Jazz, an 11-year-old transgender girl,
says she want to help other transgender kids.
In an ABC profile aired this weekend,
Barbara Walters looked at how puberty affected Jazz's quest to live
as a girl.
“What part of being transgender hurts
you the most?” Walters asked.
“My genitalia,” Jazz answered.
“Because right now I feel like a girl. But when I look down there,
it reminds me.”
“And that must feel very bad for
you,”
“Yeah,” Jazz said.
To counter the effects of puberty, Jazz
is on hormone blockers.
“The medication stops testosterone
from entering her body, essentially pausing her natural male
development,” Walters explained.
“They block any facial hair I might
get or armpit hair, maybe like just so I don't look like a boy, or
even getting a deep voice also,” Jazz said.
The next step is whether to give Jazz
the female hormone estrogen.
“I wish I could take that right now,”
Jazz said. “I want boobs.”
Jazz added that she agreed to the
interview because she wants to help other transgender kids.
“I want to help those kids become the
person they are. And I want to tell the parents that they should
still love them no matter what,” she said. (The video is embedded
on this page. Visit
our video library for more videos.)
Jazz is also the subject of the
documentary I Am Jazz: A Family in Transition, which premiered
on Oprah Winfrey's OWN network last year.