her through Cam, and Cam is ridiculously in love with her. So there is a lot that is up to interpretation.
What we do know is that her experience in dealing with her feelings for a girl is radically different from Cam’s. I’m gonna talk a bit about Cameron here because i think it sets a nice contrast for trying to understand Coley better.
Cameron never really rejects who she is, despite where the story takes her. In a way she’s a really comforting narrator to go through all these things with, because she’s really confident in who she is. Yes she feels a lot of shame, but most of it is linked to her parents’ death and how it was unfortunately associated in her mind with her experimenting with a girl for the first time. And yes she probably doesn’t FEEL all that confident for most of the book, but in the end she always sticks up for herself and accept her feelings in a way that i think Coley wouldn’t be able to. Cameron understands very early on that her feelings for girls are not what they’re supposed to be and even after her parents’ death, she still looks for people like her. In movies at first, then in real life. She very clearly seeks to explore her feelings for girls and even being sent to God’s Promise never really manages to make her want to shut down that part of herself (unlike say, Mark or even Erin).
Coley however, I doubt that she even had feelings for girls before Cameron. Or if she had she probably never acknowledged them as such, I don’t think she even let herself think too much about what she was doing with Cameron. She did it because she couldn’t help not to. Coley could have never looked for representation the way Cameron did, because she would have never admitted (even to herself) that she was LIKE THAT in the first place. Coley has a lot of expectations on her shoulders (from her family, from the whole town) and as a result she has a very clear image of who she should be. That image does not include fooling around with Cameron Post. The only way she can rationalize it, other than just by avoiding thinking about it altogether, is by labeling it as sin. Coley Taylor does not in any way shape or form have feelings for girls, but Coley Taylor can be weak and susceptible to Sin. That’s something she can deal with.
When they get caught and Coley’s brother blames everything on Cameron, I think Coley embraces it completely. And not in a “yes that’s a convenient way to save my neck” kind of way. I think she truly does believe the explanation he provides (aka Cameron corrupted her) because it fits with who she (thinks she) is. Finally, finally an explanation to something that doesn’t make sense.
And if there’s a small part of her that knows this isn’t the truth, a small part of her that knows she, Coley, was the one initiating things most of the time because she WANTED to, well i think she didn’t acknowledge that part for many, many years.
I think Coley would have stuck very tightly to people’s expectations of her after this. And probably she would have married very young, because she would have wanted to prove this short mistake was behind her.
I think Coley in her twenties would keep such a tight control on herself that she probably wouldn’t develop feelings for another woman in those years. But I also think 30-something Coley Taylor would relax enough, thinking this all behind her, that she would inevitably start having crushes and feelings for women in her life. I think she would start thinking about Cameron sometimes. Thinking back on their time together more honestly than she ever did until then. Hopefully she would have gained enough confidence and enough love for herself by then to finally start the process of understanding and accepting this part of her.
But yeah Coley Taylor is a beautiful disaster and it’s hard to imagine a road to self-acceptance for her that wouldn’t take decades.
