Transgender Euphoria star Hunter Schafer reveals she underwent gender-affirming bottom surgery: 'I love it so much'

Transgender actress Hunter Schafer has revealed she underwent gender-affirming bottom surgery. 

Schafer, 27, who transitioned to female as a teenager, revealed she had the procedure done late last year during a new interview with Elle. 

'I just had bottom surgery in December, which was amazing, and I love it so much,' she said. 

'“Bottom surgery,” also known as genitourinary reconstruction surgery, describes a wide range of gender-affirming procedures performed on the genitals. Bottom surgeries can be feminizing or masculinizing,' according to UChicago Medicine. 

Schafer decided to move forward with the procedure when the idealized, LGBTQ+ vision she strove to live in failed to come to fruition, as well as the manner in which she wanted to present herself in it. 

'Like I 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', she said.

While recovering at the beginning of this year, Schafer had to restrict her movement and sought refuge in a big apartment she rented out.

She was visited by friends and family while following instructions to lie down. 

'I think my limit was 150 steps per day, which is nothing,' she said. 

Schafer, who is known for playing transgender teen girl Jules in Euphoria, has advocated for the rights of transgender people. 

In 2016, she protested her home state's so-called 'bathroom bill', which restricted bathroom access for transgender individuals, during a rally at a special session of the North Carolina General Assembly which argued for the repeal of the law, per WUNC.

Schafer, then 18 and a high school senior, held a sign that read: 'Trans youth exist, are valid, [and] deserve basic human rights.'

Last year she hit out at the Donald Trump administration after learning that her new passport lists her gender as 'male' rather than 'female' due to the president's controversial executive order.

She expressed her shock at the move in a video shared on social media, in which she said that the change will 'make life a little harder.'

Schafer also voiced her fears for the transgender community, adding that the move will create added levels of stress when dealing with border control agents.

Beginning her video, Schafer explained that she hasn't had any issues with her gender marker since she had it changed a decade ago.

'I want to acknowledge my privilege, not only as a celebrity transwoman who is white and thin and can adhere to contemporary beauty standards and I can participate in all of the that, and I pass, and it still happened,' she said.

'I never had my birth certificate changed, so this has led me to believe that I think the agencies who are interested in passports are now required to cross reference birth certificates.

'I don't know exactly what, or what changed in far of the processing goes.

'This is the first time this has happened to me since I changed my gender marker. We're coming up on a decade now or something.' 

Hunter said that fundamentally she does not care about her sex being changed on her passport because she is and always will be a transgender woman.

'I also want to say, I don't give a f**k that they put a M on my passport,' she continued.

'It doesn't change really anything about me or my transness, however it does make life a little harder.

'Personally, I mean I haven't tested it out yet, I'll found out next week when I have to travel abroad with my new passport, but I'm pretty sure it's going to come along with having to out myself to like border patrol agents and that whole gig much more often than I would like to or is really necessary.

'And this is just my personal circumstance, and thinking about other trans women who this might also be happening to, or other trans people, the list only gets longer as far as the intricacies that come along with the difficulty that this brings into real life s**t.'

Concluding her video, Schafer added: 'Trans people are beautiful.

'We are never going to stop existing, I am never going to stop being trans, a letter on a passport can't change that.

'And f**k this administration. I don't really have an answer on what to do about this, but I feel it was important to share. This is real. So, um yeah, f**k.'