Ooh, that makes sense! More sense that I did.

Going back on the whole age-related gender dysphoria, I think that is a good reasoning to Utena's gender identity.

Many girls agree, myself included, that when we were younger, playing pretend we preferred to slip into more masculine roles. To me, it always seemed more fun to possess a masculine role. Even when I grew older and got into middle school and online roleplaying I still stuck to male characters. I was always very tomboyish anyway, but now I think of myself as very feminine at heart.

We have to remember that Utena and Anthy aren't "adults", no matter how their ordeals might affect our opinions of their ages. In fact, they're junior high students. Even the majority of the student council members (Touga, Saionji, Juri) are in the high school section of Ohtori and are at least a few years older than Utena. By these members she is still initially viewed as a child. She's a young adolescent girl, and one of the major themes in Utena is that of coming-of-age. In the end, Utena wasn't really a prince because she had by then realized her own femininity and her vulnerability. And as we all know, it defies logic for a girl to be a prince, doesn't it?

Utena initially wanted to be a prince, due to her impression of the heroic and strong Dios. She didn't want to be the princess she was born to be, to have to wait idly by for her prince to come for her. So she decided what any young ambitious child would do and chose the proactive approach of being a Prince. However once she came to Ohtori and got involved in the duels, she began to realize just what being a noble prince would require of her. She still wanted to stick it though, but with factors like Touga and Akio, she began to realize her feminine side. And by the time she had realized it, she was reluctant to give it up, which led to her failure as a prince. The princess she was born to be was interfering with the prince she desired to be. In other words, she was having to grow up into a young woman when all she really wanted to do was continue her childhood games of being a prince.

CoffinBreaker wrote:

It's rare, however, for boys to pretend to be girls unless they grow up to be metrosexual or gay.

I think you just showed us the prevailing common conception that kept young straight boys - most of whom wanted to be accepted as normal by others - from pretending to be girls while playing.

Pre-school, many little boys, when given the chance, will experiment with their mother's high heels and scarfs and play acted in them since children do whatever they think is fun; that, and it is within human nature that one would want to "gloom" and beautify themselves, and feminine attires just give ample opportunities for such experimentation.

Once at school, boys who pretend to be girls will immediately get ridiculed and bullied by boys and girls alike, most of whom having already been taught by the world (parents, older siblings, teachers, media) how boys who resemble girls are "sissies" - which, like "sluts" and "gays", are the human equivalent of bugs that deserved to be played with and/or outright destroyed.  What friends they had will stop associating with them, least they got similarly branded as well; their own parents will berate them for their being weak enough to get bullied, and will try actively "manning" them up to stop them from "degenerating" into the stigmatized sissies.

I've once known this good-looking kid who got bullied at school for his blond locks; when his parents caught wind of it, did they call up the teachers to discuss the problems with school bullies?  No, they made their son get a crew cut instead, and forced him to join the sports team that the bullies were members of.

Any boy found being anything similar a girl will get skewered faster than Anthy by OUR WORLD's swords of hate.  Even if straight boys wanna try flirt with the idea of playing as girls, most of them will find the colossal social risk involved is just not worth it. 

Thus why girls play as boys and boys play as boys, and all is well in their coffins.

gorgeousshutin wrote:

CoffinBreaker wrote:

It's rare, however, for boys to pretend to be girls unless they grow up to be metrosexual or gay.

I think you just showed us the prevailing common conception that kept young straight boys - most of whom wanted to be accepted as normal by others - from pretending to be girls while playing.

Goes to show that femininity still is looked down upon, that guys should avoid it at all costs less they lose their status. It's pretty sad. I remember my best friend's younger brother wanting to wear a dress to school, but his dad was worried his son would get bullied if he did that.

But as far as the long hair in SKU and the movie goes, while it makes for a nice metaphor, I think part of it is for the sake of looking cool/pretty.
(With hair like that, who would want to cut it all off? :V)

Lol, whenever I played a male role as a kid, it was mostly because my friend insisted on being the female role. I usually preferred female roles though (whether they were princesses or witches). In that sense I was pretty girly.

Lurv wrote:

Goes to show that femininity still is looked down upon, that guys should avoid it at all costs less they lose their status. It's pretty sad.

What I find completely depressing is that feminity is still so looked down upon, full stop. Guys who aren't totally traditionally masculine get sneered at, women who are traditionally feminine in any way get accused of being "anti-feminist" and other shit like that, there's all the terrible things many women go through just for being women, and then you have to think of how much worse still things must be for trans* people.

In other words, misogyny hurts just about everyone to one degree or another, and the sooner it dies in a fire, the better.

Bringing this back to SKU... I don't really have anything more to add to the topic of movie!Utena's hair going from short to long, but I'll put another tangently-related observation out there instead: Movie!Utena, when we first see her, has short hair that's part of her trying to be her own prince, when really a good part of it is about her trying to deal with her pain; in contrast, movie!Touga, her male childhood sweetheart, has very long hair, and that too is linked to his own painful past experiences. Sorry if that's mostly stating the obvious, but at least I thought it was kind of interesting?

Honey Bear wrote:

I don't think we see Utena's true self until she and Anthy emerge butt naked at the end, because they've lost the prince and princess roles and are simply themselves.

Lots of anime use nakedness to represent the naked true self (Penguindrum being one), so I guess naked and hair unbound would be naked true self unbound in SKU movie.