Charlize Theron Reveals Her 7-Year-Old Child Is Actually a Girl

Celebrated actress, fashion icon, and obvious top Charlize Theron revealed this week that her daughter Jackson does not identify as the gender she was assigned at birth. Theron, who adopted 7-year-old Jackson as a baby, confirmed her daughter's gender in an interview with the Daily Mail, saying, "Yes, I thought she was a boy, too.

"Until she looked at me when she was 3 years-old and said: 'I am not a boy!'"

Theron, who also has a three-year-old daughter named August, was unflinchingly supportive of her children. "So there you go! I have two beautiful daughters who, just like any parent, I want to protect and I want to see thrive. They were born who they are and exactly where in the world both of them get to find themselves as they grow up, and who they want to be, is not for me to decide."

Theron added that her "job as a parent is to celebrate them and to love them and to make sure that they have everything they need in order to be what they want to be."

Theron has a long history advocating for children: she's worked to combat poverty, violence against young women, and founded the Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project in 2007, which aims to protect South African youth from HIV/AIDS. Theron is clearly ready to apply that same passion to making the world a safe space for her own daughters, insisting that she'll "do everything in my power for my kids to have that right and to be protected within that."

The Oscar-winner credits her mother for her commitment to authenticity. "I grew up in a country where people lived with half-truths and lies and whispers and nobody said anything outright, and I was raised very specifically not to be like that. I was taught by my mom that you have to speak up; you have to be able to know that, when this life is over, you'll have lived the truth you're comfortable with, and that nothing negative can come from that."

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