TV

Caitlyn Jenner Makes Her Vanity Fair Cover Debut; Looks Incredible

"Bruce always had to tell a lie ... Caitlyn doesn't have any secrets. As soon as the Vanity Fair cover comes out, I'm free."

by Steph Harmon  2 June 2015

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On April 24, almost 17 million Americans watched the then-named Bruce Jenner — a former track and field star and current reality TV star, who had been married to Kris Jenner for close to 24 years before a divorce earlier this year — come out as a transgender woman in an insightful, honest and powerful interview with Dianne Sawyer.

During the interview, Jenner busted a variety of myths about the trans experience and trans issues, and demonstrated the fluidity of gender transition by switching between male, female and neutral pronouns to refer to herself, sometimes in third person: she told Sawyer, and the rest of the world by proxy, to continue to referring to her as “he” and “Bruce” until she was ready to reveal her new name.

And now she is. Here’s Caitlyn Jenner, on the cover of Vanity Fair’s July issue, looking all kinds of amazing:

caitlynfull

Photo by Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair.

The cover and a short video featuring Jenner and photographer Annie Leibowitz was released overnight, to promote the 22-page cover story by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Buzz Bissinger that will hit newsstands with the issue on June 9.

According to a write-up on the Vanity Fair website, Bissinger spent hundreds of hours with Bruce and Caitlyn over the course of three months, speaking to her about post-surgery panic attacks and her hopes for the life of Caitlyn, and at one point apologising for confusing the gender pronouns. (“I don’t really get hung up,” Caitlyn replied. “A guy came in the other day and I was fully dressed—it’s just habit, I said, ‘Hi, Bruce here,’ and I went, Oh fuck, it ain’t Bruce, I was screwing up doing it.”)

The interview is Caitlyn’s first since completing gender transition. “The last few days doing this shoot was about my life and who I am as a person,” Caitlyn says in the video below. “It’s not about the fanfare; it’s not about people cheering at the stadium; it’s not about going down the street and everyone giving you, ‘Thattaboy Bruce’, pat on the back. This is about your life.”

“Bruce always had to tell a lie. He was always living that lie. Every day, he always had a secret. From morning til night. Caitlyn doesn’t have any secrets. As soon as the Vanity Fair cover comes out, I’m free.”