#thinking about girl will smith's gender problems, one of things I've seen fic writers touch on is the colleen of it all and more broadly the gender mandates of her moneyed new england catholic background conflicting with being a female athlete in a sport like hockey/football. so i was pondering what kinds of messaging & support/pushback she has been getting from her family over the years as she goes through the sports pipeline (in contrast with boy will smith and 'where's mommy moving to'). did they dissuade her at any point? how driven did she have to be swing it still? her mom was a woman in sports and there's ofc dorothy comiskey of baseball fame, but being in management/ownership is so different to being an athlete... and how much they must be pushing her to present & act femininely in professional spaces and the kinds of things they must be saying about girls around her like mack (and mack herself lol). like the whole lesbian thing must be at the forefront of their minds which makes her #tormentnexus around her sexuality and the closet and her codependency with mack (and her parents's thoughts on it) so interesting. i've seen fics where writers contrast how their parents treat golden boy will vs grace and i personally think a girl version is so delicious bc now she has this much more gender conforming older sister that her mother is like 100% comparing her to. that sister relationship must be so deliciously twisty. anyway, i'm super interested to see where u go with everything and i'm grateful for writers like u who are exploring these ideas! i love girls & i love lesbians haha
thank you, this is such a good question!! some of it will come up in the next part of the series, which is from will's pov and will be a bit longer, but i'll get into it a little bit now.
okay, so i think in mine and yesterday's anon's asks, i mentioned will and mack converging on a point in terms of their identity as players and i kind of see that being the case in terms of their gender presentation and how they feel about that, too. mack is pretty gnc in this fic and she has no interest in changing that, but she's aware that that inflexibility and inability to even try to present femininity, marks her out as different from most of her peers; and also conforms to stereotype. will on the other hand is gender conforming without even trying to be. i don't envision her as having any issues with not being girly/feminine enough in this verse - as mack notes in the fic i posted, will is pretty! she passes for straight with flying colours. she's a soccer player but she's not that kind of soccer player. that to me is where it gets thorny for will - she doesn't want to be like mack, she doesn't experience gender dysphoria, she's kind of happy sitting at the intersection of femme and masc that she sits at, BUT, she struggles with the fact that sometimes she feels as though she wants people to be able to tell that she's a dyke. she's the kind of girl that people say oh well you'd never know she was gay! about, and she hates that, it feels like she's lying to everyone and herself. so while mack is jealous of will for being able to conform so easily, will is jealous of mack for being so steadfastly herself and visibly queer.
as to the colleen of it all. i totally get where people are coming from with the whole new england/catholic/blue bloodedness of it all, but i just don't see colleen as being someone who wouldn't accept a "tomboy" daughter. like i think what she appreciates in irl will is his ambition and his individuality. i think a lot about her saying on the never offside pod that you should support your kids in whatever they want to do (or be? can't remember the exact quote). and i think grace being so gender conforming and feminine is exactly what would allow will the freedom to not be that - youngest siblings are so often given free reign to be themselves where the oldest weren't! i think will in this universe would be very like irl will - hyperactive, anxious, obsessive, driven, and i think if she latched on to soccer and was good at it, colleen would just be happy that a) she was occupied and out of the house and b) had the potential to be a star athlete. i think will's issues with her sexuality as they'll appear in the next part are more just like ... we live in a society! and she projects a lot of that onto colleen, maybe, and colleen isn't perfect, but she's also not a raging homophobe or desperate for will to wear a dress and heels rather than a cute trouser-waistcoat combo. like everyone in the family kind of knows that will's gay, but no one really talks about it, and the reason for that is more will's awkwardness than theirs. that's my version anyway! each to their own, this is like ... a fake universe lmao, i'm not saying i'm right, just that that's how i've crafted my sandcastle.
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