Glamour Magazine Confirms Caitlyn Jenner Will Receive Its Woman of the Year Award, Amid Controversy

Following much rumormongering in recent weeks — originating from, of all places, a source leaking the scoop to CBS medical morning show The Doctors —​ Glamour magazine confirmed Thursday morning that Caitlyn Jenner will receive their Woman of the Year Award. Other winners at this year's awards include Reese Witherspoon (who covers Glamour's December issue), Victoria Beckham, ballerina Misty Copeland, and Planned Parenthood's Cecile Richards.

"I am just excited about the future for the first time in a long, long time," Caitlyn told Glamour in a profile accompanying her award. "To be honest with you, if the worst thing in the world that happens to you is you are trans, you've got it made."

In an interview with WWD, Glamour Editor-in-Chief Cindi Leive said she felt Caitlyn deserved the award, even though she's "only six months into it." (The "it" here refers to Caitlyn's public declaration of her transition, though she had been living, and identifying, privately as a woman for longer.) "What she's done in six months has done a lot of good," Leive added. "There are so many different types of women in this world. We aren't taking away from one by honoring another."

Leive also said that the choice "didn't seem the least bit controversial" to anyone at Glamour. That's less true for the Internet dot com at large, however, though the Internet can argue over what flavor bagels are best (it's sesame seed, obviously), so here we all are. Backlash against Caitlyn receiving the award has come from both the right-wing blogosphere because of course, and also from the old-school feminist lobby because of a somewhat-commonly held belief among second-wave feminists that trans women are not fully women. Germaine Greer, for example, who has long touted her transphobia couched in feminist rhetoric, said last week that "misogyny plays a really big part in all of this ... [the award implies] that a man who goes to these lengths to become a woman will be a better woman than someone who is just born a woman." 

Following a backlash to her backlash in turn (at which point I think it's also considered whiplash?) Greer doubled down on her comments and got salty: "Just because you lop off your dick and then wear a dress doesn't make you a fucking woman," she argued. And with news of Caitlyn's award now official, it won't be long before this isn't the worst response, unfortunately.

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