“Hey, Mr. Fantasy Man,” Sports Illustrated (1980)
Bruce Jenner is living out our fantasies for us. . . .
We all fantasize: we swagger through our daydreams. But we are too thick-waisted to play the role in reality. Our hair, once so dense and lustrous, has turned mouse-colored and thin. Our teeth are irregular, and the cap on the upper left canine doesn’t quite match the others. But those are mere cosmetic reasons. The final, crushing truth is that we’re all too damn busy to do all of these things that Jenner does for us. We have reports to get out, deadlines to meet; who has time to go jet skiing in the middle of the day in the middle of the week? . . .
Jenner’s appeal, dear chap, is not unlike that of Christopher Reeve, who played Superman. The appeal is to both sexes, to men and women. Women can ooh and aah over Jenner, and their husbands and boyfriends won’t feel threatened by him. That’s the appeal. . . .
“I’ve made a lot of money, and I’ve learned a lot. I’ve worked hard, and now I’m playing hard. Look at all these toys. It is kind of a fantasy life, isn’t it? But this is what I worked for all those years before Montreal. I’ll always have that tremendous feeling of accomplishment, the satisfaction of walking away from that arena and saying, ‘Hey, I did it.’ And now come the good times.”
(for the whole article, click the link.)
