Jazz Jennings

2000– ACTIVIST UNITED STATES

Being transgender is not just a medical transition, [it’s] discovering who you are, living your life authentically, loving yourself, and spreading that love towards other people and accepting one another.

—JAZZ JENNINGS

“Mommy, will you put pigtails in my hair?” Jazz asked. As her mother brushed her short locks, trying to gather enough of it into two hair ties, Jazz closed her eyes. She was finally allowed to grow her hair long, and she loved it when her mother brushed it. She also loved looking like her big sister, Ari. Today, she was wearing one of Ari’s old dresses. It was pink—her favorite color. Soon, she’d be able to wear dresses to school, just like Ari. Her preschool was finally going to let her wear what she wanted to wear.

Jazz couldn’t wait.

“There. All done,” said her mother.

Jazz opened her eyes and looked in the mirror. Her chin-length hair stuck out from the sides of her head like mini trumpets. Her mother wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and together, they looked at the reflection. “You are a very pretty girl,” said her mother.

Jazz couldn’t believe it! Her mother had just called her a girl for the first time ever! Finally, she understood.

“I love you,” said Jazz, dancing giddily around the room. “And I love my hair!”

Jazz froze midtwirl. She was thinking about her brothers and how they’d just taught her how to play soccer, a game that Jazz loved.

“Can girls still play sports?” she asked, worry lines wrinkling her forehead.

Her mother smiled. “Girls can do anything they want.”1

Jazz Jennings was born in 2000 with a boy’s body and a boy’s name—Jaron—but she knew from the start that she was really a girl. When asked about how old she was when she first realized it, Jazz said, “Ever since I could form coherent thoughts, I knew I was a girl trapped inside a boy’s body.”² Jazz is transgender, and as soon as she could speak, around age two, she began telling her parents all about it. When her mom called her a good boy, she would reply, “I’m a good girl.”³ Once, she asked her mom, “When is the good fairy going to come and change my penis into a vagina?”⁴

“Transgender” describes a person whose sense of self—of who they are—does not match the gender of the body they were born into. The number of transgender kids in America is unclear, but there are 1.4 million adults who identify that way.⁵

In fact, Jazz was a total girly girl. She loved dolls, princesses, mermaids, and everything pink. And she always wanted to wear her older sister’s dresses, skirts, and heels. Her parents let her wear whatever she wanted at home, but when she left the house, they insisted that she wear “boy” clothes (plain shorts and a T-shirt—no pink and no princesses). Jazz hated it and threw massive fits. She explained how it felt: “Imagine a young boy who is super into trucks and cars and playing in the mud. Then imagine that every time his parents take him out in public, they parade him around in a pink frilly dress with a parasol. The humiliation he’d feel is exactly the same humiliation I felt.”6

Jazz’s obsession with mermaids never faded. In middle school, she launched a company, Purple Rainbow Mermaid Tails, for which she designs and manufactures extremely realistic silicone mermaid tails. Check it out on YouTube, youtu.be/YnQxrO7edDY.

It took a little while for her parents to understand transgender kids and how Jazz was feeling. Before Jazz, there was almost no information on transgender people that young. But at age five, while Jazz was still in preschool, her parents decided to let her be who she wanted to be. She began wearing skirts and princess T-shirts in public. It wasn’t so easy to convince her preschool, however. They had a strict dress code, and at first, they didn’t want Jazz dressing like a girl or growing her hair long. Jazz kept fighting to express who she was inside.

Jazz’s parents registered her as a girl for kindergarten. This school was fine with Jazz dressing as a girl—but they wouldn’t allow her to use the girls’ restroom. Her only option was to use a bathroom in the nurse’s office or in her classroom. But the nurse’s office was crowded with sick kids, and the bathroom was where they went to barf. The bathroom in the classroom was no better—it had no lock (so Jazz got walked in on many times), and every time she peed, the entire class could hear her! Frustrated by her lack of options, Jazz quit using the bathroom and wet her pants a lot. When she did sneak into the girls’ bathroom, she often got caught and got in trouble. It wasn’t until she was in fifth grade that the school board changed their policy, finally letting Jazz use the girls’ bathroom.

Also while in kindergarten, Jazz took a big step into the public eye. World-famous journalist Barbara Walters interviewed her for 20/20, a national TV show. Jazz and her family thought it would be good to help other families who might be struggling to understand their own transgender kids. After the show, they were flooded with letters thanking Jazz for her courage in speaking out publicly. Some transgenders confessed that before seeing the show, they had been suicidal or were attacked for being transgender. At age six, Jazz already began to see that she could be an inspiration for other young transgender people.

