In 'Secrets,' Caitlyn Jenner reveals what Kris knew About Gender Transition

Can there be any secrets left after two reality shows, countless interviews, magazine covers and an adult life spent entirely in the spotlight?
“I sometimes worry that so much of my life is in the public eye now that there is nothing left of me in private,” Caitlyn Jenner, 67, writes in her new memoir, The Secrets of My Life (Grand Central). But somehow, even after exclusives with People and an interview with Diane Sawyer to mark the two-year anniversary of the last sit-down with Bruce Jenner,  there’s always more to tell.
The book, written with Buzz Bissinger, who penned the story Call Me Caitlyn for Vanity Fair in 2015, flips back and forth between present day and Jenner’s past, culminating with the news that the former Olympian has successfully completed gender confirmation surgery.

Secrets is revelatory for the depth with which Jenner details the staggering challenges of finding her true self, and the repercussions of hiding her gender dysphoria. She describes the once elaborate ritual of dressing as a woman before transitioning, a private act done in hotel rooms while on the road for speaking engagements, a turn around the hotel lobby or short car ride the only reward after an hour-long effort with fake eyelashes and Krazy Glue. And the excruciating process of electrolysis for facial hair, explained as torture she felt she deserved.
But the most unexpected parts involve the K-troop, as Jenner calls the Kardashians, particularly the world’s most famous momager. Several passages seem to contradict how much Kris Jenner has said she knew about then-husband Bruce’s dysphoria, and indicates their marriage was one of mutual benefit.
Love is at the crux of us,” Jenner writes. “But I believe, and this is my opinion and my opinion only, we both want something from each other.”
To be fair, who doesn’t want something when entering marriage, if simply companionship? Jenner says that for Kris, their union was a giant flipping of the bird to ex-husband Robert and a jump-start to the empire she has since built, Jenner’s famous name serving as the kindling. For Jenner, Kris restored the image of Bruce after she nearly transitioned but ultimately decided not to in the late '80s.

Caitlyn Jenner and Kris Jenner attend Kanye West Yeezy Season 3 on February 11, 2016. (Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris, Getty Images for Yeezy Season 3)
 

Unlike with her first two wives, Chrystie Jenner and Linda Thompson, Jenner writes that she was forthcoming with Kris from the beginning of their 23-year marriage, telling Kris that she had been a woman inside her whole life. So the stunned reaction from her now ex-wife seen on Keeping Up With the Kardashians “seemed a little puzzling then and seems puzzling now.”
Jenner offers as further evidence that she had developed size 36B breasts after undergoing hormone therapy for 4½ years, stopping only six months before meeting Kris. She had her breasts removed after daughters Kendall and Kylie were born, births she calls "incredible" because the couple worried they wouldn't be able to have children after Jenner's hormone therapy.
Some things remain private, however. Jenner writes that it is the first and last time she’ll ever speak of “Final Surgery.” Not every secret needs to be tabloid fodder, even for an honorary Kardashian.