'Hi, Gorgeous' author Candis Cayne on beauty standards and the importance of being yourself

By Kavita Daswani

Sept. 15, 2017 4 AM PT

Surrounded by a small entourage, Candis Cayne walked through Barnes & Noble at the Grove dressed in a strapless sequinned bustier dress with a plunging neckline and towering stilettos, her famously lush hair cascading over a shoulder. Heads turned. She beamed at everyone who looked her way.

Cayne was dressed for the launch event of her first book, “Hi, Gorgeous!: Transforming Inner Power Into Radiant Beauty,” co-written by Katina Z. Jones. At a nearly packed event that included RuPaul in the audience, the transgender actress and model chatted candidly in conversation with her close friend Caitlyn Jenner, who wrote the foreword to the book and on whose short-lived E! reality show “I Am Cait” Cayne regularly appeared.

Cayne, who lives in Glendale, was recently featured in Time magazine’s Firsts project for being the first transgender woman on prime-time TV; she was a costar on ABC’s “Dirty Sexy Money,” which aired from 2007 to 2009. Over her career, the entertainer and author, a vocal supporter of LGBTQ rights, worked as a performance artist for years as well as was a hairdresser and makeup and fashion stylist in New York.

In her new book, Cayne has distilled her 20-plus years in fashion and beauty into an easy-breezy read with tips on makeup application, building self-confidence and quieting that inner critic. Here’s an excerpt from our conversation.

What made you decide to write this book?

Before I did a heavy memoir, I wanted to write something light and happy. A beautiful young girl came up to me last year and said, “You’re so gorgeous.” I said, “You are too.” She insisted she wasn’t. It was sad that there was this beautiful young girl who could conquer the world but didn’t have the confidence.

What does beauty mean to you?

We see people all the time who are super-beautiful, but it’s a vapid beauty. To me, beauty is confidence, knowing how to treat others with respect, to go through life smiling rather than frowning.

Do you think our culture gives women impossible standards of beauty to reach for?

Every girl on a magazine cover has a team of people that’s producing her, an airbrush staff, Facetuning [referring to the phone app]. This is the reality of what that life is about. I’m a size 8 or 10. I’ve learned to dress for my body, and that’s what I want to teach girls. It used to be about [being] stick thin and heroin chic. Now we’re going into this era of the voluptuous woman, of the ethnic booty. It would be a lot easier to have girls embrace their genetics, their background, their bodies.

Which labels or beauty products do you gravitate toward?

For day, I wear a lot of Vince. It’s easy, loose, casual. I’m a big fan of mixing the old and the new. I go to the runway section at T.J. Maxx and buy a discounted dress that’s well-made and pair that with a vintage bag. I like Kiehl’s Midnight Recovery [Concentrate] and Veil [Mineral] Primer from Hourglass. You put it on and you don’t sweat, and your skin is all soft.

People must come to you for more than beauty advice though, right?

It runs the gamut. I have people in their 40s writing to me, “I’m in the Army and have a wife and kids, but this is how I feel.” And when kids tell me that they feel a certain way about their bodies, but their parents or friends don’t understand, I say, “It’s OK. Wait until you get to a place where you’re safe, find your tribe, figure out what you want to do.” I’ve been marching for gay rights for 20 years — before even “trans” was a word. And now, it’s like, we’re doing the same thing, again, for our rights.