“Survivor” alum Teeny Chirichillo came out as transgender in a candid new essay.
The 24-year-old acknowledged he struggled with his identity throughout his time on Season 47, which aired last year, and is still figuring it out today.
“The state of my life since ‘Survivor’ has been full of uncertainty,” he wrote for Cosmopolitan on Wednesday.
“I didn’t come back to a spouse or a full-time career, like many of my castmates did. I didn’t have a passion to replace the 15-year quest that was getting cast. When I think about my future, there’s a lot of blurriness. But there’s a lifelong accumulation of artifacts that has pulled my identity into focus, inside the museum of my own transness.”
Chirichillo, who identified as non-binary while competing on the CBS show, recalled reading “invasive” comments about himself online immediately after his season’s trailer debuted earlier in 2024.
“I waded through debates over my pronouns, whether I would ‘count’ as a girl or a boy or both or neither, if I had a penis, and (my personal favorite) if I had tboy swag or nonbinary tea,” he wrote.
The writer admitted he “wasn’t ready” to label himself on national television at the time, particularly during a “game of social politics.”
He also worried about causing his co-stars to “panic about messing up” his pronouns, which were she/her at the time, though he later went by they/them.
“It’s an error almost unavoidable for those still learning,” he noted.
However, Chirichillo quickly opened up to his tribe about having gone for a top surgery consultation just days before flying to Fiji to film the hit series.
“I joked with my cast that I was giving my boobs one last treat before I put them down by wearing a sports bra instead of a binder for the first time in nearly two years. Chest binding on a deserted island for 25 days is a no-go,” he wrote.
After returning home, the New Jersey native began to question his non-binary label and realized he “had been a closeted trans guy.”
“Even in knowing this, in writing this, there is a part of my brain that can’t shut off,” he wrote.
Chirichillo shared that he often wonders whether his parents, grandmother and girlfriend feel about his transgenderism in addition to worrying about the cost of testosterone injections.
“I don’t expect everyone to reach the same level of ease with my gender that I’ve arrived at after a lifetime of suppressing and then exploring the boyhood in my soul,” he concluded. “But I know who I am.”
