Caitlyn Jenner’s appearance on the cover of “Vanity Fair” has inspired a new internet meme to showcase the diversity of transgender beauty around the country.
Using the hashtag #MyVanityFairCover, the meme shows transgender women posing on fake covers of “Vanity Fair” with the name in the now famous caption “Call me Caitlyn” replaced by their own.
Two transgendered roommates, Jenn Dolari and Crystal Frasier, first began using the hashtag #MyVanityFairCover on Twitter in reaction to the beauty standards they felt were being showcased by the Jenner cover that went viral June 2.
According to Frasier, the two sought to show a different, less privileged side of the transgendered community, who, in a survey done in 2008, were found to be “four times more likely to have a household income of less than $10,000 compared to the general population,” and were twice as likely to be unemployed compared to the general population.
Frasier noted on Tumblr that much of the transgender community’s reaction to the Jenner picture mostly revolved “around the idea that the world only seems to embrace us if we are wealthy enough or lucky enough to adhere to white, normative beauty standards.”
“Whether we fit those standards or not, we are beautiful, and we all deserve to feel beautiful and be acknowledged by the world,” Frasier wrote beneath a picture of herself in the #MyVanityFairCover backdrop she helped to create.
The online movement has received a positive response from many in the transgendered community, with multiple transgender individuals answering the call and uploading their #MyVanityFairCover pictures along with personal stories.
“These are stories I want to see out there,” wrote Dolari. “To let the public know that we are worthy of our own covers, our own articles, our own stories.”
