Olympic gold medalist Caitlyn Jenner was revealed as the celebrity behind the Masked Singer’s Pheonix costume when she was voted off the show.
Judges had guessed that it might be Laverne Cox, Jonathan van Ness, and RuPaul. Judge Jenny McCarthy, however, guessed correctly that it was Jenner.
Related: Elliot Page knew he was a boy since he was 9. It took the pandemic for him to transition.
“When people see me, they always see a winner baby,” Jenner said before her performance. “But while I’ve graced the cover of many magazines, I’ve actually hidden behind a mask for most of my life.”
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Jenner performed Kesha’s “Tik Tok” with lackluster results, but says she deliberately chose her costume.
“I wanted something that would be kind of gender-neutral that wouldn’t be real masculine, wouldn’t be real feminine,” Jenner told People. “I thought it would be harder for them to figure out who I was. Because to be honest with you, my voice doesn’t match who I am. I thought that could be an advantage to me, so let’s go with something that’s gender-neutral. It could be either way. You can have a woman under there, you could have a man in there, and so I thought it would be harder for them to choose.”
Jenner added that her comment about wearing a mask before the contest was particularly pertinent.
“When anybody suffers from gender dysphoria, you do kind of wear a mask in life about who you are, especially me growing up,” she said. “I’m older — I grew up in the ’50s, ’60s, mostly in the ’60s and even through the ’70s where you just didn’t talk about this. You just put your face on, and went out into the world, and did the best you possibly could.”
“It isn’t until over the last 20 years that, really, this issue has come forward. Today, because of the internet and television and society, they’re much more accepting of the differences people have. You can eventually feel more comfortable with yourself and be more honest with yourself and everybody else around you, so you can kind of take that mask off.”
“Today, younger people identify a lot quicker because of the internet and the information that’s out there. But education is by far the most important thing,” she continued, working in a pitch for her foundation’s scholarship fund for trans youth. “I want to be able to change that next generation that’s coming along. I want trans doctors, trans lawyers. I want them to be educated out into the world, having a job and really being part of society.”
“The most important thing I feel like that I can do is to continue to be visible. Continue to show people who have to deal with a subject like this, that life isn’t over.”
