Tiny white ra-ra skirt, red and black boned bodice, and lashings of mascara and lipstick. The risque outfit her 16-year-old daughter wore for a Halloween party last year will forever be etched in Clare Macnaughton’s memory. But far from telling her to cover up, Clare felt secretly overjoyed.
Context is everything: four years prior to that night, Isabella, known as Macc, had insisted that she was no longer a girl, initially identifying as non-binary and then as a trans boy – and even binding her breasts. So this overt display of femininity was a very welcome sight indeed for Clare. ‘It has been quite a journey, for both Macc and me,’ says Clare, 53, from Warminster, Wiltshire. ‘From the age of 12, she was adamant she was non-binary and, by age 13, that she was a boy.
‘I’ve done my best to support her at every stage, but I drew the line at giving my consent for her to have the testosterone and double mastectomy she was so intent on. And thank goodness I did.’
Macc, who once thought her mother ‘unreasonable’, is equally relieved she resisted her ever more insistent pleas.
‘If I’d had hormones, I think I would have thought, ‘S***, I’m in too deep, I can’t de-transition now’, and felt stuck,’ she says candidly.
The ordeal was all the more difficult for the fact that Macc’s dad, Kai, died of cancer in 2023. ‘For two years, I haven’t had a husband to talk through the complexities with,’ says Clare. ‘On top of my grief, there were times when I really struggled – and Macc did too.
‘Like me, Kai had a sense that Macc would go back to being a girl. However, her de-transitioning now feels bittersweet because the last time he saw her, she was still insisting she was our son. I would’ve loved for him to see her as his little girl again.’
Meanwhile, for any anxious parents of trans kids who may take heart from Macc’s de-transition, she is keen to stress that hers is an unusual case: ‘I know that when their kids transition a lot of parents think, ‘Oh, I hope they come back to their senses’ but I am rare.
In 2021 Isabella, known as Macc, had insisted that she was no longer a girl, initially identifying as non-binary and then as a trans boy – and even binding her breasts (Pictured: Isabella and her mum Clare)
Now the risque outfit her 16-year-old daughter wore for a Halloween party last year will forever be etched in Clare’s memory. But far from telling her to cover up, she felt secretly overjoyed
‘I know so many people who are so happy having transitioned so I want to be clear that, just because one person de-transitions, it doesn’t mean everyone will.’ There’s no denying it’s a dramatic volte-face. So convinced was Macc that her future self would have surgery, grow a beard and live as a man, that she and her mother shared their story in Femail in November 2021.
Macc was 13 at the time.
You may well question how on earth the change of heart came about. Clare puts it down to Macc suddenly realising that she found boys attractive – and that both heterosexual and gay boys were largely disinterested in trans boys like her.
Macc believes that wearing bikinis and cropped tops during a family holiday in Kenya – where it was too hot for her usual jeans and shirts, with a chest binder underneath – made her embrace her femininity.
‘I remember thinking, ‘Ooh I like wearing feminine clothing and acting like a girl’,’ says Macc. ‘I told my friend Keny, who was on holiday with us, but I didn’t want to tell anyone else because I didn’t want them saying, ‘Told you so!’ – even behind my back.
‘My grandmother and other older members of my wider family had said I wouldn’t always be a boy, and that made me all the more determined to prove them wrong. So it was hard proving them right.’
Clare recalls her daughter flirting with a boy staying at the same hotel on Diani Beach in Kenya’s Indian Ocean, and later confiding, crestfallen: ‘He’s not interested in me because I’m trans and he’s heterosexual.’
‘I comforted her but knew better than to suggest this might be a recurring issue – it would have only made her dig her heels in,’ says Clare. ‘However, back home, she told me one day, in the car, that she was no longer ‘so fixated on gender’.
‘Again I didn’t give a big reaction, just nodded along. But I was secretly hopeful. Then, when she was starting sixth-form college the following month, I asked what gender she wanted to register her place in and she said ‘girl’.
‘By then, she was wearing make-up and more feminine clothes, so it didn’t come as a big surprise, and I said ‘OK’.
‘I knew the last thing she wanted was for me to make a big fuss about her de-transitioning so I’ve played it very cool.’
The first inkling that Macc was ‘unhappy in her body’ came when she was 12 years old. Clare, an author, was driving her daughter home from the stables where she spent a lot of time riding when Macc announced she was neither a girl nor a boy, but non-binary.
She had always been a bit of a tomboy, preferring joggers and hoodies to dresses, but had also enjoyed playing with traditional girls’ toys, including dolls.
