TRANS GENerational

Now growing up as a young child in the 1970's was pretty weird. Even as a young kid of 5 or 6 I remember looking at the world around me and thinking it was pretty weird and ugly: the clothes, the hairstyles, the cars, the home decorations, cities were polluted and decaying and ugly,  even many of the movies and TV shows had jettisoned the bright hues of Technicolor for grainy film stock, and drab colors. The music was pretty cool (classic rock, hard rock, metal, punk rock, pop, disco, reggae, new wave, rap) but I wouldn't come to appreciate that until many years later as an adult, now thinking the 70's and 90's are my two favorite decades for music.

The images I remember most as a kid in the 70's: "Nixon" painted below "Stop" on the traffic signs in my neighborhood; Vietnam on the evening news; the Jonestown massacre; long gas lines; and on a positive note Sesame Street, Star Wars, Carol Burnett, the BiCentennial and ... Bruce Jenner.

Bruce Jenner the Olympic Decathalon champion who was ubiquitous from summer 1976 onwards. The ultimate athlete, the uber alpha male, his Prince Valiant haircut flopping everywhere with his sideburns and Wheaties boxes and talk shows and game shows ... He was everywhere in the second half of that decade. Then, like most of us, once 1980 came, for the ensuing 25 years I never saw him or heard about him or thought about him until the "Kardashians" reared its ugly head. The only reality TV I watch is sports, news, and cooking shows, but I'm a news and pop culture junkie, so I always know what is going on, if only peripherally. And over the past year I glanced sideways as the saga of his transformation began to play out on tabloid covers and TV entertainment talk shows. It seemed like a big publicity stunt, and just too weird and confusing to spend much time thinking about it. Freaky, a desperate ploy for an aging celebrity to squeeze 15 more minutes of fame. That's pretty much what I thought. 

Now I've always considered myself to be an open-minded, progressive kind of person. "To each his/her own" I've always said. I've been the kind of guy who could say "Oh, I've had friends/colleagues/acquaintences who were _______ (insert edgy/misunderstood conditon)" And my own sexuality is the ONLY thing I have never been confused about in my life. Everything else has been total chaos and never ending insecurity, but never that. That was never an issue.

So two nights ago I was flipping channels after my daughter went to bed (life of a single Dad; those nights banging it in clubs and bars are long gone). I came across the ESPY awards just as the pre-packaged bio about Bruce now Caitlyn Jenner was beginning. I was immediately captured and engrossed and began to "get it"; then she came on stage and gave a powerful, impassioned speech, nothing cynical or calculated about it. It was clear it was a long delayed epihany, a long pent up explosion of true freedom that began when she was a child in a boy's body, and continued when she was an adult in an alpha male body. I found it to be very poignant and eye-opening.

Bottom line is I still don't completey understand it, but I don't have to. I just have to accept it, and wish Caitlyn Jenner best of luck in the future, as she clearly has reached a long sought escape from a very long prison sentence. Many Internet Trolls were griping she didn't deserve a "Courage" award. They are idiots. Courage and bravery comes in many forms, sometimes even strange and confusing (to a plain white straight guy like me) such as transgender.