Caitlyn Jenner in crosshairs of conservatives and liberals
Caitlyn Jenner, former Olympian and public face of the transgender movement whether she or anyone involved likes it or not, received a high-profile award this month from Glamour magazine. Jenner, 66, was among a handful of recipients of Glamour’s Women of the Year Award, a prize the magazine has doled out to important ladies since 1990.
Glamour honoured Jenner at a star-studded ceremony Nov. 9 for coming out of the closet and for bringing transgender issues to the fore with her documentary reality series, I Am Cait — a Kardashian-style sideshow with a moral message. In the series, Jenner discusses trans issues with experts and activists and receives fashion advice from her stepdaughter Kim Kardashian, who discards ugly clothing from Jenner’s gargantuan closet with love and sass. “I like being myself,” Jenner told a packed audience at Glamour’s ceremony earlier this month, sporting a royal blue evening gown.
Unsurprisingly though, not everyone likes Jenner. The former reality TV patriarch’s swift transition from cheap tabloid fodder to transgender activist and recipient of prestigious awards (earlier this year she won ESPN’s Arthur Ashe Courage Award) is a constant source of controversy — so much so that disapproval of Jenner’s recognition by Glamour was a top trending topic on Facebook this week.
When James Smith, the husband of former Glamour award winner and New York City police officer Moira Smith (Smith was awarded Woman of the Year posthumously after she perished in 9/11) learned about Jenner’s win, he was so livid he returned his late wife’s award to the magazine. “I find it insulting to Moira Smith’s memory, and the memory of other heroic women who have earned this award,” he wrote in a now viral letter to Glamour. “Was there no woman in America, or the rest of the world, more deserving than this man?”
Actress Rose McGowan also took shots at the former Olympian recently, for Jenner’s supposedly anti-women remarks. When asked at the Glamour ceremony what the hardest thing about being a woman is in 2015, Jenner quipped: “Figuring out what to wear,” a statement that irked McGowan to her feminist core. “Caitlyn Jenner you do not understand what being a woman is all about,” McGowan wrote in a now viral Facebook post Monday. “We are more than the stereotypes foisted upon us by people like you.”
In short, Caitlyn Jenner may be a well-heeled white woman with numerous awards under her designer belt, but by God, the lady cannot catch a break. She is regarded by the conservative world as an attentionseeking guy in a dress undeserving of even a sliver of respect. And in the eyes of many high-profile feminists she is equally incorrect: it turns out, even in her serially ridiculed female form, Jenner is considered a testament to male privilege.
The prevailing question around any statement she makes in the press no matter how innocuous is invariably: how can a woman who has lived most of her life in the body of a rich heterosexual man — a man formerly on a Wheaties box who spent his weekends golfing at posh country clubs — possibly understand the challenges and complexities faced by the average woman? “Figuring out what to wear?” Try closing the wage gap! Or working three jobs to pay for child care! Or eliminating the tampon tax!
Jenner is a walking, collagen-injected catch-22: she is damned for speaking out and damned for keeping quiet; damned for being an inferior activist and damned for winning awards based on her activism. Perhaps the greatest irony about the current backlash to Jenner’s Glamour award is that she was recognized alongside a handful of other winners who more than meet both liberal and conservative critics’ definitions of bravery and uncompromising feminism.
Among the other winners were actress Reese Witherspoon, founder of a new feminist-bent film production company; Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, and — if it’s heroism you’re after — five women affected by the shooting massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., earlier this year. Sounds to me like a pretty well-rounded group.
But perhaps Jenner’s critics are right. The hardest thing about being a woman in 2015 isn’t figuring out what to wear (though I would argue it’s up there). The hardest thing is being forced to apologize for your success when you have done nothing wrong. Emma Teitel is a national columnist. Her column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. eteitel@thestar.ca