If her first red carpet appearance (at the ESPY Awards on Wednesday night) is anything to go by, the brouhaha surrounding Caitlyn Jenner’s appearance in a bustier on the cover of Vanity Fair, which produced a multitude of editorials about what being a woman looks like, has not swayed her style choices.
Jenner, receiving the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the ESPY event (aka the Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly Awards), was draped in white goddess Atelier Versace, her hair in a Veronica Lake sweep, Beladora emerald earrings dangling on her lobes. The look: full-on glamour. The statement: Take me as I am, clearly intended for those who were taken aback by her transition, as well as those who wanted to co-opt it for their own political ends.
Given the magnitude of what Jenner represents, you could say that it is ridiculous to talk about her dress, that the clothes were the least of it, and that her heartfelt and moving speech about being trapped in the wrong skin for 65 years, and the difficulty of breaking out of that prison, is what should linger in the memory. And there’s no question that it was a powerful declaration.
But it was she who brought up frocks at the beginning of her acceptance speech, joking about the stress of picking a dress and begging the fashion police to go easy on her. It was an icebreaker, sure, but it seemed like a calculated one.
It underscored the fact that to ignore what she was wearing was to ignore part of her point, which was that she had finally been able to define herself for herself and that she had chosen this way to do it. As she said, “I’m new at this.” And she’s decided to play the red carpet game like any female star.
Or, for that matter, like many of the female athletes in the audience – for example, U.S. soccer star Ali Krieger, in shirred and slit crimson Prabal Gurung; skier Lindsey Vonn, in a red gown cut to reveal almost an entire leg; and mixed martial arts fighter Ronda Rousey, in her body-conscious black-and-white minidress with sheer inserts.
Approve or disapprove, but you can’t deny that it was Jenner’s choice, which is the most important thing.
Indeed, she reportedly hired Jennifer Rade, a stylist who has worked with Angelina Jolie, for the ESPY occasion – Rade is, probably not coincidentally, the woman who put Jolie in the famous leg-baring black Versace dress at the 2012 Oscars. That’s not being a victim or a sucker; that’s owning your own destiny.
Which is why acknowledging Jenner’s fashion choices does not undermine her accomplishment; it celebrates it. Which is perhaps why the most overwhelming reaction by far of the Twitterati to her appearance Wednesday night can pretty much be paraphrased as, well, “fabulous.”
© 2015, The New York Times News Service
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