Years after her trans child, 9, made history as the pink-haired National Geographic cover model, mom Debi Jackson looks back: 'We were at a great place in our country'
"We know that it did some really positive things and made a huge difference in so many people's lives," she says of the cover.
It was just six years ago when pink-haired, earnest-faced 9-year-old Avery Jackson made history by becoming the first transgender person to grace the cover of National Geographic magazine — not only with the now-iconic photo, but a powerful quote: "The best thing about being a girl is, now I don't have to pretend to be a boy."
But in many ways, the cover feels like it's from a much more distant time.
Avery's participation in that special "Gender Revolution" issue inspired a range of reactions, from letters of heartfelt thanks to a frightening doxxing incident for the family. But today's national rhetoric — which has both given rise to and been fueled by the anti-trans bills proposed in 44 states in just 2023 alone (with 11 passing laws) — is "a lot scarier now," says Avery’s mom, Debi Jackson.
Debi spoke with Yahoo Life on the heels of International Transgender Day of Visibility — and in the midst of a push in her own state of Missouri to ban gender-affirming care for trans youth — to look back at that issue, recently shared by National Geographic on Instagram.
The shoot, by photographer Robin Hammond, took place in the family's Kansas City, Mo., home, and "was fun," recalls Debi, who remembers everyone "moving from room to room and window to window to try to catch just the right light," as it was stormy outside, and the magazine's photographers, according to Debi, only wanted to use natural light. "They had Nerf guns out and, in between takes… they were having a Nerf battle and having a great time," she says. "Robin was wonderful to work with — absolutely great at working with kids."
Hammond and Debi have remained friends and still email each other from time to time. They also have each other's backs when necessary on social media, like recently when Hammond was pilloried by trolls after being tagged in the magazine's reminiscing post.
"Of course, I wish we didn't live in the world where one would receive hateful and threatening messages for posting an image of a trans kid on social media," Hammond tells Yahoo Life. "But those comments have zero impact on me other than reminding me how much work there is to do for us to reach a place where we can respect people who are different to ourselves."
Hammond remembers Avery, now 15 (and opting to not take part in this story), being "a confident 9-year-old" who "made fun of me for my [New Zealand] accent." Now, looking back, he adds, "I feel extremely privileged to have made that photo," noting that it helped others validate themselves, and has "meant a lot" to queer folks around the world.
"One young gay man from Colombia I was talking to last week told me how he purchased a copy and carried it with him for months. He used it to help his own family understand who he was and the community he was part of," Hammond says, adding that still, years later, he regularly hears such stories about the importance of seeing Avery on the cover. "That is an extremely powerful thing for a young person who may feel alone in their experience. Being a part of that is what has affected me most and made this so gratifying."
How the cover photo came to be
Debi had already become an activist who had been in the public eye for several years, starting with a 2014 LGBTQ-advocacy speech supporting Avery, in which the mom identified as a "conservative, Southern Baptist, Republican from Alabama," prompting Avery's own video for a separate campaign. That's how National Geographic editors wound up reaching out to the family.
She says she didn't know that Avery's photo had been chosen for the subscribers cover (a different image appeared on newsstands) until she received a call from the magazine as it went to press in late 2016.
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"I was actually happy that it was going to be on the subscriber version because my family, who was not supportive, was not a subscriber, and I was like, 'They're never going to know, because they won't see it,'" Debi recalls. "Unbeknownst to me, my grandmother was a subscriber and saw it and called my parents and was like, 'Oh my gosh, you didn't tell me, this is amazing news! Look, how beautiful Avery is!" That, followed by the avalanche of national media coverage, is how Debi's parents and siblings found out about the cover. They remain unsupportive.
"We haven't spoken in the years since that," she says. "My grandmother was amazing and till the day she passed away, kept trying to work on the rest of the family to get them to be accepting." But, adds Debi, "That's what chosen families are for."
She remembers agreeing to let Avery take part in the issue — and Avery wanting to — because "we were at a great place in our country," she says.
"We had had four years of the Obama administration. We had seen so many strides — trans people were mentioned in speeches by the attorney general, they were welcomed and supported through the Department of Education and everyone fully was expecting Hillary [Clinton] to win that election," she continues. "So, we knew the issue would be coming out right before we headed into yet another super-affirming administration, and it seemed like serendipity, and it was actually really exciting. Like, wow, this is going to push our progress even further. The anxiety [around the cover photo] was about my own personal family, but not for the rest of the world. We thought: 'This is what's needed. This is going to be so important.'"
As a reminder of the context back then, Debi says, the cover photo "was a very big deal for the trans community as a whole, worldwide, to have that kind of visibility. We had had Laverne Cox on Time magazine … Janet Mock had a book out … my video was out there, and a couple of other parents had some videos that went viral. But there still wasn't a huge emphasis on transness and trans kids at that point in time … So, there was this great clamor of, 'Wow, this is representation, there's a whole issue about this!'" Soon after, the related documentary that Katie Couric made came out, "and there really was a moment of visibility and it seemed so positive. People were hungry to learn about it."
Reactions to the cover
Avery "thought it was pretty cool," even without fully understanding, at 9, the international impact of the magazine. In fact, recalls Debi, the cover star declared, "'It's not my cover, it's the trans people's cover. That's for everyone.' And I think that's exemplary … Avery's been out there publicly, but it was never an 'I want to be the face of the trans community,' it was, 'I'm proud of who I am. I have this great, supportive family and I wish every kid had it. So, I want other people to know: It's OK to love your kid.'"
Debi thought the image "nailed it," and "was just full of sass and personality," although she was even more struck by seeing her child's quote, which Avery had told Hammond when she was out of the room.
"I didn't know until I read it on the cover, and was like, oh my gosh, that's so incredible — and it resonated with so many people," she says. "They would send me messages, like, 'I've been trying to explain how I feel for 50 years — and your kid's just said it in one sentence." Although she's saved multiple versions of the magazine that they "intend to get framed at some point," for now what they've got on display at home is a portrait painted from the photo, gifted to them through the mail by a fan whose name they do not know.
The note, Debi recalls, just said something along the lines of, "You don't know me, I'm a trans woman. Painting was one of my outlets so I didn't have to think about gender and your child has inspired me … I'm transitioning because of [Avery]."
Now, all these years later, Avery's response to the photo and its impact — specifically to being doxxed, targeted by hate and being cut off by extended family — has become more complex. It even made Avery worried about adopting they/them pronouns about a year ago, in the midst of "course correcting" and figuring out their identity is nonbinary.
Debi recalls them worrying, "Is that going to hurt other trans kids? Because people are not going to want to believe them?" but she assured them that such openness could only help.
Still, the years of "hateful backlash" after the magazine cover "caused them to be kind of angry at the exposure and what had happened. They were filled with all kinds stress and anxiety over that," Debi says.
The vicious sentiments, she believes, have led to what she refers to as "faux outrage," noting that when the cover photo was so recently shared, "people who were not paying attention even two years ago have now been primed to be angry and full of hate … But the sun has still risen and set every single day. The world has been going along just fine until this amplification of rage and hate and rhetoric."
Because of that, and the unending stream of anti-trans legislation around the country, including right in Missouri, Avery has taken a step back from public life; Debi and her husband, meanwhile, have been testifying before the state legislature against the proposed anti-trans bill.
Still, Debi says, Avery does not regret that cover, and is proud of what it did.
"We have all the letters from people, we have the portrait hanging here. We know that it did some really positive things and made a huge difference in so many people's lives," she says. "And they're happy about that. They're happy to have been part of that."
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