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Warning: This is about to be a giant analysis post regarding Jackie, Shauna, and Nat’s relationship with gender (specifically masculinity), presentation, gender roles, misogyny, and sexuality. I specifically tend to think of these three as having the most potential for transmasc readings due to the prominence of these themes within their stories, but if anyone wants to add onto this with trans readings of other characters, I would love to see them!
Starting with the Jackieshaunanat transmasc trifecta, I’m going to talk about Jackie. Guys. Guys. JACKIE!!!!!!!! I know there’s a good community for transmasc Nat truthers which I AM a part of and I support, however, look at all the fodder we have for transmasc Jackie!!!! It connects directly to transmasc Nat!!!! I’m literally the CEO of transmasc Jackie PLEASE!!!!! I’ve gone so far down this rabbit hole that I sometimes forget it’s not canon and am shocked when people interpret her as femme. It’s not that femme Jackie headcanons are bad, but they’re just—sorry to all femme Jackie truthers, this is just my opinion—surface level interpretations that don’t dig into Jackie’s issues with gender presentation. My biggest issue with parts of this side of the fandom mostly actually has to do with people calling Jackie femme but not Taissa who genuinely enjoys presenting femininely, not for others but for herself. I think it’s important to remember that while the YJs didn’t always feel like themselves in the wilderness due to intense hunger and suffering, the wilderness was nonetheless an opportunity for them to explore themselves in ways they wouldn’t be able to within the confines of society. Jackie’s style changed very suddenly and dramatically in the wilderness compared to what we saw pre-crash. She quickly switches from flowery dresses and skirts into a style of dress that’s, funny enough, really similar to how a lot of trans boys dress while they’re figuring themselves out. Not necessarily masculine, but only just barely feminine enough not to draw attention. Jackie is ALWAYS performing for people right up to her death, but her performance of femininity is certainly more heavy-handed in society with her parents and boyfriend to worry about. i.e. pre-crash Jackie:
Jackie deliberately packed a lot of very modest collared shirts/sweaters, long pants and shorts, and vests, all in more androgynous colors like blue, yellow, and green.
To address the multiple elephants in the room with pointing these things out about Jackie’s gender presentation:
If Jackie is trying to distance herself from femininity in the wilderness due to discomfort, why does she seem fine wearing her dress for Doomcoming?
2. If Jackie IS consciously trying to move away from femininity, why does she force the things about girlhood that make her uncomfortable onto Shauna (i.e. the boob dress=Jackie’s discomfort with feminine clothing, trying to get her to hook up with Randy=Jackie’s repulsed attitude about sex) and why does she force misogynistic ideas onto Nat via slut-shaming?
3. Why do we see Jackie in this very feminine outfit in S3?
These are all actually easy to make connections about and connect to my own transmasc Nat and transmasc Shauna headcanons, which I’ll explain further.
Jackie has a very specific version of herself that she presents to the outside world. While this version is chipped away to reveal glimpses of the real Jackie during her limited time in the wilderness before her death, the tragedy of Jackie is that we never really got to know her as she really was. We can only extrapolate from what we have to make guesses about her true self—what was Jackie and what was Jackie’s mask. Jackie’s fallout with Shauna directly corresponds to the Doomcoming dress. In the wilderness, I think Jackie felt like she and Shauna could be more open with each other, which is why it upset her all the more when Shauna didn’t reciprocate this and kept secrets from Jackie, confiding instead in Taissa. (There’s something to be said about Jackie’s insecurities with Shauna confiding in a very confidently feminine girl while Jackie is exploring previously untapped aspects of her masculinity.) Jackie was very suicidal in the last few weeks of her life. A large portion of the fandom has agreed her death was passive suicide. When she wore her Doomcoming dress, she was reverting to that overtly feminine mask, because she’d let Shauna and the others see her slip too much and it cost her dearly. It was also in this dress that she lost her virginity to Travis despite not feeling any attraction to him. This connects to the second point relating to Shauna and Nat.
Shauna has her own struggles that can easily be interpreted as part of the transmasc experience. It shows up early with Shauna feeling uncomfortable in the party dress Jackie insists she wears—the red “boob dress” (interesting to note too that red is often cited as the color of lust/seduction) that Shauna ends up covering to the best of her abilities with a jacket. The outfit Shauna wanted to wear for the party covers much more skin, and she obviously felt more comfortable in it.
Jackie forces a more revealing outfit on Shauna while suggesting Shauna should have sex with a boy despite she herself being extremely uncomfortable having sex with her own boyfriend and feeling disgusted by it. Jackie’s self-loathing is palpable after she has to get Jeff off, and she faked her own orgasm to get him to stop touching her.
She even insists that what she and Jeff are doing isn’t REALLY sex and puts off having penetrative sex with him.
Interestingly, while she shames Shauna for not having sex before college during their first scene together in Shauna’s car, Jackie shames Nat in the opposite way by implying Nat has too MUCH sex. Again, this comes across as very hypocritical given Jackie judges Nat for having sex with Travis and then Jackie herself later coerces Travis into sex. We also know that Jackie is, in some way, jealous of Nat based on her compliment to her during the party:
In Jackie’s eyes, Nat has everything Jackie wishes she had. She wishes she was comfortable enough in her own skin to have sex like Nat does. She wishes she could stop caring about what others think and drop her hyperfemininity, something Nat in both timelines is never concerned with, often presenting androgynously and taking on stereotypically masculine roles such as that of the hunter (which furthermore ties into Shauna being put in the stereotypically feminine role of preparing the food the “man” hunts and yet garnering no recognition for it. Remember how Shauna, like Jackie, becomes viciously jealous of Nat and resents Nat for this role while presenting far more masculinely than before… yeah).
Essentially, Jackie can never be happy with what those around her are doing with their bodies, presentation, and sexual autonomy, because Jackie can never be satisfied with herself in these ways. She is so deeply insecure about her gender, sexuality, and presentation that she projects these insecurities onto others, especially Shauna and Nat. It’s a vicious cycle, because it’s not like Jackie is the only one guilty of forcing their own image onto another. Shauna’s hallucinations and dreams of Jackie after her death create a feminine “mean girl” persona of Jackie that isn’t Jackie at all, but rather, is what Jackie hid behind when she felt afraid that others were looking at her too closely and lashed out at Shauna and Nat. The famous pink and green outfit is a reflection of how even Shauna upholds that image of Jackie. The fandom associating Jackie with pink rather than, for example, blue, a color Jackie wears more often than any, also falls in line with others even outside of the show itself almost intentionally misinterpreting who Jackie is to fit an aesthetically pleasing, easy image of her, or of Jackie in the context of ships like Jackieshauna or Jackienat where people like to see her as the feminine one to Shauna and Nat’s more masculine presentations.
And while we’re at it, to talk more about that cycle of feminization and envy that started with Jackie’s parents and transferred to Jackie who exchanges this behavior back and forth with Shauna and puts it on Nat, Shauna also transfers her own vitriol onto Nat when Jackie is gone. As I mentioned, I see this jealousy and resentment as being heavily influenced by gender roles and presentation in the wilderness—this is, after all, a major theme of Yellowjackets. Nat hunts, Nat shoots the gun, Nat feeds the team, so Nat gets the glory. Shauna receives the food Nat hunts, Shauna prepares the food, and she does the job no one wants to do to deliver that food to everyone else’s mouths. Shauna does not get the glory. Shauna’s job is looked away from. Shauna’s job scares them. In a typical patriarchal hunter-gatherer society (note: this is a generalization and does not apply to all hunter-gatherer societies by any extent) Nat takes on the man’s role while Shauna takes on the wife’s role. She is even, in a way, feminized by the entire team as a girl who acts as a vessel to give birth to their “blessing” from the wilderness.
Shauna shares Jackie’s old envy for Nat, and in a very similar context. Rather than this envy being rooted in Jackie’s resentment over Nat’s presumed comfort with her body and sexuality, Shauna’s is more related to the masculine role and presentation that Nat fits into. Shauna and Nat actually have very similar experiences with their sexuality, which we know Shauna is aware of due to her attempt at defending Nat from Taissa’s slut-shaming at the party. Nat, rather than appreciating Shauna acting as a protector to her (another example of stereotypically masculine roles emerging here) Nat lashes out.
Shauna, having cheated with Jeff, and Nat, having had sex with several boys (and been groomed by grown men as well) both have reputations pertaining to their sexuality and presentation at a young age. I say this because I think Shauna presenting much more masculinely in S3 while taking pleasure in humiliating Nat and forcing her into the “feminine” role of prepping the food to understand Shauna’s position is important to this discussion.
