In Vanity Fair's sprawling June cover story, Caitlyn (née Bruce) Jenner talks about a lifetime of longing and the pain of denying a gender identity that felt natural and inevitable.
The profile, available on newsstands June 9, is a closeup on Jenner's life, touching on her fractured relationship with some of her children, the divorce from Kris Jenner, and the reason why she's doing a reality show.
Jenner announced her decision to transition in an April interview with Diane Sawyer. She appears as Caitlyn for the first time stunning in Badgley Mischka and Zac Posen gowns, no less in the Vanity Fair article.
Here are the five most important things you should know about the story:
1. Jenner always felt female.
Jenner began expressing a female gender identity as early as 10 years old, when she would sneak clothes out of her mother's or sister's closet. She described putting on a dress and wrapping a scarf around her head, and feeling "fascinated by it all" but terrified that someone might find out.
Jenner didn't tell anyone until the early 1970s, when she shared the secret with her then-wife, Chrystie Crownover. "He told me he always wanted to be a woman," Chrystie told Vanity Fair. "He told me as a little kid how that felt. He told me [of] different fantasies that he had, related to loving women."
Jenner says she made similar confessions to her second and third wives, Linda Thompson and Kris Jenner. Yet, Kris and Caitlyn disagree about what was disclosed.
“There wasn’t a gender issue," Kris said. "Nobody mentioned a gender issue. Somebody mentioned that he at one point in his life liked to dress up.”
Kris said Caitlyn did not explain her experience of gender dysphoria until they divorced last September.
SEE ALSO: The heartwarming reactions to Caitlyn Jenner's stunning magazine cover
2. Jenner underwent some medical procedures to help her transition.
Jenner first began taking hormones that resulted in breast growth in the mid- to late-1980s. She also underwent plastic surgery on her nose and had her facial and body hair removed over a two-year period using electrolysis. Recently, she has undergone a tracheal shave, facial-feminization surgery and breast augmentation.
She has not received genital surgery. As Vanity Fair author Buzz Bissinger points out, only a quarter of transgender women undergo genital surgery. "The transgender community for years has been trying to get the public to understand that genitalia are not a determinant of gender," he writes. The procedure is also not recommended until at least a year after transition, anyway.
3. Jenner did not reveal Caitlyn's sexual preference, but it shouldn't matter.
Living as Bruce, Jenner exclusively had relationships with women. Caitlyn said she has "no idea" what the future holds and that it doesn't matter at the moment. “If you have a list of 10 reasons to transition," she said, "sex would be number 10.” Bissinger also reminds readers that "sexual preference and gender identity have nothing to do with each other."
4. Jenner says she didn't transition for the reality show.
Jenner knows what you and everyone else is thinking that she's transitioning just to make smash reality TV series and enjoy the financial spoils. Jenner insists her intentions transcend money, but she's also not naive.
“I’m not doing it for the money. I’m doing it to help my soul and help other people," “I’m not doing it for the money. I’m doing it to help my soul and help other people," she said. "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.”
While Jenner is using many of the same key players who produce Keeping Up with the Kardashians not known for its social consciousness those involved with the project say it will not devolve into typical reality television programming.
"It’s not a Kardashian spin-off...We will not resort to spectacle," said E!'s head of programming, Jeff Olde. "That doesn’t mean we can’t have fun with it.”
5. Jenner was not always the loving, exemplary father she appeared to be on Keeping Up with the Kardashians.
Caitlyn Jenner's story is about more than her gender identity. Jenner's journey is also about her relationship with her children, particularly the three sons and one daughter she had prior to marrying Kris Jenner.
While Caitlyn may have appeared as a goofy, loving father on the Kardashian reality series, in fact, she had all but abandoned her four older children, missing important milestones like birthdays and graduation parties and even the birth of her daughter.
Her children, interviewed in the story, show impressive empathy despite their pain.
"There’s no way to separate what he’s going through, the trap he’s been in for the past 60 years and how that has affected his choices around love and relationships. It’s impossible,” said his daughter Cassandra.
Jenner, she added, was a better parent when "moving towards his authentic self. I would happily have traded a distant father for a loving, involved mom.
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