‘I Am Jazz’: a transgender girl plus a family that loves her

Jazz Jennings’s new reality show I Am Jazz debuted on TLC on Wednesday night, giving fans a glimpse into the daily life of the transgender teen activist.

Perhaps foremost, the series largely eschews the sort of staged encounters often associated with such fare, easing into situations like a bowling excursion with the girls where Jazz worries about the decision to invite boys along, since, as Jeanette has witnessed, boys aren’t nice to her. The one significant exercise in sleight of hand, really, is in burying the lead in journalistic terms, making Jazz out to be an ordinary girl when she has achieved considerable celebrity via YouTube, a children’s book and an OWN documentary, all making her a spokesperson for transgender youth.

Beyond Jazz, the Jennings brood includes her older twin brothers and a sister who is just starting college.

“We first wanted to share our story to really make a difference and help other people out there, especially transgender kids who might be struggling”, Jennings told MTV News during an interview.

In the years since, Jazz has bravely remained in the spotlight, speaking publicly on transgender issues, and she co-authored a book entitled I Am Jazz. Jazz and her parents founded the Transkids Purple Rainbow Foundation, a nonprofit devoted to support transgender youth and their families.

“I’m a little bit anxious because I’m not sure if people are going to be fully accepting”, she said. “Even though you’re anxious about, it, what would be the consequences if she didn’t … we didn’t want a child that was going through life just hating herself”. Instead the brothers explain that Jazz identified as a girl from her earliest memories.

‘She looked up at me with these eyes, and I knew that I was going to do whatever it took to make her happy. “I was just … it’s happiness”. “We loved the parents, the siblings, the grandparents”, said Nancy Daniels, TLC’s general manager. It manages to be both specific and universal – Jazz’s occasional teen insecurity and apprehension about freshman year are familiar feelings – and consistently smart and entertaining.

Managing Jazz’s hormones is a delicate balance and she routinely checks in with her doctor, but Jazz says the medical aspect is just one part of her journey. “So at least she will go through a relationship and get hurt the right way and not the wrong way because someone is transphobic”.

“We know that families come in all shapes and sizes, but at their core, they are all about love, acceptance, and support”, Marjorie Kaplan, Group President, TLC & Animal Planet, previously said in a statement. Amazon’s Transparent, the best show of 2014, dealt elegantly with gender transition in a family, but Jazz and Cait-as well as ABC Family’s current docuseries Becoming Us-may have a reach beyond that show’s indie-TV audience.