The lovely Laverne Cox covers the new Entertainment Weekly, just in time for the release of the third season of Orange is the New Black. Season three of OITNB was posted to Netflix last night, a full six hours ahead of a schedule. There are surely people who are at least halfway through the 14 episodes already. Laverne tells us we’re supposed to call it a “marathon,” not a “binge”. It’s as if sitting down watching a season’s worth of television at a stretch becomes an epic accomplishment instead of something we should be ashamed of. “I marathoned the hell out of that pint of Ben and Jerry’s last night.” (Bedhead will cover OITNB over the coming weeks, when more of you have had a chance to watch it.)
EW got a lot of quotes from Laverne on Caitlyn Jenner. Laverne thinks that it must be difficult to transition in the public eye, which is basically what she said when I saw her on her “Ain’t I a Woman” college tour. She also told us not to focus on the surgical or physical aspects of transgender people, as the media has done to Caitlyn nee Bruce. Here’s the teaser article from EW, with more in the print edition:
Cox wrote an thoughtful article on Tumblr, praising Jenner for being so open, but pleading with the media to stop focusing on Jenner’s good looks—and especially to stop focusing on whether or not she was going to have gender-reassignement surgery.
“Can we get past the surgery questions now?” Cox wonders. “I chose not to write about that because it’s really complicated. But what I do know is that, at this moment, Caitlyn’s narrative is about transitioning. And obviously she’s just at the beginning stages of her womanhood…the pickup it’s gotten and her visibility has been unprecedented.”
Cox praises Jenner for handling the constant scrutiny with such grace—and also admires how forthcoming Jenner is being. “Her authenticity, her vulnerability is beautiful. Her love of her family is so beautiful,” Cox says. “Caitlyn is dynamic, and has a sense of purpose and vision.” But she also adds she’s happy she didn’t have the same attention heaped on her during her own transition.
“This is why I’m so grateful that I had the luxury of transitioning in private,” Cox says. “Because when you transition in the public eye, the transition becomes the story. I’m always disturbed when I see conversations about trans people that focus on surgery. But I believe Caitlyn will transcend this moment.”
Caitlyn is transcending this moment, in part, with tons of publicity and cash. I’m not saying she shouldn’t go that route if that’s what she chooses, just that she’s marketing the hell out of this. For many transgender people, transitioning in public would be awful, but I get the impression that Caitlyn is enjoying it, which is how it should be.
Laverne also had the honor of being named the first transgender person to get a wax figure at Madame Tussauds. Her statue will premiere in San Francisco later this month as part of Pride Weekend. Laverne said, in part, “When I think about being who I am, a black trans woman from a working class background raised in Mobile, Alabama, this honor feels even more improbable and extraordinary.”
Laverne Cox and Selenis Leyva are shown at Orangecon on 6-11. Laverne is also shown at the GLAAD media awards on 5-10-15. Credit: WENN.com and EW
Huh?
Yeah, considering he ordered one of his wives when pregnant, to get an abortion.
Caitlyn’s kids lack morals and education. One of them posted a pic in her underwear just today… the 17 y.o. who dropped out of homeschool HS and is dating a 25 y.o. father one
isn’t age seventeen in state of CA considered underage for that sort of thing?
Laverne is being so amazingly gracious about Caitlyn. I’m sure she genuinely feels Caitlyn’s publicity is good for all trans people, but she must secretly share the same doubts many of us do about Caitlyn as a role model in other regards.
Bruce was an amazing athlete and caitlyn is as laverne is stating. Yes things are tainted with association and the imprint left from PMK, but is Caitlyn trashing anyone? Or is she just going about life?
Caitlyn isn’t trashing anyone but the fame whoring is a big turn off for me. EVERY bit of publicity or disclosure by her has been a way to promote her “brand” – the interviews, the photos, the instagram, the soon to be reality TV series, the negotiations for the MAC cosmetics campaign.
Jenner’s love of her family may be “beautiful” to Laverne but Jenner’s fame whoring promotion of her transition is just yuck to me. I love Laverne for her authenticity but I see none of that in Jenner, just an obsession with self-promotion. I wanted to support her in the beginning but I now feel that I and everyone else is being played for Jenner’s big pay day. It’s sad.
Love the cover photo, she takes such a good picture!
Caitlyn Jenner gets an eternal side-eye from me until she puts her money where her mouth is.
I really adore Laverne, good for her.
It’s so interesting how Caitlyn’s cover has affected us here, I’ve so many more transgendered women in the last couple of weeks, just going about their lives, having lunch, pushing carriages, going to work. I’m in NYC where the acceptance level is fairly high anyway, so it’s nice to see this sudden freeing of people to be even more out and about.
