The debut of Caitlyn Jenner

My wife and I have a tendency to play phone tag during the day.

We both work. I leave the house before she is awake. She usually calls me before she heads into the school where she works. And she will then check in again on her way home in the afternoon.

Yesterday afternoon I had a simple question for her.

"Have you seen it?"

That's all I said.

There really was no need to say any more.

Such is the power of Bruce, or rather, Caitlyn Jenner.

I have no intention here of debating the merits of the one-time Olympic decathlon gold medal winner - emblematic of the greatest athlete in the world - and his decision to reveal his transgender status.

Not surprisingly for someone so closely connected to the Kardashian clan, Jenner knows how to make a splash.

He granted his first interview about his decision to undergo surgery in the process of becoming a woman to Diane Sawyer. Yesterday he rolled out Caitlyn Jenner in a Vanity Fair cover story featuring the talents of world-renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz. Everywhere you turned yesterday, it was all anyone was talking about.

Caitlyn Jenner opened a Twitter account yesterday and reached a million followers faster than another recent entry into the Twitterverse. Maybe you've heard of him. His name is Barack Obama.

Again, I don't know what that says about us as a society, if anything.

I hope Jenner is happy. I will not sit in judgment of his decision.

But as someone who makes his living in the media, I would be lying if I did not tell you he is working us like a Stradivarius. It's classic Kardashian. Whether it's Kim offering the world a full view of her much-discussed posterior, or the latest antics of one of the other Jenner/Kardashian women, this is what they do.

And they do it very well.

I will give Caitlyn this, and it's something else I heard again and again yesterday.

She looks great. Glamorous, even. If you had showed me that picture without any knowledge of who the person was, I might not have even realized this was the former Bruce Jenner.

I know. It sounds weird to me to even say it. But it's true.

I guess that is what the magic of Annie Leibovitz and Vanity Fair can do for you. Who knows what Caitlyn looks like when she is not posing for a magazine cover.

I'll leave the discussion of just what this means, or how important it is, to others.

I don't know if this a seminal moment for transgender people.

But I do know this. I am - at least in part - in the business of determining what people are talking about, what they are interested in, and what is important, things that they should know even if they have no interest in them.

Yesterday, Caitlyn Jenner was all of those things.

She was all anyone was talking about.

What that means about us, I have no idea.

Comments

Squirrely73 said…
There's more to being a woman than fake boobs, make-up, hair extensions and, now, sexy magazine covers. Most real women never get this kind of fanfare and fuss made over them! This type of extravagant self-indulgence makes me think someone has too much money and time on their hands? Real women just wake up every morning and live their daily lives, hopefully trying to be as good a person, a human being, as they can be given what God gave em? Thankful for another day with the people they love and that love them back. Best of luck to Bruce/Caitlyn. At the end of the day, its what's under the hair, make-up and tits that matter.