Gender and Ma Vie En Rose

by Keith Garcia

What is Gender? and what is Sex?...Gender are the behavioral and psychological traits related to a person and sex relates to male and female. The movie “Ma Vie En Rose” is a story about a boy named Ludavic (Ludo) who strongly believe that he was meant to be a girl. Although Ludo is a boy, he is taking on the gender role of a girl. It’s something that he just felt was right and went with it. So why make a film about gender role, what is its significance?

Michael R. Schiavi says in his article “A “Girlboys” Own Story: Non-Masculine Narrativity En Ma Vie en Rose” that Ludo emerges into the setting as a gender disaster. What he is referring to is the scene where Ludo shows up in his sister’s fairy princess dress. This is abnormal behavior for a boy because of how we think boys and girls should dress and act. Gender roles are usually picked up at a young age watching either dad or mom do certain things. Growing up children see how male and female act and then the child will try to mimic those actions. This is different for Ludo because he has feels that he was supposed to be a girl. Schiavi refers to this as “coming in” instead of “coming out” because of this sense of being born in the wrong body.

Schiavi says “the interiority and silence that generally contain youthful homosexual self-awareness, speech acts, and narrative possibility” is what makes Ludo’s pre-notion of being a girl to be known as “coming in.” This film portrays the struggle Ludo goes through dealing with being a transgender, as well as, shows how others react to Ludo’s self-awareness. We are self-aware of what gender we are and react accordingly. I grew up loving things such as Ninja Turtles and Transformers, not because it was forced upon, but because it was what appealed to me as a boy. The same thing goes for Ludo which was dresses and dolls. Society shuns upon gender actions that are outside the norm but who is an individual to say don’t act like that, it’s not right…only the person should be able to decide that for themselves.