That picture of her in the maroon dress…hot damn, so gorgeous. I do have to side eye the “the love she has for her family” part about Caitlyn though.
No kidding…..damn.
I couldn’t believe it when Caitlyn was quoted as saying how hurt she was that her children wouldn’t appear in her show??? Wha???? They’re standing by her in every way. It just sounded completely mercenary “kardashianesque” and not the LEAST BIT caring or concerned.
Wouldn’t it be great if Caitlyn did a cameo?
No. There are a million better role models: Janet Mock for one.
I’m guessing Laverne Cox will be expected to answer questions about Jenner in each interview from now on…
Very poised and classy.
She is a beautiful woman and a fine actress.
Although it is a positve thing that media have been giving so much attention to Caytlin and the transgender community, I hope Laverne won’t be always treated like a spokewoman for LBGB’s community.
She has her own career and is a very talented entertainer.
I have never seen OITNB but considering how much people seem to love it I should probably check it out. I really do enjoy Laverne’s interviews, she is always so well spoken. I wish others in Hollywood would catch on to that. Hollywood seems to be the land of verbal diarrhea. On a superficial note , I love her style. I want that grey and black outfit like now. Lol #badass She always looks gorgeous.
Oh You so Should! It’s an excellent show, it really showcases women/looks (they aren’t all white skinny, young, straight) /storylines and talent you wouldn’t have seen on TV otherwise
I’m loving that they put a whole season out at one time. I hate having to wait a week for the next episode of a show I love to come out . Oh first world problems lol I think I’m going to binge watch this weekend.
QQ is correct, the show is pretty amazing and fairly complex. I love that the show features NORMAL women of all shapes, colours, and sizes. The main character can be slightly annoying though. Lol But still worth the watch.
Slightly OT but definitely related: Does anyone else wonder if ‘transformation’ and the definition of ‘authentic or true self’ is going to be an increasingly hot flash point of discussion and argument for a while?
I ask because within ten minutes, I just read the Iggy post, this post, and this article (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3121061/Local-NAACP-leader-professor-African-studies-outed-WHITE-parents-convincing-community-black-years.html) about the woman who ‘transformed’ herself from white to live as ‘black’… and the varying degrees of uproar and publicity that have accompanied all these stories.
I am particularly interested in seeing the differences or similarities of how people talk & feel about gender identification vs. race identification unfold in the media – as well as in the ongoing debates about defining either ‘race’ or ‘gender,’ or the reason & freedom & possibilities of choosing or reinventing your own.
I’m not sure but that’s a great question.
That woman identifying as black is a far different story. She created her life by lies, disowning her own white family, pretending to have a black father and the man isn’t even related to her, and writing articles or tweets about living as a bi-racial or black woman and challenges she faces, talking about her natural hair, when her natural hair was straight and blond, not the died dark, tight corkscrew-permed hair she is sporting and pretending to have gone back natural. She is now much darker skinned, I guess through tanning or bronzers. She even it appears was setting up hate mail addressed to herself at the NAACP f when they have discovered the mail wasn’t mailed to her. It was put in the mailbox by someone with a key, which is probably her. She is a real mental case and has no right to be co-opting the minority experience as her own while a professor and working with NAACP. The woman was once light-skinned, freckled, with straight blond hair with two white parents.
I am sure that her people will jump on the bandwagon and try to conflate her situation with Laverne and Caitlyn, but they aren’t related at all IMO.
This little girl is white. She grew up with white parents and all of the rights and privileges that come with that. If her goal is to help and be of service to African Americans, she can do that without pretending to be black. And for goodness sake, stop all the damn lying.
@ Jayna & WTF: I confess that for the moment, I’m far more interested in the overall thematic similarities to be examined – and I see many – than solely in the difference between details of the particulars.
Privilege (white/white male); pretending; physical transformation; a certain amount of ‘lying’ (both to one’s self and to others); time spent on both ‘sides’ of gender and race; identity confusion and assumption; public presentation; speaking out for others (in both cases); being of service (and serving as an example) to oppressed or under-represented people; asserting public face as chosen self vs. born gender or racial ‘designated’ self…
Again, I see tons of similarities – without this necessarily becoming a contest or comparison regarding content of character, or necessarily judging the ethics of how they went about doing what they did.
It matters, but it’s not quite what I was getting at.
And, as a postscript, I think ‘self-identified,’ ‘post-racial,’ ‘biological’ – and a whole bunch of other terms and ideas and definitions – are about to get even more of a public workout soon.
Laverne is great but I hope she realizes that Caitlyn Jenner LOVES the publicity. I don’t think Caitlyn would be having so much fun if she had to do her transition privately. I get that people want to say nice things about Jenner but let’s not pretend that she didn’t court this hoopla with all her might.