Like Jackie and Shauna, Nat’s story is also very prominently about sexuality and gender roles, and it often ties into Jackie and Shauna’s stories. This starts early with Nat’s backstory regarding her trauma with guns.
I’m going to use some Freud psychology here PLEASE bear with me.
Freud’s theory on guns sees them as a phallic symbol of masculinity—we see this a lot in modern times and I think it’s very much applicable to both Nat and Shauna’s stories, that guns are often viewed as an instrument by which to fight one’s own feelings of emasculation. Nat, to me, is clearly a victim of incest in some capacity from her father. He condescends to her, weaponizes her sexuality and gender against her by calling her a “little slut” simply for hanging out with a boy, and uses the nickname “Natty” to belittle her. His abuse is incredibly misogynistic, degrading, and relies heavily on infantilization and feminization of Nat (which often go hand in hand). By Nat making the decision to hold a gun to her father and pull the trigger on him, even though it didn’t work, she was reclaiming what her father took from her. She was stepping into that role of protector for herself and her mother, and she was disputing his infantilization and feminization. Obviously Nat is traumatized by what follows, but when we see her again using a gun in the wilderness, she’s once again finding power in wielding it. She’s once again using a gun to fight against the label of her as a slut, this time from Travis, and from his taunting regarding her being a girl who therefore “shouldn’t handle a gun.” When she gets that power back, she looks almost crazed with the joy of it.
By the way!!!! Shauna’s reaction to the idea of wielding a gun in S1 was to say she doesn’t think she’s “meant” to wield firearms.
Her reaction when she uses one to shoot at Melissa and thus take back the power she feels Melissa took from her in S3?
Very similar to Nat’s S1 response.
This leads into my point about Shauna “taking” Nat’s masculinity for herself in S3 after being forced to play the mother in S2, ignored for her efforts while Nat was praised. This is literally represented by Shauna physically wrestling the gun, the phallic symbol, from Nat…
…and forcing Nat into the “feminine” role of food prep.
It’s also important to note relating to the gender roles and stereotypes involving the hunter and butcher jobs that while Nat and Shauna derive joy from CHOOSING to wield the gun, no character ever feels okay being forced into one of these jobs. Shauna initially accepted the “feminine” butcher role, believing she wasn’t suited for the gun, which is the same rhetoric Travis pushed on Nat for being a girl. As time went on and her efforts went unnoticed, particularly when she had to butcher humans, she was essentially forced to keep doing something she never agreed to in its entirety. Nat is obviously revolted by being forced into the butcher role by Shauna. Taissa contrasts Shauna and Nat by being horrified when she’s given the gun, and can only force herself to (almost, until she’s interrupted) shoot Ben when Other Tai takes over.
Jackie herself was put off by the idea of taking on the butcher role, which Shauna tried to show her—feeding back into Shauna’s unconscious feminization of Jackie—while Jackie seemed to desire the hunter role but wasn’t chosen. She seemed disappointed in herself when she couldn’t make the shot.
That’s the dynamic between Jackieshaunanat and their struggles with gender: Nat will make the shot while Jackie will never know how. She’ll step into her role of protector and save the team while Jackie dies in the cold, never knowing or accepting who she is. And Shauna, unlike Jackie, will try to take it from Nat by force if she has to.
It makes it all the more depressing how post-rescue, Shauna concedes the masculinity she stepped into that made her feel powerful again after her power was taken from her. She concedes it to punish herself because she believes it’s the life Jackie would have lived. Nat gets to keep being the badass in Shauna’s eyes. Nat’s life is in shambles, yeah—she’s an addict—but in Shauna’s eyes, at least Nat is free. Even at the end, Nat dies in the “masculine” role. Nat dies the protector.
Shauna is resigned to the role of wife and mother.
Jackie never got to find her role.
So, TL;DR: Jackie, Shauna, and Nat all have great potential for transmasc readings of their characters due to their individual and connected struggles with feeling trapped by femininity as they gravitate towards masculinity, and much of Shauna and Jackie’s resentment of Nat can be sourced from Nat’s natural ability to step into masculine roles and presentations while Jackie and Shauna are stuck in the feminine roles they’ve been assigned to play.
