On Reinventing Yourself …
Don’t know about you, but I have a bit of a problem
with the whole Bruce Jenner thing.
No, I’m not homophobic — but I actually do have
a problem with hypocrisy and double standards. I
find them almost as terrifying as they are funny.
I find it intriguing that scores of people are applauding the emergence of “Caitlyn Jenner.” Many
of them are the same people who were so cruelly
disparaging about women like Renee Zellweger,
Lisa Rinna, Joan Rivers and countless other female
celebrities when they had cosmetic surgery. Why is
that? It’s baffling how it is pronounced “heroic” for
Jenner to have “work” done to look like a 35-yearold supermodel.
Yet any older woman who gets work done in an
effort to look younger, work that makes her look like
a 35-year-old woman — that’s seen as vain.
Is there a double standard here?
“No one wants to pay money to see some old
lady on the stage,” Rivers once said in an interview.
“As long as I keep working, I’m going to keep having
cosmetic surgery.”
While on the surface Rivers’ cosmetic work may
have seemed to be linked to vanity, it was really all
about business.
So, OK, Jenner felt that he was a woman locked
in the body of a man. Great. Fine. So, if it’s all simply a gender issue, in the transformation, why not
switch from being a 65-year-old grandfather to being
a 65-year-old grandmother? Instead he looks like a
young Renee Russo? Even Renee Russo doesn’t look
like a young Renee Russo any longer.
If society can give such a wide berth to this man
of a certain age, why not give women of a certain
age the same consideration?
Why is it “courageous” for a man to have surgery
that wil