A teenage girl says she is de-transitioning after being influenced to wrongly identify as a boy by TikTok users.
Ash Eskridge, 16, a student from Missoula, Montana, started transitioning into a male when she was 13 years old. She said she was feeling depressed at age 12 and was influenced by “social media influencers” who made her think she was transgender.
Ash got her name changed legally, going by Greysen, and socially transitioned, which involved getting a new wardrobe and cutting her hair. Once she turned 16, Ash started taking testosterone and her voice became lower. She realized she made a mistake in April after feeling “unnatural” having body hair and a low voice and began de-transitioning this year.
Ash said influencers on the popular social media made her want to transition after they said how transitioning saved their life.
“I saw a bunch of stuff on the internet and wanted to fix myself the way that those people have been fixed,” Ash said. "I saw TikTok videos by influencers saying how that transitioning saved their life. I was struggling and wanted it to save my life too.
“My family were very confused—my life had been really girly and I never showed any dislike of being a girl. They were very supportive of me but they never thought it was right for me but they stood by me regardless.”
Ms. Eskridge said: “She told us she was trans. It was after COVID and she was at home a lot. She started spending too much time on TikTok, watching influencers who were saying how they went through the same thing. How they had transitioned and it made them happy. We questioned Ash and pushed back.
“We told her we would accept her for who she is but how we didn’t feel this was the right path for her.”
After two and a half years of living as a male, Ash started taking hormones.
“My voice dropping didn’t feel correct. When the voice started dropping it made me feel uncomfortable and the body hair felt really gross,” Ash said. “It was a big build-up of that and I missed being a girl—I was missing the way I was perceived in society. My breaking point was when I had a dream that I was a girl and I thought ‘I can’t do this anymore.’”
In April 2023, Ash told her family she had made a mistake and wanted to de-transition.
Ms. Eskridge said: “She came to us and said how she made a mistake. She told us how easily influenced she was by social media. There was a lot of shock from us but also a sense of relief as we never thought it would be the best path in life for her. As I said, there was a shock but we supported her, we always supported her.”
Both Ash and Ms. Eskridge said it has been a “tough road” as Ash has lost friends since deciding she wanted to de-transition. Now, the mom-daughter pair want to speak out and advocate for better mental health care for teens going through a similar situation to Ash.
“It made me have to hide myself—it was really hard to do. It was exhausting, the people who I knew in real life didn’t know I wasn’t born a man,” Ash said. "I had to adjust the way I walked and talked, in a way that wasn’t natural to me. They thought I was born a man, and after I de-transitioned I lost a lot of friends.
“I didn’t tell anyone that I was born a girl as I supposed I was ashamed and embarrassed of it. I knew deep down that it wasn’t me, the trans label wasn’t me.”
