Pageboy sheds the livery in Elliot Page’s powerful autobiography
From Atlantic Books Today 98, fall 2023
A pageboy, historically, was a servant. They were clad in the livery and colours their masters selected for them. They couldn’t speak unless spoken to first. Even then, it was a dangerous thing to speak at all. And they were lucky if they were ever called by their proper names. Nova Scotian actor Elliot Page, author of Pageboy, was doing more than just making a clever pun when he decided on this title for his tell-all memoir. He’d settled on the perfect word to describe what his life was like as an actor before he officially transitioned to male in December 2020.
Readers can expect to be shocked by the dark understory behind Page’s career-establishing lead role in Juno, and the sexist micromanaging of the publicity team that left him emotionally scarred for years. While still publicly identifying as a female, but privately aware of being male, Page was called upon to play two parallel roles at once in 2007, the year of his supposed triumph as a star. On the film screen, a pregnant teenager. In front of the paparazzi cameras, a dainty and feminine It Girl.
“I was planning on wearing jeans and a western (ish) shirt to Juno’s world premiere. I thought it was a cool look, and it had a collar. That’s fancy, right? I thought,” he writes. “When the Fox Searchlight publicity team learned about my outfit, they urgently took me to Holt Renfrew on Bloor Street, with a dramatic rushing that is characteristic of the Hollywood circulatory system. I suggested a suit. They said I should wear a dress and heels.”
Page’s co-star wasn’t subjected to the same humiliating experience of being dressed up like a doll with a fixed smile. “Michael Cera rocked sneakers, slacks, and a collared shirt. He looked fancy to me. I wonder why they didn’t take him to Holt Renfrew. I guess he had nothing to hide, he was approved. He fit the part.”
Page approaches his own life story throughout Pageboy like a true Canadian novelist. His prose style is down-to-earth, conversational, yet with a touch of unpretentious elegance which is not unlike Margaret Atwood’s refined social critique pieces or Alice Munro’s eloquent autobiographical tales. There is no off-putting, overly arrogant bragging to be found about his fabulous success as an actor, which is, unfortunately, the bane of many other celebrity authors’ memoirs. There are some lively, boastful passages about his sex life, in the periods of his life when sex was (finally) satisfying for him, but these can be either thoroughly enjoyed, ignored and/or forgiven, or appreciated for not being tactlessly overdetailed or over-the-top, depending on the reader. There is no showing off, there is just showing.
As a memoirist, Page only prioritizes events from his life that are relevant, organizing a navigable storyline for his migration into what is, for him and only him, the correct gender, sexual, and body identities. Though the happenings themselves are not quite linear, they’re easy enough to follow if you pay close enough attention.
Pageboy is an approachable and relatable chronicle to read for anyone who has undertaken the same journey, whether it be transitioning, coming to terms with same-sex attraction, or even slowly navigating acceptance into any sort of subculture that danger and societal shunning accompanies. For any reader who is not well-acquainted with these experiences, the benefit of reading Pageboy is education. You will upgrade past the point of regarding trans issues as a detachable debating point on the news and in YouTube videos and instead become intimately acquainted with a real transgender person who is both a public figure and a full, reasonable, and understandable human being.
Page himself has moved past Juno, past Hard Candy, past Inception, and most definitely past To Rome with Love, into a new chapter of his life where he exerts complete and long-delayed control as an independent artist. Pageboy reflects that. This book is more than Elliot Page’s autobiography, it is his manifesto to the world. He will never be dressed up in the wrong clothes or addressed by the wrong name ever again. He, rightfully, claims the name Pageboy but refuses the livery.
Written By: