Turning the gray haze into sky blue
CONTENT WARNING: brief mentions and discussions of transphobia and transphobic caricatures
(A screenshot of Bridget forcing a smile through a lot of physical pain)
If you hang around in transfem spaces online you've probably seen Bridget (also typically referred to using words that sound similar to her name, like brisket, basket, biscuit, etc.), many people don't even know a lot about her, they just know what she looks like cause she's hard to avoid, there's fanart of her everywhere. She is a character I like and find interesting despite having a few gripes with her, so I decided to write a bit about her.
Bridget is a fairly popular character in the fighting game series "Guilty Gear", when she was first introduced she started off as... let's face it: a transphobic caricature, the infamous "trap" character archetype, if you don't know what that is go look it up on your own, this post isn't about that, but I did want to mention the fact that her initial introduction to the series was at the very least unpleasant and I appreciate that they turned her into proper representation.
In earlier Guilty Gear games Bridget identified as a boy and corrected people when they mistook her for a girl, she would even talk about how she wants to be more masculine at times. The reason she dresses and speaks so femininely is because in the lore of the game she was actually raised as a girl, and, ok, this next part is kinda weird but stay with me for a second ok?
So Bridget was born in a town in England that has a superstition against male twins (yes I know, tragic, she is in fact bri'ish), this is taken so seriously that when male twins are born the youngest one is meant to be put to death or given up for adoption, and since her parents didn't want to lose Bridget they raised her as a girl, hiding her assigned gender at birth from everyone. So she's used to being feminine because that's how she was raised to be, but still thinks she is a boy and wants to be more manly to like, prove her town wrong? And make her parents feel less guilty over imposing femininity on her? Or something? I don't really get it I'm not going to lie, more on this later.
Bridget doesn't show up in every Guilty Gear game, and she's never been the most relevant character to the main plot of the game, in fact I'm under the impression she's one of the weakest characters in the canon, so she probably wouldn't be able to hold a candle to the main antagonists and stuff, she's not usually part of the main story, and despite that I also hear she's always been voted as one of the most popular characters in the franchise.
Eventually the game "Guilty Gear Strive" came out, and though she was not part of the initial roster they eventually released Bridget as downloadable content, and they changed her whole design and even made her canonically trans. They were smart about it and didn't immediately advertise her as trans though, with the amount of transphobia that is common in anime fandoms and gaming that probably wouldn't have landed well, but they didn't misgender Bridget either. In the promotional materials they wrote things very carefully avoiding gendered language and so people had to wait and buy her and play her whole storyline for them to realize she's trans.
Her transness is unambiguous, of course there was a lot of transphobic backlash, there were people trying to pretend it was a translation mistake or something but her whole story is about accepting herself and eventually there is a whole scene where she straight up says the actual words "because...I'm a girl", which is a fairly faithful translation of the Japanese line "内は……女の子ですから" (uchi wa... onnanoko desu kara) which – when translating as literally as I can – roughly means "because as for me (feminine) I'm a girl" (let's not get into the technicalities of it). Basically, from Guilty Gear Strive onwards she identifies as a girl despite being assigned male at birth, so she's literally a trans woman.
Let's focus on her character design first and then we'll go over a few other things I find interesting about her.
Back when she was first introduced into the franchise she was wearing (in my opinion) the weirdest outfit out of anyone, the character designs for this series are often over the top and goofy (and are often sexualized), in her case she was literally wearing a very short nun dress that is blue with a male symbol on her forehead, and a gigantic handcuff around her waist (a waistcuff?). It seems pretty clear that her outfit was not really taking into account her lore or even her personality, it was trying to be out there and probably sexy? maybe? (I'm not even sure, like yeah the dress is short but that outfit does nothing for me), while also hinting at the fact she was meant to be a boy at the time, so overall I can't say I particularly like it.
When we look at her redesign, it's still fairly similar in vibes, even the color palette is not too different, but you can tell the people in charge of her design did their research and made it with love, because this is actually a thousand times more fitting for a trans woman and I gotta say, I LOVE her redesign.
For starters, while it still kinda looks like a nun outfit her top has actually been turned into a hoodie, and not just any hoodie, if you're a trans woman you may recognize this as a dysphoria hoodie, because it is literally meant to be one.
They actually did enough research to figure out what kinds of things Bridget might feel dysphoric about, one of those things is her hands, so the big puffy sleeves (and her black gloves) make her hands look smaller, the fact her hoodie is so big it also hides her lack of curves on her upper body, the stuff she's wearing underneath also specifically covers her neck because she's dysphoric about her adam's apple as well, and the fact it's a pastel colored hoodie also goes well with how feminine she likes to present herself, like, this is a carefully thought out design, I was moved the first time I heard about this being a thing because you so rarely see this type of thing anywhere else, it's such a breath of fresh air.
