Elliot Page Shared the Moments He Shed “Tears of Joy” After Coming Out as Transgender
It's the little joys that bring Page the most happiness.
Elliot Page sat down with Oprah Winfrey for Winfrey’s new Apple TV+ series The Oprah Conversation, which begins streaming on the platform on April 30th, and talked about what part of his transition brought him the most joy. Page, who came out as transgender in December 2020, said that it’s the little things that make him shed happy tears.
It’s getting out of the shower and the towel’s around your waist and you’re looking at yourself in the mirror and you’re just like, ‘There I am.’ And I’m not having the moment where I’m panicked, Page, who revealed to TIME in March 2021 that he had undergone top surgery, told Winfrey, per E!.
He continued that little joys like “being in a t-shirt” are profound. “It’s being able to touch my chest and feel comfortable in my body for probably the first time.” Page began to get emotional just thinking of how free he feels. “Tears of joy,” the Umbrella Academy star told Winfrey.
However, as Page noted to Vanity Fair on April 28th, his joy is counteracted by the cruelty the transgender community is faced with. “My feelings aren’t really linear,” he told the publication. “I feel emerging joy and excitement one moment, and then in the next, profound sadness reading about people wanting to take gender-affirming health care away from children.”
Page knows, though, that experiencing his own personal joys can only help right the larger injustices. “I’m really able to just exist…just exist by myself, like be able to sit with myself. Not have some constant distraction, all these things that aren’t conscious or aren’t even overly overt,” Page told Vanity Fair. “For the first time in, I don’t even know how long, [I am] really just being able to sit by myself, be on my own, be productive, and be creative,” later adding, “I want to use the strength I have to help in all the ways that I can.”
How can I feel grateful for my joy, and embrace my joy, and allow myself to have that joy—but then put that joy and that love into action? Page asked himself.
Raising awareness via social media, being transparent via high-profile interviews, and sitting down with Oprah Winfrey to talk about the joys and fears of living one’s truth as a trans person, as Page has already done, is a really great start.
