Bruce Jenner, the 1976 Olympic decathlon champion who said in April that he became a woman “for all intents and purposes,” said he’s now Caitlyn Jenner, as shown on Vanity Fair‘s July cover, and unlike Bruce, “doesn’t have any secrets.”
“If I was lying on my deathbed, and I had kept this secret and never ever did anything about it, I would be lying there saying, ‘You just blew your entire life,'” Jenner said, according to the magazine.
A Twitter handle, @Caitllyn_Jenner, launched Monday, and reached one million followers in around four hours after its first tweet, breaking a record set by President Obama’s handle — @POTUS — in May.
Vanity Fair published a Q&A between the story’s author, Buzz Bissinger, and Jenner:
Bissinger: You said something after the shoot that was incredibly poignant, I thought. You had the gold medal on top of the table, the gold medal you won for the Olympics, and you said that was a good day, but the past few days of this shoot have been better.
Jenner: They were.
Bissinger: Why? What did you mean by that? I mean, you were talking about a gold medal, something that everybody covets and wants, and yet these past few days have been better. Why is that?
Jenner: That was a sporting event; the last few days is about life, O.K., about living your life. About being true to yourself. I was probably at the games because I was running away from a lot of things, O.K., very, very proud of the accomplishment, I don’t want to diminish that accomplishment, but the last few days in doing this shoot was about my life and who I am as a person. It’s not about the fanfare, it’s not about people cheering in the stadium, it’s not about going down the street and everybody giving you “that a boy, Bruce,” pat on the back, O.K. This is about your life and about who you are. And the last few days have been absolutely amazing, you know, I never thought, you know, that some day I’d be able to do this.
