Caitlyn Jenner: Hero! Problem! Today, the perceived poles of Caitlyn Jenner’s social import — as a beacon of trans acceptance on the one end, and on the flip side as a raging Republican who supports Ted Cruz (perhaps the most frightening candidate when it comes to women’s and LGBT rights) — convened in two separate news stories, proving once again that, yes, Caitlyn Jenner is a multifaceted person who can represent cultural steps forward in one vein while espousing steps backward in another.
First, the good (ish?). Caitlyn Jenner announced via Instagram that she’s behind H&M’s athletic-wear campaign.
According to Fortune, the company confirmed she was selected because she’s “one of the world’s most celebrated athletes” and that the upcoming sports ware was known to “celebrate individuality and self-belief.” A big yay for continued mainstream representation of trans people, and a simultaneous slight cringe for continued subsuming of ideas of “individuality and self-belief” by the likes of corporations reported to exploit cheap/child labor.
In other news, Jenner announced her (unsurprising) support for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton today, calling the latter a “fucking liar.” (She’d previously spoken out against Clinton, with slightly less harsh words.) In a recent conversation with friends from this coming Sunday’s I Am Cait that E! posted, Jenner said of Trump:
I think he would have a hard time with women when he doesn’t even realize it, and it doesn’t mean he wouldn’t be good for women’s issues, I think he would be very good for women’s issues. Just because I’m a woman now doesn’t make me all of a sudden liberal.
When asked — in the increasingly heated discussion (it is, after all, a political discussion on reality TV) — if she would vote for Trump over Hillary, she said:
Oh my God, I would never, ever, ever vote for Hillary. We’re done. If Hillary becomes president, the country is over… She was a lousy Senator…Look at all the things that are going on in the Middle East because of what she did. Look at Benghazi. She lied to us. She’s a fucking liar… All of her emails, she’s a political hack. She’s done nothing.
Admittedly, Clinton did just make the horribly revisionist claim that Nancy Reagan was an important force in starting a conversation through “low key advocacy” about the AIDS epidemic (which she’s now retracted) — but such a statement certainly doesn’t mean the man who wanted to ban Muslims from entering the country isn’t so very much worse.
Anyway, sportswear!