Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen
by Jazz Jennings
Crown Books for Young Readers. 272 pages, $17.99
AS a sort of spokesperson for the younger generation of transgender individuals, Jazz Jennings has plenty of experience. The teenager has her own reality show; she’s co-written a picture book for small children; and she’s been the subject of documentaries and books. In Being Jazz, she finally writes directly and personally to an audience of teenagers and young adults whose lives have been impacted by transgender issues.
Born as a male, Jennings says she knew from earliest childhood that the grownups around her were mistaken when they referred to her as a boy, and she corrected them by undoing her onesie and fashioning it into a dress. As a toddler, she stole her sister’s clothing and told her parents not to call her a “good boy.” She’s certain that her gender identity was set by then; it was only a matter of making sure everyone else understood. For her family, that started to happen when Jennings was a preschooler. It was her grandmother who first grasped that there was something different about little “Jaron.” Jennings’ mother caught on soon after that, while the men in the family were slower to understand. To Jennings’ siblings—a sister and twin brothers—her gender identity as a girl was always a foregone conclusion.
Outsiders, however, were often less understanding, forcing Jennings to hide her femaleness for quite some time, especially at school. She was unusually honest with classmates about being a girl in a boy’s body. School chums mostly didn’t seem to mind, but teachers were another matter. Jennings recounts parental battles for her right to wear girls’ clothing, to change her name, to play soccer on a girls’ team, and to use the girls’ restroom. Concerning the latter, she recalls having to hold her bladder all day until she got home from grade school and, later, facing the mortifying choice between hiking to the nurse’s office to use a private restroom or wetting herself. It was only when the school principal stood up to administration rules that Jennings was finally allowed to use the restroom corresponding to her gender identity. Bathrooms—perhaps not surprisingly, given the current pulse of national news—play a large (and sometimes jejune) role in this book. Still, by offering a firsthand point of view, Jennings answers many of the questions that most people are too polite to ask.
Gender identity aside, Jennings is nowhere near the stereotypical teenager. She has become famous, though she treats her life in the spotlight in an insouciant way that is not off-putting, sharing what it’s like to be friends with Barbara Walters, to be a star on reality TV, and now a published author. Yes, she has dated boys and was forthcoming about her gender status. And, yes, there have been interesting moments in the life of a girl in a boy’s body, including the acquisition of medicine to control puberty. She also explains why she’s decided not to have sex-change surgery just yet.
In sharing those stories, Jennings is cheerily upbeat, though she says that she does encounter haters and sometimes suffers from depression. She confides these deeply personal matters with an honesty that readers don’t generally get from an adult. It is this unselfconscious honesty, that of someone still unbattered by life, that makes this book so refreshingly readable.
