In her early childhood, she was considered a boy by her parents and siblings (see the newspaper article below).
Her Testicular Feminization Syndrome (TFS) case had been well known in the medical world for a long while — that’s how I heard it for the first time — and served as a standard example in several medical grad schools in the US, and other countries.
(But apparently, specialists can see it without further notice.)
She was born with Testicular Feminization Syndrome (TFS), having the usual male pattern XY chromosomes, but as with all TSF patients her body did not respond to testosterone fully or at all. This prevented the sex development of a typical male — and in Jamie Lee Curtis’s case, this aspect is even more pronounced.
Patients with TFS have internal, undescended testicles and no uterus, fallopian tubes, nor ovaries, but externally the labia, vagina, and clitoris all develop.[1]
Many other sexual characteristics such as breast development and pelvic shape are also normal. On the other hand, armpit and pubic hair is decreased or absent. And as patients with TFS have no uterus, they cannot have children.
Her father Tony Curtis has addressed “her secret” a number of times in public in the past, and in her early childhood she was actually considered (and called) a normal boy.
What bothers me the most about this “conspiracy” (because that’s how it is received by many) is not that she was born with XY chromosomes — that doesn’t bother me at all and doesn’t change my opinion about her (as a big fan) whatsoever — but rather how violently people react if you mention her as a medical case with XY chromosomes.
Because according to these people, this MUST be a conspiracy.
For these people — who ironically “defend” Jamie Lee Curtis (against what ?) — she would apparently be a lesser person if the TFS claim would be true.
That is what bothers me the most about her case —
Hypocrisy.
SOURCES: the footnoted site. For the images: Jamie Lee Curtis at the 1980 Cannes Festival. The newspaper article was published in Daily World (January 18, 1959 edition)
Footnotes
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