“For so many years, I lost my enthusiasm for life,” Caitlyn Jenner admitted during a moving acceptance speech at the Glamour Women of the Year Awards in New York last night. Since coming out, though, she once again enjoys “going out and being myself.” And, finally, she laughed, she can drive again. Last week, her new driver’s license arrived, with a photograph that looks like her — “and gender marker F!”
There was a time, before her Vanity Fair cover, when going out had become an ordeal. “I was getting destroyed in the tabloids,” she said. “Every week walking through the grocery line, I was looking at the headlines, and so were my children. And it was hurtful. So I sat each one of them down and said, ‘This is my story.'”
The Olympian spoke about the sense of freedom she has achieved by living her life authentically, the support she’s received from her family (“I am so blessed that I have family, and not one of them has abandoned me”), and her gratefulness for the opportunity to make a difference to the lives of others. She also thanked the trans women who had come before her, and made a plea for global acceptance of the transgender community: “This is about humanity,” she said. “It doesn’t have borders.”
To receive her award, presented by actress Judith Light, Jenner chose a regal off-the-shoulder Moschino gown. (Walking up the stairs in it was harder than hurdling, she joked.) But in a video screened during the ceremony, Caitlyn’s youngest daughter said, “besides appearance nothing has changed.” Kylie added, “She’s lived an amazing life and she’s always done amazing things. She’s such a good role model.”
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Text Alice Newell-Hanson
Image via @glamourmag