SOUTH PARK MADE ME REALIZE I'M TRANSGENDER (when I was younger) (day of rant: April 22nd, 2025)

Yes, you read the title right, there's an episode of South Park that I look back in retrospect, this episode was definitely a sign that I was transgender. No it wasn't one of the many transphobic ones, such as the athlete ones, or the Mrs. Garrison one, but one about Butters.

The episode is episode 9 of Season 9, and it's called "Marjorine". Honestly, we can forget about the a-plot and the b-plot, but I'll give a quick rundown of the premise, and I bit of a review of it.

The boys see the girls using a paper fortune teller and think that they are using a magic device to predict the future, so they want it for themselves. Their plan is to have one of them infiltrate the girl's slumber party for Heidi's birthday (I think it's her birthday, I don't remember) to steal the "device". They decide in true South Park fashion, that the way they're gonna go about this is by faking Butters' death and having him dress up as a girl and become a new student to infiltrate the slumber party. He goes by Marjorine in this instance, and I'll use she/her pronouns from here on out for Marjorine!

Just a casual note, this episode features "Mrs. Garrison", which is a character that pisses me off a lot because they transitioned Mr. Garrison just to make fun of trans people, and he later detransitions because of woke (/s) and I fucking hate that whole character arc. It actually pisses me the fuck off and the episode where he gets sex reassignment surgery traumatized me when I was younger.

Marjorine is outcast a bit by the girls for "being different". Not because she's too masculine or anything, but because she has a different sense of style and "she's flat" (bitch, you're in 4th grade, you're all flat, wtf you talking about).

She is only able to go to the slumber party because Cartman pretends to be Marjorine's mother and says that she is a state official, so her mother is "using her authority" over her.

Marjorine doesn't fit in with the other girls because she's unsure of how she's supposed to act (real) and she's on her mission. Eventually, they are mean to Marjorine, call her hair ugly, her clothes ugly, and her chest flat, which causes Marjorine to cry in the bathroom.

The girls apologize for hurting Marjorine's feelings, and they give her a makeover and do girl things with her (dance to Justin Timberlake, which I don't know how the fuck they got the rights to "Rock Your Body", but kudos to them I suppose).

This scene made me felt seen. I always wanted to be in Marjorine's shoes at this part. Look, this is going to get quite vulnerable, autistic, and quite embarassing, but late at night, I like to make up stories in my head, and often, I'm self-inserting myself into worlds I really like. This specific episode is one of those worlds that I created in my head. I wanted to be Marjorine, get bullied by the girls, but then, they apologize and give me a makeover. I wanted to be a pretty girl and wear dresses at the sleepover. I wanted that SO badly. I would often fantasize being in that situation. I wanted to go to girl's sleepovers, not just because I find girls hot, but because I wanted to BE one of the girls. I've cried knowing that I will never get the chance to go to a girl's sleepover. In fact, I'm kind of tearing up right now thinking about all I missed by not being a cis girl. I can't fucking believe an episode of South Park makes me feel like this.

I'm not exaggerating when I say this is one of the most important queer media examples in my life, and it's not even from a fucking queer show, in fact, quite an annoying centrist "I hate everyone equally" type show, which sucks cause I have a bit of a soft spot for South Park. When South Park is woke, it's absolutely fire, but when it's trying too hard to be offensive or edgy, it fucking sucks ass. It's not because I'm "offended", it's because it's in poor taste and poor writing. There are many awesome episodes of South Park, and there are also a lot of terrible episodes that have aged like shit.

I'm getting a bit off topic.

I LOVE this episode a lot, and it has stuck with me throughout the years. It's not perfect, but it honestly warms my heart seeing Marjorine enjoy being one of the girls. Her crying in the bathroom is a scene I get teary-eyed for because I literally feel just like her. I feel like a fake girl all the time, especially when I hang around cis women. They treat me with such kindness and like I'm one of them, but I can't help but feel like a performative poser all the time. I feel like I'm failing at trying to be a girl and it really hurts, so seeing a scene like this really sticks out to me even to this day.

This episode makes me feel so gay! Whatever, Butters is a bisexual icon, and I will hear no if's, and's, or but's about it. Butters is also maybe secretly trans, but I can't headcannon shit that they push to the side for two decades :(

The episode overall is really good, but I think the b-plot is really dumb, so it's like an 8/10 episode.

Still sad that I've never had a girl sleepover/girl's night ever, and I'm probably going to be thinking about that for a while sadge.

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