When her Vanity Fair cover was released this morning, Caitlyn Jenner did a better job of breaking the internet than Kim Kardashian – but the ‘damage’ is far from over. The story—a captivating profile of Jenner written by Buzz Bissinger—is every bit as memorable as its cover.
Bissinger (a “cross-dresser with a big-time fetish for women’s leather”) called it “the most remarkable story I have ever worked on in 38 years as a journalist,” and it’s easy to understand why. Below are some of the most notable quotes that followed the already-legendary “Call me Caitlyn” headline.
On watching Bruce play golf before making his new identity public:
He played by himself because he almost always played by himself, a loner who said he wasn’t lonely, although it was hard to see the difference.
Jenner, on a lifetime of feeling like the odd one out:
“I wish I were kind of normal. It would be so much more simple.”
On Caitlyn’s newfound honesty:
Bruce Jenner was ‘always telling lies.’ Caitlyn ‘doesn’t have any lies,’ she says.
On being on top of the world after his Olympic victory, and still feeling like an outcast:
He tried out for the lead role in the film Superman, which was too much of a stretch without any acting experience, although Jenner was actually one of the great actors of our time.
“I walk off the stage and I’d feel like a liar. And I would say, ‘Fuck, I can’t tell my story. There’s so much more to me than those 48 hours in the stadium, and I can’t talk about it.’ You get so mad at yourself…Little did they know I was totally empty inside. Totally empty inside.”
“’I don’t want to be this way’ was the bottom line. Who would want to be dealing with all these issues?…I look at men and say, Oh my God, would it not be so wonderful to be comfortable in your own skin, male or female, so when you wake up in the morning you get dressed and go to work and this identity issue is not even present?”
On avoiding regret:
“If I was lying on my deathbed and I had kept this secret and never did anything about it, I would be lying there saying, ‘You just blew your entire life,’” she told me. “’You never dealt with yourself,’ and I don’t want that to happen.”
Bissinger, who admits he often slipped with the pronouns, on how Bruce doesn’t “really get hung up.”
“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.”
On her cup size after taking hormones in the 80s:
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