Gender Identity

Growing up, Julia wasn't a typical little girl. Instead of dresses and dolls, she embraced boys' clothes and trucks. "When I was younger, I'd always be Ken and I'd always be the dad, not the mom. Or the dad or the brother in house," she says. "I wanted to climb trees and play in the dirt, and I always used to make my brother be the girl in the games because no way I was going to be the girl."

As Julia got older, she realized that something wasn't right. "It's confusing … because you wake up and [see] that's not [the same genitalia] my brother has."

Then, Julia had a life-changing conversation with her mother. "When I was, like, 7 maybe, I went up to my mom and I said, 'Hey Mom, I'm a boy in a girl's body.' And that's when it really, like, occurred to me that I was different."