How Jazz Jennings Changed the World for Trans Youth Simply by Being Herself

Variety ^ | 06 03 2021 | Caroline Framke

[yesthatjallen]

In 2007, six-year-old Jazz Jennings went on national television to tell Barbara Walters the same thing she’d been telling her parents, siblings and anyone else who would listen: She was, despite her birth certificate’s insistence otherwise, a girl.

Shy and sweet, Jennings answered Walters’ probing questions with the clarity and patience of someone used to explaining herself over and over again. “She was so charismatic, so charming and so clearly herself,” Laverne Cox says of first seeing that “20/20” interview. “Her humanity was so on display that you couldn’t deny she had the right to be who she was.” It was a watershed moment for transgender visibility in media, not least because it made Jennings one of the youngest documented trans people to speak her truth for millions of viewers to hear.

It’d be easy for Jennings to say she always knew that moment would be life-changing. Looking back, though, she mostly just remembers it as something she got to brag about at recess. “I think there was like, one kid from school who recognized me from TV,” Jennings, now 20, recalls over a recent Zoom call from her home in South Florida. “Maybe my confidence increased a bit because I was like, ‘I’m on TV!’ like any little kid would think about it.”

SNIP

[yesthatjallen]

Still, being a role model and chronicling your life on reality TV can be exhausting. Two years ago, Jennings hit a wall and found herself in need of a real break. Since “I Am Jazz” last filmed in 2019, she’s been taking some necessary time for herself, stepping back to sort through her burnout, depression and anxiety at home without having to broadcast it all to the world.

[Celerity]

“So clearly herself”

Author and I have very different meanings of these words.

[Gay State Conservative]

“Jazz” will be dead within 5 years.

[Darksheare]

“Jennings answered Walters’ probing questions with robotic rote and practice of someone used to rehearsing coached lines over and over”
Fixed that for them.

[Da Coyote]

As above, they keep using that word. We KNOW it does not mean what they think it means.

[lee martell]

I happened to be present when a co-worker watched this on the Community Room TV. It seemed to me that the Mom was the driving force behind most of this. The Dad seemed like a ‘Yes, Dear!’ type. Why this (Sargeant Mom) appears to be the background for many trans, I could only speculate.

[rktman]

Surely they meant himself. Themself? Its self? Theys self?

[Karliner]

46% suicide rate and they’re just now starting heavily in children. Bet the percentages go up to 75%.

[a fool in paradise]

Millennials.

Never has a generation so regurgitated what social media has spoon fed them for 20 years.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

I’ve decided to identify as an astronaut. My new pronouns are Commander and Chief Engineer.

[a fool in paradise]

Peter Cushing’s mum used to dress him as a little girl. One day he wandered off and was picked up by the police who brought him to the station where they eventually discovered “she” was a he.

[JayGalt]

I remember reading at the time that the surgery was very painful and Jazz was really emotionally devastated for awhile. I hope Jazz finds peace but her Mother should pass directly downstairs. Munchausen’s by proxy, all the attention and strokes and someone else pays the tab.

[snuffy smiff]

Same thought here when I stumbled across this BS.

That ‘mom’ needs to be imprisoned for child abuse!

[ProtectOurFreedom]

So we have to upend all of civilization built on millennia of common sense and experience to accommodate the special needs of the rare freak. Makes perfect sense to me.

[Bones75]

I’d bet there’s at least one whacko, narcissistic parent behind this.

[yesthatjallen]

“Jazz” will be dead within 5 years.

He/she's not a youth anymore. The novelty is gone.

Aging is going to take it's toll. He/she's going to become increasingly irrelevant. I wonder how he/she's going to handle it.

Who dates trans?

[Lurkinanloomin]

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Bow down to me, Chief, for I am the Chairman of the Intergalactic Council.

[Larry Lucido]

"Watch carefully as I test-fire this gun into these videotapes of Barbara Walters interviews. As you can see, it completely destroys the Burt Reynolds interview, and everything from Bo Derek to Paul Newman. But only up to the point where Barbara asks him "Is it difficult to love?" Now, let me show you what happens when the gun is fired from 3-feet – which is the distance Sally claims the shots were fired from. Notice? Complete destruction, right up to the point where she asks Katherine Hepburn what kind of tree she'd like to be."

[Gay State Conservative]

I was thinking basically of suicide...drugs...etc.