Caitlyn Jenner. Photo, Annie Liebovitz
Buzz in boots
Talk about breaking the internet! Caitlyn Jenner and Vanity Fair stopped the planet yesterday, huh? That cover! The name reveal! The behind the scenes video! The story! The fastest Twitter account to 1 million followers!
I’m a VF subscriber so I downloaded it ASAP to see the rest of the incredible pics by Annie Leibovitz. I compared the pose to Philippe Halsman‘s shot of Marilyn Monroe, not saying that Caitlyn resembles Marilyn, but rather the pose, attitude and “ultimate female” vibe she had was being transmitted by Annie’s instantly iconic cover. But all anyone else could talk about was the resemblance to Jessica Lange, Cindy Crawford or Janice Dickinson. Well, not bad for your first (public) day as a woman, CJ.
But as I was reading the incredible article by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author Buzz Bissinger, who was given exclusive access to Jenner, I came across a sentence that I had to go back and read again. Twice.;
“… I have been a cross-dresser with a big-time fetish for women’s leather and an open critic of the often arbitrary delineation between men’s and women’s clothing…”
OK. That peaked my interest, so me and Mr. Google went to work. While writing for The Philadelphia Inquirer Bissinger won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for his story on corruption in the Philadelphia court system in 1987. He’s the former host of The Buzz Bissinger Show on CBS’s Talk Radio 1210 but he is perhaps best known for his book Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream, which was turned into a successful film and TV series. He’s been a Vanity Fair contributor for years and in 2013 wrote a piece for GQ, My Gucci Addiction, which caught my eye. He sold 2 million copies of Friday Night Lights, but he also must be independently wealthy.
As one of Gucci‘s biggest clients, he was flown Business Class for “five pampered and feted on an all-expenses-paid four-day trip to Milan and Florence”… follow along, this gets interesting…
Photo, Phillip Toledo to illustrate Bizzinger’s GQ article, My Gucci addiction
“There are other clients coveted and important to the retailer, who will also get the royal Gucci treatment. We five got lucky. We are Team Gucci, with representation from Argentina, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. We are for the moment Gucci Olympians who have spent Olympian sums and will presumably spend Olympian sums during the week.
I have an addiction. It isn’t drugs or gambling: I get to keep what I use after I use it. But there are similarities: the futile feeding of the bottomless beast and the unavoidable psychological implications, the immediate hit of the new that feels like an orgasm and the inevitable coming-down.
It started three years ago. I have never fully revealed it, and am only revealing it now in the hopes that my confession will incite a remission and perhaps help others of similar compulsion. If all I buy is Gucci, I will be fine…
I own eighty-one leather jackets, seventy-five pairs of boots, forty-one pairs of leather pants, thirty-two pairs of haute couture jeans, ten evening jackets, and 115 pairs of leather gloves. Those who conclude from this that I have a leather fetish, an extreme leather fetish, get a grand prize of zero…
Some of the clothing is men’s. Some is women’s. I make no distinction. Men’s fashion is catching up, with high-end retailers such as Gucci and Burberry and Versace finally honoring us. But women’s fashion is still infinitely more interesting and has an unfair monopoly on feeling sexy, and if the clothing you wear makes you feel the way you want to feel, liberated and alive, then fucking wear it. The opposite, to repress yourself as I did for the first fifty-five years of my life, is the worst price of all to pay. The United States is a country that has raged against enlightenment since 1776; puritanism, the guiding lantern, has cast its withering judgment on anything outside the narrow societal mainstream. Think it’s easy to be different in America? Try something as benign as wearing stretch leather leggings or knee-high boots if you are a man.”
See? The perfect guy to interview Jenner, right? Hats off to VF‘s longtime editor, Graydon Carter, who made the excellent call. You should read the whole story. But here’s a bit more of the juicy bits.
Was I homosexual because so much of what I wore is associated with gays? I did experiment. And while I don’t think it is my sexual being, I can tell you that gay men as a group are nicer, smarter, have a shitload more fun than straight whites. Was I veering toward becoming a dominant leather master in the S&M scene, the leather fetish an obvious influence in most of the clothing I purchased and in much of high fashion itself? I did experiment. Was I a closeted or maybe not so closeted transvestite? Tom Ford makeup is divine; the right foundation and cheek blush and eyeliner and lipstick can do wonders for the pallid complexion. Thigh-high boots add to any wardrobe, although walking on six-inch stilettos for hours is just a bitch and therefore confined to the privacy of my house, seen only by the UPS man, who at this point could not possibly be surprised by anything. But a dress or skirt just doesn’t look good on me, and I can’t ever do a thing with my hair. The look I was going for was more David Bowie androgynous.”
I did engage in a relationship with a dominatrix after the failure of my second marriage. I left the scene after two years. But I clearly missed it, the trappings of leather increasingly irresistible. I liked extreme feelings of restraint and taking pain. But I was also interested in everything.”
You can read it all here, but spoiler alert… here’s the ending;
“I was dressed in tight black faux-leather stretch pants, a black Gucci T-shirt, and a black leather Gucci jacket lined with shearling. I looked so hip that the owner of the club put us in the special VIP section overlooking the jammed dance floor.
I ordered a bottle of Cristal. Another member of the party ordered a magnum of Veuve Clicquot. Then I ordered a bottle of Patrón tequila. At first we all took little shots out of little plastic cups carefully rimmed with salt. Tequila? That’s no stinking way to drink tequila. I bit hard on a lime, licked down some salt, took a long pull straight from the bottle, and passed it along. We swigged like sailors, laughing, cheering, dancing, singing. I finished the bottle off. I beat the Argentinians, no small feat when it comes to partying. I did my country proud that night. I was proud. I felt alive. I was alive. I felt myself. I was myself.
All for $638,412.97.”
The post Why Buzz Bissinger Was The PERFECT Writer To Cover Caitlyn Jenner (Spoiler: He Likes Wearing Women’s Clothes, Too) appeared first on World of Wonder.