This Is Jessica

This is Jessica documents the dynamic journey of Jonathan to her life as Jessica. Interviews with friends and family portray the attempts to fulfill the lifetime demands of church and family. Vintage home movies illustrate childhood, while Jessica describes her inner turmoil tryng to be Jonathan, whose church-endorsed life has been laid out from infancy. We see Jessica early in the film. The drama comes from the revelation of the intense pressure one human being faced in order to find the peace that comes from living her authentic self.

This was a very confusing and misleading documentary. From reading the description on the DVD box it says it is about someone who was born as a woman but raised as a man. They never explain why their parents would have chosen to be so deceptive and how they would cover up the obvious biological differences. It's not until 30 minutes in that you realize this person actually was born as a man but transitioned to living as a woman. No where in the description of the documentary does it say this is about someone transitioning genders. As someone who had severe body dismorphia as a child I find this not only really sloppy and misleading as a documentary but also really disrespectful to people with body dismorphia and especially to people who really did have to pretend their biological gender was different than it was.

I respect everyone's right to find their own way in being comfortable in their body and in society but this documentary is missing important parts of the conversation that really deserved to be addressed.