Withering Glance: Caitlyn Jenner at the starting gate

Rick Nelson and Claude Peck dispense unasked-for advice about clothing, etiquette, culture, relationships, grooming and more.

CP: Bruce Jenner? Dead. It must be so, as Wikipedia now catalogs the former Olympic medalist as Caitlyn Jenner, a 65-year-old cover model with a shaved adam's apple and, apparently, an endless appetite for big media "reveals."

RN: Never has a .jpg of a magazine cover ricocheted around the planet so quickly. And @Caitlyn_Jenner vacuumed up 1 million Twitter followers in four hours. That's a bigger showing than President Obama's recent foray into the Twittersphere.

CP: I like how she doesn't show her hands in the Vanity Fair cover shot by Annie Liebovitz. Nothing like a big ol' pair of man hands to give away someone's bio-past.

RN: To my eye, she's owning some major Margot Kidder realness.

CP: Jenner's two-hour prime-time special with Diane Sawyer was at first fairly decent TV.

RN: Seriously, two hours? In the old days, Barbara Walters could squeeze 10 luminaries into her two-hour "Most Fascinating People" slogs.

CP: But then I realized it was drawn out to the point of extreme tedium.

RN: Not unlike a season of "Keeping Up With the Kardashians."

CP: At one point, I thought Sawyer herself was going to fall asleep in her overstuffed chair. It was when she started in with the drill-down questions, like, "What song has guided you through this?" Zzzzzz.

RN: I didn't watch. But take away the endless self-promotion, and you can't help but admire Jenner for having the courage to finally, fully and ever so publicly embrace a true-to-your-real-self life. And speaking of fearlessness, there's the audacious style choice to slip into a satin corset for La Leibovitz's lens. Is there anyone else on the planet who looks that good at age 65?

CP: Key word there is finally. Why, oh, why, did Bruce wait so long? These yearnings, he has said, had been with him nearly his entire life.

RN: Perhaps the pressures of his near-universal celebrity kept him from making the switch. I'd like to think that the whole Caitlyn-with-a-C thing is a dig at the everything-with-a-K Kardashian world. Can't you picture Jenner's former spouse/control freak Kris Kardashian having a k-onniption?

CP: Let's acknowledge that his female role models — the Kardashian coven, his wives — are among the shallowest, most vain and obnoxious creatures ever to populate the public airwaves.

RN: Those who know Bruce Jenner only through his Kardashian escapades can't fully understand the worldwide level of male hotness he commanded at the height of his Olympic and Wheaties box fame.

CP: Sounds like he was a major male role model for you in your developmental years. You must be devastated.

RN: Naw. We'll always have that studly image of Bruce, in the blue short shorts, red and white tank top and the Dorothy Hamill wedge coiffure, arms aloft at his moment of triumph in Montreal. As for Caitlyn, I'm happy for her.

CP: Me, too. It's not everyone who can go from wearing a gold medal to sporting a statement necklace by Bulgari.

E-mail: witheringglance@startribune.com

Twitter: @claudepeck and @RickNelsonStrib