‘There had been no signs of gender dysphoria beforehand, otherwise I’d probably have taken it more seriously,’ says Clare.
‘Instead I said, ‘Well, it’s not like Woolworth’s pick and mix, you don’t just choose one.’
It was during the pandemic and Clare was aware that Macc was spending a lot of time on TikTok, where there are currently 43million posts relating to being non-binary.
Clare previously struggled with Isabella – then known as Macc – wanting to transition but she is ‘overjoyed’ to have her ‘beautiful daughter’ back
Telling herself it was probably just a phase, Clare ‘just listened’ – firmly believing that pushing back would only make her daughter more entrenched in her beliefs.
Wondering if it was a reaction to societal pressures to be sexual once you hit puberty, Clare confided in Macc that she hadn’t felt especially girly as an adolescent, either.
She’d been unhappy with periods and breasts, though she embraced her femininity now. When Macc cut her long hair into a short, spiky style, she didn’t object. But when she asked for a chest binder to hide her developing breasts, Clare said that she would need to use her own spending money for that.
An internet search revealed that if worn incorrectly or for too long, binders can lead to chest or back pain, bruising and even rib fractures, shortness of breath, skin damage and over-heating.
When the £12 black binder arrived from Amazon, Clare relayed this information to Macc, who agreed to take breaks from the tight crop top-style garment with hooks and eyes down one side.
‘As a feminist, I struggled with Macc rejecting being female,’ she says. ‘But I also understand why someone may want the advantages that come with presenting as male.’
Telling herself this ‘phase’ had been triggered by a combination of the onset of puberty and the weirdness of the pandemic, Clare was pragmatic, believing the most important thing was to stay strong and supportive – in order to avoid triggering a ‘mental health crisis’.
Her husband Kai agreed and was supportive because, she says, the last thing he would have wanted was to alienate Macc.
By her 14th birthday, the following April, Macc had decided she was no longer non-binary but, in fact, a boy.
Although her style of clothes – jeans, cargo pants and shirts – didn’t change, her pronouns became he/him – and woe-betide anyone who got them wrong.
‘Although I generally took a chilled approach, no matter how challenging it was hearing her talk about ‘chopping her t**s off’, I remember Macc shouting at me after I mistakenly referred to her as ‘she’,’ recalls Clare.
Helen Carroll reports on ‘Macc’ and mum Clare in 2021, with Isabella now de-transitioning
Clare believes this ‘unhysterical’ approach to parenting has been instrumental in helping to steer her daughter through the various stages of her gender journey (Pictured: Isabella as a young girl)
‘I blurted out, ‘They, them, him, he, she, her, it – whatever!’ in frustration.
‘I consider myself pretty liberal-minded but tip-toeing around all of these pronouns – some of which seem ungrammatical – felt utterly exhausting. Macc called me ‘disrespectful’ and I remember rolling my eyes, like a teenager myself. It wasn’t my finest moment.’
When Clare asked why she had decided to identify as a boy, Macc’s only explanation was: ‘Because it makes me happy.’
‘If she’d told me she felt more affinity with boys, it would have made more sense, but this felt like a fairly vague reason for doing something so extreme,’ says Clare.
‘I didn’t challenge her but I do remember offloading to friends, saying, ‘Identifying as a size eight makes me happy, but it doesn’t make it real!’
‘Although I’ve never put this to Macc, I had a sense that this gender journey was rooted in her need for attention because in the preceding years her older brother, Ben, who’s 21, and has ADHD, had needed more parental support.’
In spring 2022, Macc informed her teachers that she was now a boy and, after her mother gave her consent by email, had her name changed from Isabella to Macc Macnaughton on the register.
She used ‘gender neutral’ toilets in school, while continuing to visit women’s loos when out and about, finding the men’s ‘gross’.
She also stuck to the girls’ changing rooms for PE because she felt self-conscious undressing in front of boys and wanted to be with her female friends.
Macc had always worn trousers as part of her school uniform and says her ‘woke’ friends didn’t comment on either her initial declaration that she was non-binary, or her subsequent transition to being a boy.
Eventually, when she turned 16 last April, she paid £50 out of her own savings to change her name by deed poll, officially becoming Macc Kai James Macnaughton.
Still grieving her father, a Squadron Leader and helicopter pilot in the RAF, who died within three weeks of being diagnosed with blood vessel cancer, she wanted to honour him.
