I Am a Girl!

Every 13-year-old girl dreams of that nice, but hard-to-get, boy. And Joppe is no different, consulting her friend on how to ask Brian out. But just how should she tell him that she was born a boy?

From a very early age, Joppe—then still called Jop—liked to wear dresses and wigs and play with Barbie dolls. Jop also preferred to be addressed as a "she” rather than a “he.” Halfway through the last year of elementary school, she decided to ask her classmates to consider her a girl from then on. All things considered, this went remarkably smoothly: from that moment on, she just started getting changed with the girls. At her new school, she preempted problems by telling everyone right away. “It really isn’t a huge problem,” she says. “It doesn't dominate your life, although you are confronted by it every day.” With a striking amount of self-confidence, Joppe explains how puberty blockers and female hormones work and how she copes with her emotions.