Jazz Jennings, the transgender star of
TLC's I Am Jazz, announced in a YouTube video that she'll
undergo gender confirmation surgery later this month.
“I'm actually super excited for it,”
Jennings, 17, told her fans. “I am so looking forward to it. I've
been ready for this my entire life. I'm going to have a vagina!”
Jennings said the procedure will be
performed on the 26th of June. She explained how the
procedure she'll undergo is experimental.
“Because I started the [hormone]
blockers so early, I never went through puberty,” Jennings
said. “That's why I'm able to be so feminine.”
“Because there is a lack of tissue,
they really didn't have enough material to construct the entire
vagina, so they're using a special procedure.”
Jennings explained that the procedure
involves extracting tissue from her peritoneal lining, a thin
membrane that surrounds the stomach.
“They take that out through my belly
button,” she said. “They use that and harvest that and use it to
create the vaginal canal. It looks like real vagina tissue and it
feels like vagina tissue. It allows them to make a bigger canal.”
While stating that she doesn't
“anticipate problems,” Jennings acknowledged that “something
could go wrong.” “You don't know what's going to happen,” she
said.
Jennings added that her journey will be
documented on I Am Jazz.