If on principle you avoid all things tabloid and all things Kardashian (good on you), you may have missed the news that patriarch Bruce Jenner is increasingly adopting a more feminine appearance: getting French manicures, donning Spanx, wearing his hair long, sporting earrings, and the like. There's even rumors that he had surgery to shave down his Adam's apple.
Predictably, the media—and especially the tabs—have treated the transformation with thinly veiled, deeply troubling bias against the trans community. "Hairless whisper!" snarked the Daily Mail about Jenner's smooth legs. "Dude Wants To Look Like A Lady," trumpeted TMZ. On the Howard Stern Show, a Jenner impersonator even pretended to come out as trans, turning a stigmatized, fraught decision into a cheap punch-line.
Less predictably, the Kardashian family itself seems to be handling the news with . . . relative grace?
Rumor has it that Jenner's transformation will be the subject of an E! documentary later this year. If true (this is, after all, according to a TMZ "report"), it would mark one of the first times a major cable network has documented a trans, or at least gender-questioning, experience.
Meanwhile, Kim Kardashian has come out in support of her stepdad, telling Entertainment Tonight:
"I will say that I think Bruce should tell his story his way . . . I think everyone goes through things in life and I think that story and what Bruce is going through, I think he'll share whenever the time is right. I think Bruce is very happy, the happiest I've ever seen him . . . He's our dad so we support him no matter what, and I think when the time is right, he'll talk about whatever he wants to talk about. I guess I'll kind of let everyone be curious and I feel like that's his journey to talk about."
All those in the media not-so-subtly smearing Jenner's transformation, whatever it may be, could learn a thing or two about respect and dignity from the Kardashians. Think about what that says for a moment.
