Non-binary She-Ra creator Noelle Stevenson explains how lockdown gave them the push to finally undergo top surgery
Noelle Stevenson at the Annual Critics’ Choice Awards in January, 2020. (Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for Critics Choice Association)
Noelle Stevenson has had a big year. First, the She-Ra showrunner came out as non-binary, and then they got top surgery.
It was also the end of their groundbreaking series, Netflix’s She-Ra and the Princesses of Power – which massively flipped the status quo by centring a lesbian love story on a kid’s TV series
Speaking to Out Magazine, Stevenson explained exactly why getting top surgery was so important to them, and how being at home during the pandemic helped them realise that.
“Suddenly this year, I’m not going anywhere, not even into a coffee shop. So I’m not worried about random people. I’m not worried necessarily about how I’m looking to the world at large,” they said. “And that actually really great gave me this little space to just be like, ‘Wait a second. I am still feeling these gender feelings.'”
Stevenson, whose pronouns are he, she or they, went on to lay out how they realised that their feelings about their body hadn’t changed, despite not seeing people.
“This is not a reaction to the world I’m in,” he said. “This is not a reaction to the way I’m treated at work or at the coffee shop or on the street. This is something that is in my heart that has been growing and getting more intense. And these things that I want to explore about my gender, that’s just a part of me.”
Even at home with her wife, Stevenson realised that she wanted to be shirtless, with a flat chest.
“And so realising that I wanted top surgery, which had been this huge thing that I had been thinking about for years and years and years, suddenly it was like that hasn’t gone away,” she said. “It’s only gotten stronger, even when I’m just at home with my wife, and she’s the only one who’s seeing me.”
Having undergone top surgery, Stevenson shared a photo of them smiling. While they are still inside, they’ve just been enjoying the feeling.
“It’s nice to be able to spend this time just with myself and with the person who loves me and knows me the best and just figure out what makes me happy and what makes me feel like myself,” they said.
Describing how, in a year of big achievements, top surgery was the best one, Noelle Stevenson added: “It’s like taking off ankle weights you didn’t know were there.
“It’s just like, oh my God, it has improved every single other aspect of my life and every single other part of my relationship to my own body and presentation has been seriously the best thing ever.”
View this post on Instagram
