Forgive the rather obvious pun, but…
… Jazz Jennings is rather jazzed about her upcoming surgery.
(We’re very sorry, but the terrible play on words was just sitting right there, you know?)
The TLC reality star, who anchors a series titled “I Am Jazz,” used her personal YouTube account late last week to preview a rather giant procedure currently scheduled for June 26.
It will officially, technically, medically turn her from a male to a female.
“I am so looking forward to it. I have been ready for this my entire life,” the transgender 17-year says in her video, speaking, of course, about gender reassignment.
This has been a major theme on her aforementioned series, which debuted in July of 2015.
In this same video, Jennings explains that she has decided to be open about the surgery in hopes that it will educate people both inside and outside of the transgender community.
And she’s very explicit in talking about what it will entail.
“I’m gonna have new genitalia,” she says. “Like penis to vagina! That’s some serious sh-t, y’all! I can’t believe I’m gonna have a vagina!”
Jennings has long been an advocate in the LGBT community.
She has found herself in the headlines over the past few months because Derick Dillard, who appeared on Counting On but who has since been fired by TLC, has often mocked and slammed Jennings for the way she lives her life.
“I pity Jazz, 4 those who take advantage of him in order 2 promote their agenda, including the parents who allow these kinds of decisions 2 be made by a child,” Dillard randomly said last fall, adding at the time:
“It’s sad that ppl would use a juvenile this way. Again, nothing against him, just unfortunate what’s on tv these days.”
Jennings never invited this sort of critique and is certainly not interested in Dillard’s pity.
She’s living her best life, thank you very much!
“What an oxymoron… a ‘reality’ show which follows a non-reality,” Dillard previously said, piling on an entire community of people by adding:
“‘Transgender’ is a myth. Gender is not fluid; it’s ordained by God.”
SIGH.
But, hey, if Jazz can take the high road and basically ignore Dillard throughout this nonsense, so can we.
We’ll just focus on her latest video and the surgery about which she can’t stop talking.
“I have been looking forward [to the surgery] forever,” Jazz told us. “Even at a young age, I knew.”
She also says she’s excited for the procedure – but, as you might expect, also a bit frightened.
“Because I started the [testosterone] blockers so early that I never went through puberty…basically the blockers block testosterone in my body so I don’t develop as a male and get a beard, a mustache, a deep voice,” Jennings says.
“That’s why I’ve been able to be so feminine. Because of that, it caused me to be so suppressed that I didn’t have growth in ‘that’ region.”
In conclusion, Jazz goes over what’s about to happen in pretty fascinating detail, even if it may gross out some folks out there:
“Because there was a lack of tissue [down there] they didn’t have enough material to construct the entire vagina, so they’re using a special procedure where they extract my peritoneal lining.
“It’s regenerative, so it will regrow and what not.
“They take that out laparoscopically through my belly button or whatever. They use that and harvest that and use that to make the vaginal canal.
“It’s better because it looks like real vagina tissue and it feels more like real vagina tissue.”
Science, huh?
Pretty amazing.
We wish Jazz Jennings the best of luck.