Not only that but they gave her a black skater skirt (a classic transfem item of clothing if there ever was one), they switched the male symbol on her forehead for a transgender one (a combined male and female symbol: ⚨), and she even has the word "growth" written on the crosses hanging off her sleeves, recontextualizing the religious imagery in much the same way a lot of trans women recontextualize their own beliefs and perspectives once they explore and take ownership of their genders.
Even without any context I think you should be able to tell the character is a trans woman if you stare at her design long enough, or at least it doesn't feel too surprising to find out she is one. And I won't go into it too much but like, they kinda sexualize most Guilty Gear characters in some way and the way they do it for her makes sense, and I think it's tasteful, I won't elaborate further on that though, make of that what you will.
NOTE: I don't remember where I read the stuff about her design taking into account the things that make her dysphoric (been trying to find it with no luck) so I can't corroborate that it's true, but even if it isn't the fact that the design can be read that way still rules honestly.
So I love her new design, and I think it also resonates with a lot of other people for the same reasons: we can tell it was done with love, there was effort put into it.
Not only that but her theme song hits pretty hard if you're trans, it's very relatable, from the denial of your own transness (why am I feeling so off? must be the vegetables I don't like, or the alarm clock I chose... couldn't be anything deeper right?) to the realization and acceptance of it, in particular these lines are really emotionally impactful:
I know who you are
I'm not leaving you again
Once you figure it out it's not something you can (or even would want to) ever let go of, this is who you were meant to be and the idea of repressing it once again is inconceivable, it is so joyful to finally get to be yourself, to "paint the gray haze into sky blue" as the song so poignantly puts it.
I think the way Bridget is so outwardly feminine / cutesy (liking cute things, carrying around a plushie, speaking in a feminine way) also makes it easy for us to project ourselves onto her and kinda view her as not just relatable but as something to aspire to, especially if we don't personally have the opportunity to have big 'ol plushies, wearing makeup, or dressing femininely without our relatives or roomates suspecting anything, it's nice to see her getting to be so openly herself instead of being treated like a tragic character.
I even like the way she seems to have a very carefree attitude, there was a Guilty Gear Strive anime that released a few months ago and it is striking how positive, wholesome and supportive Bridget is throughout the whole thing. Considering how terrifying things can be in the real world and how most transfems suffer from mental health problems as a result it's really nice to see a portrayal of a trans woman in fiction being so relentlessly happy and unbothered (though I do have problems with how they portrayed her in that anime but this post isn't about that).
I think the fact that the animation (and the visuals in general) of Guilty Gear Strive are so amazing also probably contributed to why I got hyperfixated on the character to be honest. The improvement between her older animations and the newer ones is astonishing and you can now see her personality reflected a lot better through the posing and the timing of her movements, she's always so energetic and happy, when you don't touch any of the buttons and she's just standing there she's literally dancing by default the whole time, it's awesome.
Genuinely as an animation nerd this game is a gold mine, I think Guilty Gear Strive is the best looking game ever made, so personally that also helps me connect with the character (and the franchise) a lot more.
And lastly I wanted to bring something up I found pretty interesting. I remember thinking her backstory is kinda silly and makes her completely unrelatable, after all part of the trans experience is being raised as a gender you are not, having the pressure to conform to society's expectations based on your assigned gender at birth, which is something Bridget somehow doesn't struggle with because she was raised as a girl, but is AMAB, and wanted to be more masculine for... reasons I don't fully understand, and then she does a 180 and ends up identifying as a woman anyway.
I remember wishing the story was a bit different because of how out there it is (though Guilty Gear stories can often be ridiculous and out there so perhaps it's not so out of place) but eventually I found a way to contextualize it that I think I kind of like, it's interesting at the very least.
As trans people we are constantly experiencing the pressure of society to conform to certain expectations, before coming out we're expected to conform to our assigned gender at birth, but afterwards even somewhat progressive people can unintentionally put pressure on us to perform our gender in a very specific way. If you're a trans woman you might be expected to be really good at makeup and wear it all the time, to keep yourself perfectly shaved constantly, to get certain surgeries, to voice train until your voice sounds like a cis woman's, to dress in a very outwardly feminine way but not overdoing it, and even when you do all of these things there's always someone who is judging you and thinking you are doing it wrong out there.
In a weird way these pressures can resemble the way Bridget's parents treated her: imposing femininity not to allow her the freedom to explore and be comfortable, but to prescribe a certain way to be they deem appropriate, and so even though Bridget does want femininity it is not being given to her as a thing she has agency over, but as a command, a box to fit into, it is presented in a rigid way instead of the messy, fluid thing gender can be in reality, and that's one of the joys of being transgender, getting to explore what your gender means to you.
So despite her backstory being a bit weird it feels like it somehow does represent this weird paradox where even as a trans woman it can be negative to have femininity imposed on you in a prescriptive way.
I imagine these things I talked about here contribute to why she's such a popular character, there's lots to appreciate about her so despite the flaws (which I didn't mention cause this post isn't about that) I would say she's not bad representation in my opinion.