The battle for transgender bathroom rights is being fought right now, probably at a school near you (maybe even yours!). In May 2016, the Obama administration directed US public schools to let transgender students use bathrooms and locker rooms of their chosen gender identity. Schools that didn’t comply risked losing their federal funding. Twelve states fought back, asking the courts to overrule the president. When North Carolina enacted its own state law requiring people to use public bathrooms that correspond with the sex on their birth certificate, the Justice Department sued, and people around the world boycotted the state in protest.8

Throughout Jazz’s childhood, she was always honest about who she was. Her parents didn’t let her go to another kid’s house unless they knew she was transgender. And people had different reactions when they found out. Some kids teased her and wouldn’t play with her, while others shrugged and said, “Oh, you’re transgender? That’s cool. Let’s go get pizza.”⁷ Like most girls her age, Jazz had sleepovers, went to parties, and had several BFFs. She even had her first boyfriend in the fifth grade.

When Jazz did face ignorance and bullying, she worked hard to keep a positive attitude. In sixth grade, a group of new friends ditched her after discovering she was transgender (one even called her a “chick with a dick”), which made her sad for a while, but then she moved on. “It would have been easy for me to stay really bummed out and wallow in misery,” she remembers, “but  .  .  .  I’m genuinely proud of who I am, and someone who can’t see a person’s soul beyond their body isn’t worth getting upset about.”9 She also stood up for herself, calling out bullies for their ignorant behavior or comments.

Another area where Jazz had to fight back and defend herself was on the soccer field. Jazz always loved the sport, and she was good. While in the rec league, she’d always played on a girls’ team. But when she moved up to club soccer, the state soccer league said she could no longer play with the girls—they considered her boy body an unfair advantage (even though she was the smallest player on the girls’ team!). Some teams threatened to sit out games in protest. Jazz tried playing on a boys’ team but was miserable without her girlfriends.

Jazz and her parents appealed the state ruling and continued to fight until finally, when Jazz was eleven, the US Soccer Federation (the governing body for the sport nationwide) changed its policy and ruled that Jazz could compete as a girl on girls’ teams. In fact, they went even further and created a new policy to include transgender players—a policy that had to be followed by all the states. Finally, Jazz could play with her friends. And even better, other transgender kids could play soccer on a team that matched their gender identity. Jazz was amazed that by fighting for her own rights, she changed things for everyone in the United States.

It’s hard being a transgender kid. Transgender youth are much more likely than their peers to be depressed (50 percent vs. 20 percent), have anxiety (27 percent vs. 10 percent), engage in self-harm (17 percent vs. 4 percent), and attempt suicide (17 percent vs. 6 percent).¹⁰ If you or someone you know is struggling with being LGBTQ and needs someone to talk to, call The Trevor Project hotline: 866-488-7386 (TheTrevorProject.org).

Jazz decided that she wanted to speak out more, to help more transgender kids, so in 2007, she and her parents founded TransKids Purple Rainbow Foundation to do just that. Her organization fights bullying and helps transgender kids advocate for their rights in school. It also collects money for research, for financial aid for homeless transyouth, and for scholarships to trans-friendly camps. Jazz also began speaking at conferences, talking to kids and families about her experience.

When Jazz was eleven, the Oprah Winfrey Network filmed a documentary about her life and family, called I Am Jazz: A Family in Transition. That same year, she became the youngest person to win the Youth Courage Award, which is given to “remarkable young people who refuse to be silenced by societal norms and demonstrate profound courage in the face of hardship, intolerance, and bigotry .  .  .”¹¹ When Jazz gave her acceptance speech in front of hundreds of people, she realized for the first time that speaking out was what she was meant to do with her life.

In some cultures, transgender people have been celebrated for a long time. The indigenous people of Alaska use the word Aranu’tiq to describe someone with both a male and female spirit. Aranu’tiq people are highly respected because they view the world in a different way. Other Native American groups have a similar concept—“two spirit”—and a similar respect for different ways of being.13

Jazz has continued speaking out in different ways, reaching a larger and larger audience. She published a picture book about her childhood called I Am Jazz and a memoir for teens called Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen. In addition, she is a social media star, with a YouTube channel boasting millions of views, as well as hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.¹² In 2015, she was honored with an invitation to the White House, where she met President Barack Obama. And the honors keep pouring in. Time magazine named her one of “The 25 Most Influential Teens of 2014,” and Out magazine made her the youngest person ever profiled on their “OUT100” list.

Jazz and her family are now starring in the award-winning reality series I Am Jazz, which began airing in 2015. Time magazine praised it as “an engaging story of a teen girl who has transitioned. But it is also the story of everyone else, transitioning.”14

Through her advocacy, outreach, and philanthropy, this teenager has changed the world for transgender kids and teens. And she’s only seventeen! Surely Jazz Jennings will be rocking the world for many years to come.

HOW WILL YOU ROCK THE WORLD?

I’m going to rock the world by creating an app called “Safe House.” It will create a safe environment for young adults to express the way they feel anonymously. This will be a good way to connect and find people going through the same things as you.

ELENA SIEKMANN AGE 13