Caitlyn Jenner

Caitlyn Jenner was born in Mount Kisco, New York, in 1949. At the 1976 Montreal Olympics she won the decathlon with a world record, becoming one of the best-known American athletes of her generation.

Decades later, the Kardashian family’s reality television programmes introduced her to a different audience. In April 2015 she discussed being a trans woman in a widely watched interview with Diane Sawyer. Her Vanity Fair cover, photographed by Annie Leibovitz and published that June, introduced the name Caitlyn.

The attention gave many viewers an unusually direct encounter with a public figure’s transition. Jenner’s subsequent television work and interviews kept her experiences in the spotlight, while also prompting debate about whose lives such celebrity visibility represented.

A Republican, Jenner ran in California’s 2021 gubernatorial recall election. Her opposition to trans girls competing in girls’ school sports drew strong criticism from trans campaigners. Her public role has therefore combined a landmark moment of recognition with political positions contested by many of the people who initially welcomed that visibility.