Jaeden Pinder
Contact Jaeden Pinder by Email View all posts by Jaeden Pinder October 19, 2026 Add us as a Google Preferred Source
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Hunter Schafer attends the Academy Museum Gala on October 17 in Los Angeles Emma McIntyre/Oscars/Getty Images Hunter Schafer underwent bottom surgery last December. According to a new interview with Elle, Schafer had the gender-affirming surgery – which alters a person’s genitals to match their gender identity – last December and described the process as “amazing.” “I love it so much,” she said.
“For a long time I’ve embraced the gender-expansive part of myself, and I really wanted to try to make that previous body work, because I thought there was something really cool and badass about it,” Schafer said. However, she discovered that medically transitioning would affirm her gender as a woman. Schafer had previously labeled her gender more fluidly, but told Elle her understanding of her gender is “flatter.”
“I’m a woman. I’m a girl … I feel like that’s the magical thing about queerness,” she said. “On an ideological level, it’s about possibility and expansion and growth, and being on that journey and finding yourself.”
After receiving the surgery, Schafer told Elle she rented an apartment and had family and friends visit her during her recovery in which she was limited to approximately 150 steps daily and required to lie flat.
Last year, due to Trump’s executive order that declared state agencies should recognize only male and female genders as assigned at birth on identification, Schafer revealed her new U.S. passport marked her gender as male, despite the fact she applied as female. “I don’t give a fuck that they put an M on my passport. It doesn’t change really anything about me or my transness. However, it does make life a little harder,” she said. “I’m never going to stop being trans. A letter on a passport can’t change that. Fuck this administration.”
