Caitlyn Jenner Promptly Flashed Son After Surgery — And More Revelations from Vanity Fair Profile
Caitlyn Jenner, formerly Bruce, is apparently still getting used to her new name, body and role as a mother. Along with the debut of her new look on the cover of Vanity Fair, the magazine has released excerpts from its upcoming cover story by reporter Buzz Bissinger (of Friday Night Lights fame). Below are some of the highlights.
Caitlyn Jenner had surgery on her face and breasts, but has not undergone genital reassignment surgery:
Jenner tells Bissinger about how she suffered a panic attack the day after undergoing 10-hour facial-feminization surgery on March 15—a procedure she believed would take 5 hours. (Bissinger reveals that Jenner has not had genital surgery.) She recalls thinking, “What did I just do? What did I just do to myself?” A counselor from the Los Angeles Gender Center came to the house so Jenner could talk to a professional, and assured her that such reactions were often induced by pain medication, and that second-guessing was human and temporary.
She is still having trouble remembering to introduce herself as “Caitlyn”:
Bissinger apologizes to Jenner for repeated pronoun confusion and asks whether she is sensitive about it. “I don’t really get hung up,” she tells him. “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.”
Her oldest children have known about her transgender status for 20 years:
For the Jenner children, the issue of the transition has become a non-issue. They were already aware of their father’s identity as a woman when he told them individually about the transition—Burt and Cassandra had learned from their mother roughly 20 years earlier, when they were 13 and 11…
Says Burt, “I have high hopes that Caitlyn is a better person than Bruce. I’m very much looking forward to that.”
Caitlyn’s son Brandon Jenner had quite the reaction to her post-surgery body:
Brandon said he was a little taken aback when he saw Caitlyn for the first time after surgery and she pulled her top up to reveal her new breasts. “Whoa, I’m still your son,” he reminded her.
None of Caitlyn’s children will be appearing in the E! docuseries premiering this summer:
Despite the renewed relationship with their father, the Jenner children have refused to participate in Caitlyn’s docu-series for the E! network, set to debut this summer, forgoing financial gain in favor of preserving their father’s legacy. Initially, Caitlyn was “terribly disappointed and terribly hurt,” but has come to accept their decision. For her part, Caitlyn is prepared for the criticism that it’s a publicity stunt: “‘Oh, she’s doing a stupid reality show. She’s doing it for the money. She’s doing this, she’s doing that.’ I’m not doing it for money. I’m doing it to help my soul and help other people. If I can make a dollar, I certainly am not stupid. [I have] house payments and all that kind of stuff. I will never make an excuse for something like that. Yeah, this is a business. You don’t go out and change your gender for a television show. O.K., it ain’t happening. I don’t care who you are.”
Bruce Jenner would occasionally wear women’s underwear during press appearances:
Jenner tells Bissinger that Bruce was “always telling lies.” (She even describes doing public appearances after winning the gold medal, where “underneath my suit I have a bra and panty hose and this and that and thinking to myself, They know nothing about me. . . . Little did they know I was totally empty inside.”) Caitlyn, she says, “doesn’t have any lies.”
Read the full summary at vanityfair.com. The issue featuring Bissinger’s cover story will hit newsstands on June 9.
[Photo via screengrab]
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