Raven314

From what I’ve read, Jazz was identified as gifted and talented at an early age and her graduating GPA was a 5.4. It’s easy to assume otherwise based on her lack of maturity (and scenes edited for entertaining purposes) — but I do believe she’s intelligent. At the same time, academic intelligence isn’t the magic wand society makes it out to be. Intelligence standing alone amidst a dumpster fire of familial abuse, mental health challenges, medical and surgical issues, maternal enmeshment, early exploitation — won’t be enough to guarantee success at Harvard. I can’t see how adding Harvard to an already complicated equation could be any good here. I just don’t see how it could work. Unless I’m missing something and she’s applied for disability accommodations and a reduced courseload under her mental health diagnoses. This episode made me so sad. Her family is so toxic. Her mother acts like a child tossing away a doll that’s no longer fun to play with.

At every turn, they seem to be forcing the narrative that Jazz’s weight gain and her surgery aren’t correlated. This may be true; — but their hyperbolic overemphasis on the point, only serves to draw attention to it. And it makes me wonder if, on some level, there was an agenda (possibly on the part of Jeannette) to “set the record straight” — and that’s how this season came about. Why else have so much time devoted to confronting TS Madison about her statements? They’d already discussed it once in a livestream and it ended with all parties on good terms. Why discuss the SAME points all over again this episode — when their focus was supposed to be on advocacy for black trans women, the systemic abuse they experience, and all the lives lost? I suspect this was Jeannette, feeling under pressure, trying to openly reaffirm that they made the right decision. I also don’t understand why the family, particularly Sander, are so hooked on the idea that “Jazz being 100 percent” equals “Jazz being forced to participate in staged public events and Jazz being the face of the trans moment”. If that’s what she wants, fine. But it sometimes feels more like his goal than hers.

The takeaway for me this week, was we can’t help someone with a mental illness, by trying to force them to behave like people who don’t have a mental illness. The false equivalence from Jazz’s siblings (“just do what I do, eat how I eat, work out how I work out— and you’ll be just fine”), completely ignores the fact she’s dealing with something none of them have any experience with. A mental health disorder. Something that wont just disappear with positive thinking, lectures, family sports challenges, and shaming. If were as simple as that — and she could pop up and workout like Sander, or eat like Ari with a tiny bit of grit — then, arguably, she wouldn’t *have* an eating disorder to begin with, wouldn’t have gotten to this point, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I felt her siblings were well-intentioned but incredibly misinformed. As someone who very nearly died from an eating disorder, I’m also uncomfortable that the therapist is weighing her in front of the entire world. People with eating disorders often do things in extremes. That said, its not uncommon for one eating disorder to segue into another (from binge eating, to bulimia or anorexia; from anorexia to binge eating and bulimia— or any mix of symptoms). I feel like the public weighing is just setting her up for more problems, or different ones, down the line.

I hear a lot of contradictions in what Jazz says: In one moment: ”I don’t care about myself and what makes me happy. I live for others,” In the next: “I want this for myself. I’m selfish and let me get my food,” (about her food addiction) In any event… I do think her binge eating has less to do with being transgender and more to do with feeling pressured to go to Harvard (when she wanted to go to Pomona); pressure to be an advocate and inspiration (while she’s struggling herself); and pressure to live up to the standards of her high performing family (brothers in law school, sister getting a PhD, father an attorney, etc). I think she would be better served turning the cameras off and finding her own path, away from the circus of reality TV.