‘I Am Jazz’ Renewed by TLC for Season 6

TLC viewers will get to follow along with Jazz Jennings‘ journey as she embraces life as an adult, with the network announcing Thursday the hit show I Am Jazz will return for a sixth season.

According to TheWrap, the GLAAD Award-winning series will return in 2020, chronicling the life of the transgender teen as she advocates for LGBT rights, navigates teenage life and spends time with her family.

Season 5, which ended earlier this month and followed Jennings through her long-awaited gender confirmation surgery, first prom, 18th birthday and first boyfriend, was the highest rate season in the series’ history, the outlet reported, with an average of 1.4 million total viewers per episode.

“Jazz is the quintessential example of living authentically and embracing one’s true self and that is what TLC seeks to celebrate in all of our programming,” Howard Lee, president and GM of TLC, told TheWrap.

He continued, “Jazz’s story has inspired viewers across America, and never more so than this past year during the most important moment of her life. We are proud that Jazz and her family have allowed TLC to follow along on her journey and we look forward with great excitement to sharing the next chapter of her life with our devoted audience.”

Jennings underwent gender confirmation surgery in June 2018, explaining the experimental surgical method in-depth both on the show and to her social media followers beforehand.

“Because I started the blockers so early, I never went through puberty,” Jennings told her fans on her YouTube channel. “I got this implant in my arm… it blocks testosterone in my body so I don’t develop as a male and get a beard, mustache and deep voice. That’s why I’m able to be so feminine. I didn’t have growth in that region.”

She continued that doctors would be using a “special procedure” to construct a vagina from her own tissue, including extracts from her peritoneal lining, a thin membrane surrounding the stomach.

“They take that out through my belly button. They use that and harvest that and use it to create the vaginal canal. It looks like real vagina tissue and it feels like vagina tissue. It allows them to make a bigger canal,” Jennings continued.

In October, she discussed the experience on Nightline, saying of the results, “I just get to be myself, be in the body that I’ve always wanted. And then I can live my life as just Jazz.”

“It was like a dream. It was,” she added. “This is a moment that I had always envisioned and just experiencing it was so surreal. I was like I can’t believe this is happening.”

Photo credit: TLC/Getty