This January, the world renowned magazine National Geographic will be posting as the cover of it’s magazine for the first time an image of a 9 year old transgender person. Captioned at the bottom of the magazine cover is a quote from Avery, name of person on cover, saying “The best thing about being a girl, is now I don’t have to pretend to be a boy.” This truly is a remarkably powerful statement and milestone as it shows the innocence and honesty of Avery, and the potential progression that our nation is leading towards. Unfortunately we live with a generation and in a time period where a person isn’t able to express their true self and identity. But that may all change as National Geographic intends to potentially inform readers around the world an opinion or a story of a transgender individual. I personally have no information on what the article will cover because it doesn’t come out until January. But this still is an interesting find. A little research showed me that Avery’s family are advocates for equal rights for all groups. In the Times Tim Jackson, her father, writes “The one thing that I impart upon my daughter is very simple: Love yourself and show love to others.” It’s nice to see that Avery also has a supportive family of her decision. I personally am curious as to see how the public reacts to this and hope that they do in a positive manner that sends a positive message to our nation. But this was a really interesting find and if you guys are interested by the find as well definitely give it some research and find out for yourself. Attached below is the link
http://www.teenvogue.com/story/national-geographic-january-cover-transgender-girl
Unruly Bodies 
Actually, I find that there is a bit of further reading that needs to be done. It is true that this cover will be helpful in showing positive images of trans people, but I can see a bit of the “trans narrative” in the article. For one, the article states: “she drives the point home that being transgender isn’t a choice, but just something you are,” which Spade would argue as untrue, due to the fact that gender ¬comes from societal knowledge, and without this knowledge, one can’t make a choice of gender. It’s also interesting to note that it is a M to F transition. Would a F to M work just as well? “The best thing about being a boy is, now I don’t have to pretend to be a girl.” Does that have the same impact as the other quote? There’s also the fact that “raising a transgender child is the same as raising any child”, which while it’s supposed to say that “oh, trans people are just like everyone else,” doesn’t that ignore the realities that lives aren’t the same?
I don’t want to be like, “Yeah, this is actually bad”, because it’s better than not having a trans person there, but we shouldn’t just be patting ourselves on the back for the entire victory, because it’s not 100% a step up.
this is really cool and its really wonderful to see that there will be more trans representation in media, but i agree with the comment above that there are some worrying things about this. I guess, though, that all media is worrying when it comes to representing marginalized people, so maybe that’s not saying much. I am interested to read this when it comes out and hear other people’s reactions to it, specifically reactions from people who are trans. There have been trans people displayed on magazines before (Laverne Cox and Caitlyn Jenner) and those representations have not been perfect/good either.