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Reality TV star Jazz Jennings talks about her gender confirmation surgery

Posted at 9:30 AM, Oct 16, 2018
and last updated 2018-10-16 11:30:09-04

Teen transgender reality star and activist Jazz Jennings says getting gender confirmation surgery months ago was “like a dream.”

“This is a moment that I had always envisioned and just experiencing it was so surreal,” Jennings toldABC’s “Nightline” in an interview which aired Monday. “I was like, I can’t believe this is happening.”

Jennings is the subject of the TLC series “I Am Jazz,” which has chronicled her life as a transgender girl. The series is set to return for a fifth season in January and viewers will see her surgery play out on air.

“This is really the last thing that will validate my identity as a woman,” Jennings said during her interview. “There is nothing else after this.”

The 18-year-old has said she realized early on that she was in the wrong body and reiterated that during her ABC interview.

“When I was 2 years old, I went up to my mom and asked her, ‘When is the good fairy going to come with her magic wand and change my penis into a vagina?'” Jennings recalled.

Jennings has undergone years of hormone therapy to help her transition and said there was a complication after her surgery.

“I had to come back in for another procedure but it was just all part of the journey,” she said. “The good thing though, is that it was only cosmetic and external so it wasn’t too dramatic.”

Jennings is doing well and said the surgery was the final step in her becoming her true self.

“I just get to be myself, be in the body that I’ve always wanted,” she said. “And then I can live my life as just Jazz.”