I’ll probably catch some flak for this but Jenner has openly admitted to being a less than perfect parent — including estrangement from children for years at a time. Jenner’s children have confirmed it as well (and elaborated). So…how does that equate to “love of family”?
BTW I’m not knocking the transition or Cox but just that specific statement.
I could stare at Laverne’s face ALL. DAY. So beautiful.
I might be in the wrong here, but it’s made me a little uncomfortable how it seems like Caitlyn’s getting the whitewashing treatment. She is very open about being a crappy parent. She tried to pressure the first wife into an abortion with the daughter and then refused to be in the room for the birth because Linda Thompson was already pregnant with Brandon and they got married less than week after the first divorce was final. Brody openly stated for years that he considered David Foster (his mother’s second husband) to be his “dad” because he was the male presence in his life for so long.
I see a lot of people arguing that Caitlyn’s bad parenting can be attributed to the angst of being trans and hiding it. I can certainly see how that didn’t make things easier. But there have been multiple stories told about trans people with kids and most of them are still great parents, even while struggling themselves. Caitlyn does own up to the bad parenting, but I wish people would stop excusing it. It happened, that was it, and now Caitlyn seems to be trying to rectify it. Being trans can’t be an excuse for failing to live up to parental responsibilities, and I wish people wouldn’t present it as such. I hope Caitlyn is building better relationships with her kids, but that’s their business.
That was my issue too.
“Her love of her family…” Sorry, Cox, one thing that Jenner is NOT known for is love, or commitment to family.
I like Laverne. She seems like a very good person. But she’s going overboard with her praise for Caitlyn, to the point of just making stuff up and sounding really out of touch.
I agree about Caitlyn. Ms. Cox is just looking to continue positively so I cannot be upset at that. I just hope that a publicist give her better info about Caitlyn’s parenting skills.
Also, I am liking this woman more and more with each passing interview.
I think Caitlyn’s love of her family never went away. She just didn’t always act on it and it wasn’t her priority. What also didn’t go away–her complete and total self absorption in her issues, which blinded her to the impact on others.
Jenner probably loved family to the extent she could. Probably more an out-of-sight, out-of-mind type of father. It’s a serious limitation and a good reason not to have children in the first place. Trying to have a relationship with full grown adults is not really being a father, it’s cultivating adult friends who happen to share your DNA. Children, while still children, are an entirely different matter. You can’t disappear from their lives for weeks, months, or (as in Caitlyn’s case) years and then expect to start where you left off, as you really can with adult friends. Children change rapidly and have real needs to be met by parents on an ongoing basis. Parents who really do need to be away from their children for long periods still keep in regular contact any way they can, because they realize that and miss their kids. Caitlyn didn’t miss them. They didn’t exist for her until it was convenient.
Something to consider – Laverne is a prominent spokeswoman for the trans community. If she was less than unconditionally supportive, she would become the story.
However her comments about surgery are very significant. There is a societal & sexual obsession with bottom surgery. They don’t consider people “transitioned” until this surgery is performed. A male-to-female person who hasn’t had it is a chick with a d*”ck. This is already a hot topic about CJ.
What people don’t understand (excluding folks on this forum) is that bottom surgery, from a surgical standpoint, is still evolving. For us to accept a trans person do they need to be mutilated?
One of my girl’s classmates knew he was in the wrong body when he was 5 years old. It is not like wanting to be a fireman when he grows up. If you read about trans teens, there is very high rate of suicide. No parent or child would choose a life of pure hatred that trans children face.
Yes, I hope Caitlyn hasn’t had the surgery and won’t. There are just so many complications that can occur when messing around with that area of the body, and the risks of surgery get higher with age. I can understand the desire to have more of the appearance of a birthright woman, but I hope trans women can just consider themselves as a legitimate variation on the theme and keep their original equipment.
“This is why I’m so grateful that I had the luxury of transitioning in private,” Cox says. “Because when you transition in the public eye, the transition becomes the story”.
That’s the whole point to me – Caitlyn could have transitioned in private (and had that luxury, as Cox calls it) but she chose to do the transition very publicly. And now there is no end to the magazine covers, the paparazzi parade, her own reality TV series, the endorsement contracts (i.e. with MAC cosmetics?), etc. I feel that Caitlyn could have had the luxury of privacy (I love that phrase as I find my own privacy to be a luxury) but went for fame and the pay check instead. And I am massively disappointed by that.
Really? Her “Love of the Family”? Seriously? Didn’t Caitlyn (Bruce) pretty much desert two families and the kids those unions created? ugh, barf!