What Would Erving Goffman Say about Caitlyn Jenner?

Annie Leibovitz's portrait of Caitlyn Jenner, on the cover of Vanity Fair, has provoked a lot of commentary, both praising and critical. Many of my social media friends and acquaintances have been posting and reposting Jon Stewart's commentary, which went as follows:

Stewart's point is well taken and important to keep in mind. And yet it was, after all, Caitlyn Jenner's choice to appear on the cover of Vanity Fair in full conformity with the conventions of female depictions in magazines and advertisements.

In 1961, Erving Goffman published his little-known book Gender Advertisements. It is an album-sized book, consisting mainly of reproduced photos of 1950s product ads. Through these visuals, Goffman, the champion and granddaddy of the presentation of self as a performative act, proves his point: men, in ads, are DOING things. Women are POSING for the male gaze.

Compare Jenner's depiction on the Vanity Fair cover to her 1976 photo as a decathlete on the Wheaties box. In that photo, Jenner is depicted running, gazing away from the viewers and focused on the athletic performance. In the current photo, Jenner is depicted in a corset, doing nothing except gazing at the viewers. It's a textbook example of conformity to gender standards in visual depictions. 

It should go without saying that it is Jenner's choice to conform, or not, to these standards. Also, Jenner is operating within a context that measures transfolk by their ability to conform to cisnormative standards, and I can't fault her for choosing the traditional female gender depiction (in addition to the traditional female form and dress) as a measure of success in meeting these standards. Moreover, there are no guarantees that leering and jeering commentators wouldn't be commenting on her looks even if she *were* depicted as doing, rather than gazing. But I do want to point out that the perspective Stewart mocks in his segment is so insidious and pervasive that it is embraced by the women themselves, and that Jenner is as much a subject in the picture as an object of the gaze.

Laverne Cox's comments on this are apt:

But this has made me reflect critically on my own desires to ‘work a photo shoot’, to serve up various forms of glamour, power, sexiness, body affirming, racially empowering images of the various sides of my black, trans womanhood. I love working a photo shoot and creating inspiring images for my fans, for the world and above all for myself. But I also hope that it is my talent, my intelligence, my heart and spirit that most captivate, inspire, move and encourage folks to think more critically about the world around them.