It’s been around a month since Bruce Jenner spoke to Diane Sawyer in an E! special about the gender transition that had been rumored for so long. And now, with the loving support of family and friends, Bruce Jenner is introducing the world to her new female identity Caitlyn.
In celebration of what has been a no doubt long struggle Caitlyn, photographed by Annie Leibovitz in her home in Malibu, will be gracing the cover of Vanity Fair that hits shelves June 9th.
Inside the pages, Jenner will feature in a 22-page cover story penned by the magazine’s contributing editor and author of Friday Night Lights, Buzz Bissinger, and will share an in-depth account of what her transition has been like.
“This shoot was about my life and who I am as a person. It’s not about the fanfare, it’s not about people cheering in the stadium, it’s not about going down the street and everybody giving you ‘that a boy, Bruce,’ pat on the back, O.K. This is about your life.” Caitlyn reveals in a preview of the story that hit the web this morning.
Bissinger, it is said, spent hundreds of hours with the man the world knew as Bruce Jenner over a period of three months, and then countless with Caitlyn and spoke extensively with Jenner’s four children from his first two marriages.
In the preview for the revealing story, Jenner recounts enduring a panic attack the day after undergoing 10-hour facial-feminization surgery, during which she recalls thinking, “What did I just do? What did I just do to myself?” These thoughts, nothing more than the natural second-guessing we’ve all encountered after a major decision, passed and have not since come back.
“If I was lying on my deathbed,” Caitlyn said, “and I had kept this secret and never ever did anything about it, I would be lying there saying, ‘You just blew your entire life. You never dealt with yourself,’ and I don’t want that to happen.”
Watch the behind-the-scenes video of Annie Leibovitz photo shoot below:
Vanity Fair’s feature story marks the first time Caitlyn has spoken publically since her gender transition, but we are set to hear more from her during the docu-series for the E! network. In the feature, Caitlyn directly addresses the inevitable criticism that the series is nothing more than a publicity stunt, saying, “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.”
Jenner, with her new identity, has already racked up a world record by hitting 1 million Twitter followers (under the handle @caitlyn_jenner) in just four hours as support from family, friends, celebrities, and the public floods through.