The impact of suddenly losing a loving and ‘supportive’ father cannot be underestimated.
Macc finds it difficult to talk about, though she doesn’t believe his death had any bearing on her de-transitioning. Clare, meanwhile, is unsure what, if any, impact it may have had. It was just a month after changing her name by deed poll, while on their holiday in Kenya, that Macc began to question her gender again.
While previously, Macc couldn’t look at her naked body without the binder, she was surprised to find she enjoyed strutting about on the beach in a bikini.
And while she had only ever dated girls, she suddenly found herself attracted to boys – and now considers herself bisexual. The desire to embrace her femininity was so great that, back home in Warminster, Macc ditched the chest binder and began dipping into her mother’s make-up bag.
‘It was strange, at first, seeing my reflection in the mirror – how ‘girly’ I looked in mascara and lipstick,’ says Macc. ‘But I don’t wear much make-up and my hair is still pretty short, so my friends tell me I look like a lesbian, which I’m happy with.’
Last September, Macc started college, where she is studying a Level Three Extended Diploma in Public Services.
She registered as a girl – ‘Isabella, known as Macc’ – and began growing her hair and buying her cosmetics. Her favourite brands now include Rimmel and MUA. Watching the re-blossoming of her ‘beautiful daughter’, but fearing that too much attention might send her scuttling back to her more androgynous look, Clare was careful to say as little as possible.
Clare’s new partner, Pete, whom she met eight months after Kai’s death, now lives with them.
‘I do have to say something when she walks around the house in her bra and hot pants,’ says Clare, laughing.
‘Otherwise, I turn a blind eye, including to the dresses she’s just bought from ASOS – short and strapless, with crossover backs, in flimsy Lycra.’
Clare believes this ‘unhysterical’ approach to parenting has been instrumental in helping to steer her daughter through the various stages of her gender journey.
Her advice to other parents whose children identify as transgender is not to bow to pressure to consent to hormones and surgery – encourage them to wait until they’re 18 and can take those steps, should they still choose to, as adults.
As a result, Macc’s return to being a girl involved nothing more arduous than changing her legal name back, by deed poll, to Isabella Elizabeth. Had she undergone a double mastectomy and been given testosterone, it would have been a very different story.
The next step is to get the name on her GCSE certificates altered from Macc – something the exam boards say can be done – so as not to confuse future employers who may ask to see them.
As for letting her friends know, Macc used her generation’s preferred way of communicating and simply changed her pronouns to she/her on Instagram.
‘I let people just figure it out when they saw me wearing make-up and everyone was really polite, not mentioning it or just asking, ‘Are you going by ‘she’ now?’,’ recalls Macc, adding, with a smile: ‘But my granny didn’t hide her feelings.
‘She said, ‘Ooh look at my gorgeous granddaughter!’ All her other grandkids are boys, so I think she’s glad.’
Macc is conscious that most people in her small town are aware of the journey she’s been on. In fact, her boyfriend has been teased by friends who tell him he’s ‘dating a boy’. ‘I’m sure they call me slurs behind my back, but I don’t ask,’ she says. ‘And he doesn’t care what they say, he’s pretty strong-minded.’
What, I wonder, with the benefit of hindsight, does Macc make of her journey from girl to boy and back again?
‘I think it came from the sexism in the world, how women are hated on, and how privileged men are,’ she says.
‘At first I fancied being not fully a boy, but mostly a boy, and then I thought I want to be fully a boy and was serious about getting top surgery and starting on testosterone.
‘That changed though, on that holiday, when I realised I liked aspects of being feminine.’
And what of the role of TikTok, which Clare feels played a significant part in all of this?
‘I already felt not feminine, more masculine or androgynous, and then I found non-binary TikTok and trans TikTok and thought, ‘Oh, that’s how I feel’. I could really relate to it and I just felt really seen.’
Looking back, Clare is relieved to have ‘neither prevented nor enabled’ Macc’s transition.
‘It was self-protection, as much as anything,’ she says. ‘We mothers get blamed for everything, and I had this vision of an older version of Macc asking, ‘Why didn’t you stop me? Why did you let me do that? I was a child, you should have known.’
‘I’m not sure how significant, or not, my response to all this has been because, ultimately, what changed is that Macc’s transgender status had become an obstacle to her desires.
‘However, it is lovely having my beautiful, feisty, opinionated daughter back.
‘And her new-found interest in fashion, make-up and the length of her hair certainly makes for more enjoyable conversation than her preoccupation with pronouns.’
