Laverne Cox has thoughts on Caitlyn Jenner’s Vanity Fair cover photo and its reception.
[I]n a Tumblr post that went live shortly after midnight Tuesday, Cox warned the trans experience is much more than a dramatic physical transformation and only celebrating the women for their beauty can be inherently harmful to the trans cause.
“What I think [people praising Cox’s beauty] meant is that in certain lighting, at certain angles I am able to embody certain cisnormative beauty standards,” Cox wrote.
Cox hopes transgender role models like Jenner and herself can be seen as so much more than beautiful women.
Oh looky there – that was exactly my point.
“I love working a photo shoot and creating inspiring images for my fans, for the world and above all for myself. But I also hope that it is my talent, my intelligence, my heart and spirit that most captivate, inspire, move and encourage folks to think more critically about the world around them.”
Failing to see these women as holistic individuals runs the risk of fetishizing them, Cox wrote:
“Yes, Caitlyn looks amazing and is beautiful but what I think is most beautiful about her is her heart and soul, the ways she has allowed the world into her vulnerabilities. The love and devotion she has for her family and that they have for her. Her courage to move past denial into her truth so publicly. These things are beyond beautiful to me.”
Trans people are no less complicated, complete human beings than anyone else.
That too was my point. I think women should be seen as complicated, complete human beings just as men are, and of course that means trans women too.
It’s so much more than a magazine cover. The trans experience consists of a lot more than conforming to “cisnormative beauty standards.” Jenner and Cox are unusually privileged in resources and public support. Other trans men and women might not have the ability to transform themselves physically the way these two women have.
“Now, there are many trans folks because of genetics and/or lack of material access who will never be able to embody these standards,” Cox wrote. Furthermore, some trans men and women may simply not want cisnormative conformity. “More importantly many trans folks don’t want to embody” [these standards].
Just what Meredith Talusan wrote yesterday.
While Cox and Jenner’s photoshoots and media attention are to be celebrated, tweeting pictures of them and commenting on the beauty of their transformation must not be confused with fighting for the trans cause. Public acceptance is a huge part of it, but truly embracing and supporting transgender people is so much more than praising someone for their (cisnormative) beauty.
And not just more than. I think making such a point of praising someone for their (cisnormative) beauty makes life harder for people who don’t have (cisnormative) beauty.
Of course, you can say well that’s life, tough shit – beauty is beauty and people are always going to worship it, so deal. Lots of people do say that. But I don’t. I think we can be more thoughtful than that.
H/t Kausik.
It’s not fighting very hard, but it’s certainly not anti-trans.
Indeed. But there isn’t anything wrong with being cisnormatively beautiful, whether you’re cis or not. When that’s obviously what a trans person is aiming for, and working toward, I see no harm in acknowledging that they succeeded.
I completely agree. Unfortunately, a glamour photo is not the way to convey the depth of either the subject or the photographer. I’d venture to say that the cover of Vanity Fair has probably not ever had a great photograph, just top-notch commercial glamour photography.
Oddly, as I write this, I’m hanging out with one of LA’s top professional photographers; a guy who’s shot headshots that have made stars’ careers. He’s perfectly capable of doing an incredible shot that shows a certain amount about a person and how they project their self and their interests. But if Vanity Fair hired him to do a cover, he wouldn’t be able to do any of that.
I fully support Jenner’s right to represent herself how she wants and where, and it must be a great rush for anyone to be on the cover of VF. But nobody has any business expecting a soul-revealing statement in that venue. To me, people who are questioning the message that Jenner’s cover sends are really questioning the venue more than anything else. Compare the shallow flat-lit bumf you see on the cover of any issue of VF with, say, Yousuf Karsh’s portrait of Martha Graham (which actually said something about who she was) and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
I think the question is then whether Jenner’s “message” was in the appropriate venue – and that’s not my question. If I were Jenner, I’d say “fuck you” in response to that, which – effectively – is already Jenner’s response. As a fan of the photographic arts, I can wish Jenner had been able to pose for a better photographer in a better venue. If there’s a “message” in Jenner’s choice, that’s it – she chose to play to empty vanity, and chose a venue where photoshop and lighting wiped out the years of what I cannot imagine that she lived through. Annie Liebovitz is a pretty good photographer and could have done better; her photos of olympic athletes showed how impressive they are. Google up her photo of Jenny Thompson, the olympic swimmer. I won’t say “it’s a shame” that her new photos of the winner of 8 gold medals portrayed her as anything but impressive, but that was almost certainly an art director at VF’s choice, not Liebovitz or Jenner’s.
tl;dr: Vanity Fair is crap. Duh. What do you expect?
Nobody said it was anti-trans that I know of. That wasn’t the point.
Nor is it the point that there’s anything wrong with being cisnormatively beautiful.
