She arrives, imposing, in her six feet and pinstripe suit, and prepares for the interview reclining on one of the two beds in the best suite of the hotel where we stayed, on whose crowded terrace she served cocktails until not so long ago.
It is she herself who speaks of the “hoot” that the coincidence supposes for her.
She comes with Marc, a hairdresser and stylist, a friend who, after attending the talk enraptured, nuances her shine and smoothes her hair for the video.
She looks at him from time to time, as if seeking approval in front of the stranger.
Give tenderness.
Hi carmen?
Jett?
What do her friends call her?
Jedet, which was the name I chose when I was 12 years old.
Mine baptismal was very long, I took some of his letters and formed that.
Carmen I chose it for the sex change paperwork, as a tribute to the women in my family.
My granny is Carmen, my mother, too, and I wanted to be Carmen, but only trusted people call me Carmencita or Carmela.
What happened to him when he was 12 years old?
Was there a click in his brain?
That he needed to find me.
I thought it sucks being me the way I was supposed to be.
Something never clicked with me.
It seemed like a punishment to me.
I started investigating from a very young age, I painted a lot, I wanted to escape from reality.
I saw my cousin and thought: 'How lucky she has been, why not me?'
I thought that the Kings had brought her what I wanted, and I prayed for a girl to wake up, like her.
Was it difficult to tell at home?
I always showed myself as I am.
In my town we were 100 people, and they have always loved me.
But it was another time, there was no knowledge of today.
My mother still feels guilty for not realizing it and not allowing me to live an adolescence as I was.
But no one knew, not even myself.
I wanted to be an actress.
Marilyn, Veronica Forque, Carmen Maura...
Bibiana Fernandez?
Bibiana seemed like a goddess to me.
But I didn't know she was a trans woman.
I didn't know what that was.
When I went to study in Granada, and then in Madrid, yes.
I have never been one to hide anything.
I am what I am, if you like it, fine, but I'm not going to live a life I don't want for your comfort.
I have been labeled an activist, but I have never been.
I just live life how I want.
If I had been born a woman, I would do the same.
If my presence in the media helps, welcome;
but to say that I am a trans activist detracts from real activists.
Why?
Because I was not born to be a pristine person in his actions and words or to be an example of anything.
I don't want to educate anyone.
Just be happy and calm.
Haven't you been until now?
I have always had eating disorders, bulimia, since I was 14 years old;
I've had addictions, I've been hooked on toxic people.
I am trying to stop being a slave to my own image.
What or who chained her?
It has gotten out of hand to the point that I depended on things to be able to face an event, or a shoot, which are not normal: diets, going to the hairdresser twice a week, medicines to not eat, girdles. .. when my dream is to be 60 years old and to be calm, not to depend on all that to be happy.
What bar was set?
Well, that of a toxic femininity that in the end serves to please the wishes of men, and of the industry where I work, because in the end it is my image that has made me work more and more, and I have to pay bills.
Isn't that what we all suffer?
Yes, but trans women are required more, you have to be good to make us forgive, to forgive us for occupying a space that perhaps we consider does not belong to us.
And to make us feel more comfortable, too.
You have to have the thickest lips, wasp waist, great boobs, pert ass.
You have to be perfect, quiet and force your voice to be feminine.
I cannot be what is considered masculine.
I can't not shave.
I can't not have a 24-inch waist.
What made you say enough is enough?
I was my first slave, I created a prison and threw away the key.
I have cut my toxic relationships.
Think that, with the life I've had, it's easy to choose wrong.
If you think you are wrong, if you grow up feeling that nobody is going to love you and they are going to abandon you because there is something wrong with you and you feel that you are not enough and you do not understand what you are doing in the world, it is easier to fall with a person with bad intentions and that you believe that it is love.
I have decided to respect myself and not do anything to please anyone else.
But there would be some 'click'.
Perhaps being aware that there were girls who followed me on networks, not just adults, who can decide what they want.
I already say that I am not here to educate anyone, but it made me feel guilty that those girls had an example to follow in me.
I felt less and less comfortable with being so sexualized.
I ended up hating myself, because that wasn't me, she was a character.
Which doesn't mean that if one day I feel like wearing a low neckline, I'll wear it.
But because I want and only for that.
How thick is your armor?
Wow: I'm one eighty.
For my breastplate will measure two meters.
Who does he let through it?
Well look, now a little to you, although I'm still alert to see where you come from, but there are people I've known for years and they have no idea what I'm like.
Well, quiet is not exactly in networks.
What a waste mouth.
It's just that when I explode, you don't know what I've been through.
What I have boiled before exploding.
How far is the surname 'trans' after 'woman'?
The label is put by the media.
I don't get up and think I'm a trans woman, I get up and live my life and I have an environment and a family that love me and accept me for what I am: a woman.
End. But I understand that the press labels us.
I don't know if it will be because of curiosity, to get clicks or to try to educate.
I hope it's for the latter.
What does it feel like to go from behind the bar to the big suite?
I feel at home, but also at peace and quiet.
Because I know that if one day things don't go well for me, I could go back to serving drinks, or picking olives in my town, which I used to do when I was little, although I used to get away with it.
My rings don't fall off.
Nothing else, but I shoot rods like nobody else.
BE REBORN
Carmen Jedet Izquierdo Sánchez (Polícar, Granada, 29 years old) personally chose her two proper names. The first, Carmen, in honor of the women in her family. The second, Jedet, was formed with the letters of her first name at the age of 12, when she began the process of searching for her identity after having felt, from a very young age, that she did not fit into any mold. He had read somewhere that it meant "reborn", and it seemed appropriate to put a name to what he felt. It was later, at 24, when, after studying acting and debuting as a singer and writer, she embarked on the path of her sex reassignment, almost coinciding with the filming of
Veneno
, the Javis series that has won the Ondas award for her and her co-stars who played the mythical trans woman Cristina Ortiz at different times in her life.
The title of his new album,
Veneno dulce
, alludes to his sensations in his first sexual experiences with female genitalia.