Girlmode | Review

Girlmode
Writer: Magdalene Vissaggio
Artist: Paulina Ganucheau
HarperAlley, $26.99

Life is complicated. Growing up and getting through high school? Especially so. And when you throw in an extra x-factor, like, say, transitioning from one gender to another, life only gets more complicated still.

The great virtue of Girlmode, a new YA graphic novel from Magdalene Vissaggio and Paulina Ganucheau, is that it doesn’t shy away from depicting any of that complexity and the difficulties all of the characters have navigating it.

It’s not just our protagonist, 16-year-old Phoebe Zito, who has not only just transitioned, but also moved across the country to live in California with her dad and start over at a brand-new school, who is having a tough time of it.

So is her dad, who is super-supportive and well-meaning, but realizes he knows nothing about being a teenage girl and struggles to get Phoebe’s semi-estranged mom to start playing a role in her life again.

And so too are all of her would-be friends and suitors, who have their own issues to sort out. For the most part, Vissaggio does a fine job of not separating the main players into black and white, good and bad roles, instead depicting them as more or less well-meaning but flawed, with some of them worth giving second chances to, others not so much (the writer herself does seem to sympathize with some of the characters over others, though).

On her very first day of school, looking like the version of her on the far left of Ganucheau’s cover (all three of those figures are of our heroine, by the way), Phoebe just wants to keep her head down and blend in, but her new classmates aren’t about to allow that.

First there’s Ben Wheelock, who takes an immediate interest in Phoebe just as we’re introduced to her, and the pair share interests in things like Star Wars and an off-brand version of Magic: The Gathering. A lifetime of teen movies will suggest that he’s a good guy.

And then there’s Mackenzie Ishikawa, the school queen bee, who sees in Phoebe something of a project. She takes her under her wing, gives her a glamorous makeover (see the Phoebe in the center of the cover), teaches her about fashion and make-up and, as the story progresses, becomes something of a self-appointed mentor in the world of girlhood. As helpful as she is to Phoebe, Mackenzie is, of course, coded as a bad guy; she hates Ben, who refers to Mackenzie and her friends as the school’s “Mean Girls crew.”

True to the teen movie narratives that inspired it (Can’t Buy Me Love, Clueless, She’s All That, etc.), Phoebe becomes a popular girl at school, but soon realizes that popularity isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and even when she seems to be living the perfect high school life—complete with a hunky boyfriend who is introduced as “the sweetest dude in school”—once she stops going with the flow and tries to assert herself, she realizes that the life she’s living may not actually be the one she wants.

Unlike the typical Hollywood story, however, deciding to just be herself doesn’t immediately solve all of Phoebe’s problems, and, instead of the expected, easy climax and resolution, a character who seemed in the right all along is revealed to be a bad actor, and another who seems in the wrong gets a surprisingly involved redemption arc.

Despite the unexpectedly deep character work and occasional passages about the psychology of the teenage boy or the reality of girlhood, Girlmode is for the most part a light and breezy read, a teen dramedy-inspired narrative that balances its serious side with a keen sense of humor.

As chaste as the romance aspects are—Ganucheau never draws anything spicier than a kiss—the book is about teenagers, and thus there’s plenty of talk about sex (vague as it is) and some stronger language, so the book probably isn’t recommended for anyone who isn’t a teenager yet themselves.

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