Can we talk about what is the point instead of what isn’t?
Gretchen says:
True: there isn’t anything wrong with being cisnormatively beautiful, and more power to those who are (and/or wish to be) celebrated for said beauty.
For me, however, it was NOT that obvious that this was what Caitlyn Jenner was “aiming for and working towards” as an end in itself. That is why what Cox wrote strongly resonated with me – these two parts:
And
For me, this – above – embodies the point of Cox’s commentary and Ophelia’s post yesterday, which had made me contemplate and reevaluate my thoughts.
Sure, except that it’s pretty difficult to figure out what your point is. If it’s the things you’re claiming are your point– that trans women are more than their appearance, just as all women are more than their appearance– well, I won’t say “duh,” but I will ask how that is supposed to contradict people calling Caitlyn Jennfer beautiful. “Don’t call her beautiful because she’s more than that” makes zero sense to me.
Gretchen -how about saying something about her besides that?
And then there is the question of implications for other trans women: Do they have to achieve that level of beauty to be accepted? Are trans women who are less ‘conventionally’ beautiful in the cisnormative way not quite as ‘real women’ as Caitlyn Jenner?
how about saying something about her besides that?
Honestly, if I’d been shooting that cover, I’d have shot her wearing a nice dress, with her olympic medals around her neck, in a visual reference to the rather famous shot on the cover of a million-plus Wheaties boxes. But that wouldn’t be a shot that would go on the cover of Vanity Fair.
Wheaties could/should do it.
Jenner is not a person without world-class level accomplishments. There was training and suffering and accomplishment a’ plenty. Then there was wrestling with issues my cis-programmed privileged brain cannot even comprehend and what I assume were some gut-wrenching decisions. I say categorically that Jenner is a champion, indeed, in many senses of the word.
A magazine that panders to shallow celebrity is not the vehicle to carry that, though. Let’s imagine for a second that Jenner was on the cover of “People” magazine and less than 1/5 as much was spent on the photoshoot and retouching. Would we still have high expectations? To me, the issue appears to be that somehow some people expect better from Vanity Fair than they have any business ever expecting from a celebrity glamour marketing magazine. Even the cover of Rolling Stone would be a vehicle that might carry more personal meaning.
It seems to me that the criticism is about Jenner’s choice of vehicle; which – frankly – I think is shallow and betrays misplaced expectations on the part of the critics more than anything else. Jenner’s being on the cover of Vanity Fair is not a serious statement.
Presumably Jenner had plenty of input into the shot and how she wanted to be portrayed. Well, I mean, I assume.
The Glamour Shot ideal has been heavily market to women of all ages for, well, ages. The idea that women are supposed to *want* to dress up and ‘make themselves pretty’ and take lots of duck-faced photos of themselves, etc., is a huge cultural/sexual identity issue, and clearly one that influences the choices of many women–trans and cis.
I haven’t read the VF story, so I don’t know if the choice of photography style & setting is discussed at all, but I would *imagine* that, after a lifetime of having to indulge secretly in this perceived womanly practice of becoming pretty, and further after having endured what sounds like really extensive surgical alteration to achieve that standard of beauty, Caitlyn Jenner was likely a fully vested participant in the particulars of the photo shoot.
I don’t judge her or shame her in the least for that. Hell, if Annie Leibowitz and Vanity Fair came to my house and said “Hey, Jen, wriggle into this Merry Widow and spend a few hours in the makeup chair and then we’ll photograph you bending over the ottoman, okay?” I would consider it. Ten years ago I would have done it in a heartbeat. Because that’s my culture, and it’s Caitlyn’s too.
Presumably Jenner had plenty of input into the shot
Highly unlikely. Art directors usually figure all that out and then present the subject with a very limited set of options. The photographer has limited options, too.
Ultimately the art director’s going to be the one who picks which picture runs, out of a set of maybe 5 or 6 (depending on how much they spend on retouchers) Unless the subject is a mega-superstar. In the case of Jenner, the attitude was probably “you should feel lucky we are doing this” In the case of Madonna, her attitude would be “you should feel lucky I am doing this” — it’s the hierarchy of fortune and fame in its most brutal form.
Ophelia@#3: Nobody said it was anti-trans that I know of.
Tabby Lavalamp made some comment in the earlier thread that there was a sense of underlying transphobia, or something like that (I don’t care to dig up the exact reference). It was bullshit but that doesn’t make it fit down the memory-hole.
Marcus & Mr. FancyPants: Here’s a detailed article from the style (art?) director about the collaborative nature of the shoot:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/fashion/the-woman-behind-caitlyn-jenners-vanity-fair-cover.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&WT.mc_id=2015-JUNE-TABOOLA-VIEWED_AUD_DEV-0601-0630&WT.mc_ev=click&ad-keywords=AUDDEVREMARK&_r=0