Everyone has their own secrets that are notoriously difficult to tell, even to their closest friends or families. Trans-parent, the television show about the Pfeffermans is such an example. Mort Pfefferman, a seventy year old retired professor, divorced his his wife and lives alone. His eldest daughter Sarah is a carefree housewife, who has two kids and a perfect husband. Second son Josh has a decent job with music. Ali, the youngest sister is just a normal hotheaded girl. However, life is not that perfect. Sarah cheated on her husband without a sense of guilt because of falling in love again with her ex-college girl friend. Josh is a playboy and has had a morbid relationship with his nanny since he was fifteen. Ali, who has a hippy spirit, is soaked in illusion all day. More importantly, the father of the family, Mort, maybe Maura Pfeffermans is more appropriate for her, is transgendered, and he never told anyone in the family. One day, Mort decided to be a woman and everything changed.

It is not a traditional family comedy but it was regarded as the best new series of fall 2014 by TIME magazine. It also gained 8.0 on IMBD and 98% likes on Rottentomatoes. For myself, a Chinese young adult, whose peers usually watch The Big Bang Theory and Two Broke Girls, I have to say that Transparent’s excellent public reputation and its transgender topic are the initial reasons that attracted me to follow it, but after the first two episodes, I was totally obsessed with it. As the first American TV series mainly about transgendered individuals, Transparent does reveal the subtle feelings of the transgender in a tender way by not hurrying to please the audience with sadness and suffering.

What happened in the series looks just like what will take place in real life. After Mort’s confession, her kids’ distinct reactions were fitting for the three kinds of different people they represent. Sarah accepted the transition of Mort best of the three. Naturally, her image stands for those people who believe that people should never be limited or criticized by their distinctive gender recognition. In contrast, Josh took the excuse to rationalize his promiscuity so he represented the man in reality that didn’t even care about others. Mort’s favorite kids, Ali, couldn’t accept that her father psychologically identified himself as a woman and began an irresponsible relationship with her fitness coach, which was a subconscious way of rejecting her father’s choice. Despite the fact that our society is becoming more inclusive, the level of tolerance still can’t enable everyone to be what he or she wants to be. We are non-transparent.

To me, the most impressive plot in the series is the transition of Mort’s attitude. Before the day that he made the decision to confess to his kids, he was lost in great fear and trembling. With the plot proceeding, Mort became more confident with her new identity, but I still remember his/her excited but helpless eyes the first time he/she went shopping as a woman. However, a woman is what Mort should be; she should not be afraid of acting like one. Our sense of gender has been imbued into our heads since we were babies in diapers. These kind of symbolization appear everywhere in our lives. For instance, on a diapers advertisement, you can always find that blue represents boys while pink represents girls. The majority cannot even recognize the implications behind the texts because they have previously been used to these social stereotypes. In commercials, boys always mess up their T-shirts, while girls are always dressed like princesses. Such images influence the whole lives of children unconsciously. If we cannot let people decide what kind of person they want to be, how can we boast about ourselves believing in freedom and human rights?

The gender confusion of Mort is just one side of Transparent. The other protagonists are all more or less lost in their own confusions. All these inversions motive us to think who we really are. Just like its name, besides the implication of TRANS-PARENT, the original meaning of Transparent reveals how people struggle against fate, life and the stereotypes of society. It seems like there is no one-shot approach to deal with the mess. They will keep living and struggling until they find themselves. That is the moment when their lives go back to transparent, without disguise.