Read On: The marketing of Caitlyn Jenner

OK, I really didn’t want to do it. But I simply have to.

I’ve got to write this column about Caitlyn Jenner because I mean, come on, when was the last time you saw this much publicity in a single week about a woman in her mid-60s who wasn’t named Hillary Clinton?

Let me just say right off the top that some of my thoughts on this may strike many as decidedly un-PC. And it’s not because I’m privately snickering about this. I’m not. But that doesn’t mean I fully accept or understand the whole thing, either.

Here is the part that I can appreciate: Bruce Jenner lived his life feeling trapped inside the wrong body. He still managed to marry three times and father four children, as well as become a champion Olympic decathlete in 1976. Looked great on that Wheaties box, too. But Bruce still felt out of sorts, unfulfilled and on some level living a lie, he maintained. I buy all of that.

I also understand the motivation to have gender reassignment surgery — physically painful and emotionally wrenching — and come out as a full-on transgender female at age 65. If you have the time, the means and the opportunity to do it, hey, why not?

Where I may get into trouble is over my skepticism surrounding how Caitlyn and her team engineered this whole circus. Make no mistake, a circus is precisely what this is. And not the Cirque du Soleil kind.

First, there’s the whole sex and glamour aspect of the mega-airbrushed Vanity Fair cover and the “Call me Caitlyn” come-hither look in her body-hugging white corset. It’s like — really? Why? This was a Social Security-age person who made this transition, yet it still has to be about physical beauty and objectification?

As Jon Stewart insightfully noted this past week, Caitlyn Jenner asked for this ridiculously critical treatment by opting for the body-sculpting and facially-flawless plastic surgery and casting herself as a hot babe. To my mind, this was not only unnecessary but offensive, and I have to believe hardly indicative of the typical transgender experience.

Why the big splashy emergence? Because Caitlyn arrives as a prepackaged commodity, and there’s money to be made. Tune in July 26 on E! for the premiere of her new reality series. One of the producers recently insisted that generating big ratings was “not the goal.” Because at E!, it’s all about education and the value to society, of course.

Were one to take a cynical view, one might conclude that Jenner was inspired to do this at least in part as an opportunity to extend the “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” brand. And the need to look appealing on arrival? That’s so more people will watch her television show, since ordinary-looking folk tend to be less popular in such a visual medium as well as a culture where cosmetic attractiveness is so revered.

This still doesn’t fully explain the utter promotional explosion that greeted the Monday release of the Vanity Fair story and that cover. One transgender advocate was quoted as saying, “Caitlyn’s coming out is relatable to mainstream American society because she is white, Republican, rich and famous.”

That may well be true. Yet I posit that the press onslaught has significantly less to do with genuine transgender acceptance than it does our shallow propensity in this country to leer at the freak inside the tent.

I don’t think we necessarily need a transgender media test case any more than we need a gay marriage test case. This ship has already sailed. It isn’t a matter of lifestyle acceptance. It’s called live and let live. The same people who object to it are generally the same ones who presume they can meddle in anyone’s personal decision that’s none of their business, often on religious grounds.

If the person we knew as Bruce Jenner wants to live the rest of her life as Caitlyn Jenner, more power to her. It’s rather amazing that we live in a time where the altering of one’s gender for another is even possible. I suspect that her reasons for making this shift are genuine.

But at the same time, I have to believe that the crass commercialization that’s accompanied “The Selling of Caitlyn” does nothing to create greater acceptance of transgender people and possibly does it potential harm. Overexposure, after all, knows no gender bias.

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RAY RICHMOND has covered Hollywood and the entertainment business since 1984. He can be reached via email at ray@rayrichco.com and Twitter at @MeGoodWriter.