Caitlyn Jenner can thank Full House star Dave Coulier for keeping her true gender identity a secret until she was ready to share it with the world.
According to Gossip Cop , Dave Coulier was aware about Caitlyn Jenner’s desire to fully transition from male to female over two decades ago. However, according to the Full House star, she had a different female name picked out back then. Coulier learned about Jenner’s secret from his ex-wife, Jayne Modean.
“I knew this 25 years ago,” Coulier said during an interview on The Russell Rush Show . “I did a show with Bruce called Skating with Celebrities on FOX several years ago, and I knew something — I knew that information but I never vocalized it to anybody, except close friends.”
According to Coulier, he noticed that Jenner had undergone a bit of plastic surgery during their 2006 appearance on Skating with Celebrities . This made him think that she was in the process of physically transitioning. Coulier’s ex-wife had previously informed him that Jenner had chosen her new female name years ago.
“I thought, ‘Man, I wonder if he’s gonna actually do this.’ But my ex-wife always told me that Bruce wanted to be ‘Nicky Jenner.’”
During her Diane Sawyer interview, Caitlyn Jenner revealed that she started the transition process in the ’80s. This included taking hormones, undergoing electrolysis to remove facial hair, and getting plastic surgery. However, she stopped the transition process after meeting Kris Jenner.
“I had been on hormones for five years and I was a really solid 36B something and you really can’t hide those things,” Caitlyn said, according to Yahoo! Celebrity .
Caitlyn also confessed that she tried to “downplay” what she was going through to avoiding hurting Kris.
As the Inquisitr previously reported, Caitlyn and Kris Jenner disagree about Kris’ level of awareness concerning the gender transition. Caitlyn claims that she informed Kris that she had been taking hormones, but Kris says that her ex never really explained why she was taking them. Kris Jenner also stated that her ex was not a 36B when they started dating — she claims Caitlyn just had “man boobs.”
According to Cosmopolitan , Caitlyn first revealed her true gender identity to her first wife, Chrystie Crownover , in 1973. They had been married less than a year at the time. Jenner had a much harder time coming out to her second wife, Linda Thompson — they were married with two children before Jenner shared her secret struggles.
“Bruce told me that he identified as a woman,” Thompson wrote in a Huffington Post essay. “Not understanding exactly what he meant, I questioned him. ‘What do you mean you identify as a woman?’ I asked. ‘What does that mean?’ He replied that it meant that for as long as he could remember, he had looked in the mirror and seen a masculine image staring back at him where there should have been a feminine reflection.”
“Bruce lamented, ‘I have lived in the wrong skin, the wrong body, my whole life. It is a living hell for me, and I really feel that I would like to move forward with the process of becoming a woman, the woman I have always been inside.’”
According to Thompson, Caitlyn hoped to remain a part of their children’s lives by becoming their “Aunt Heather.”
So Caitlyn Jenner didn’t just struggle with her decision to fully transition — she also had a hard time choosing a name. Do you prefer Caitlyn over Heather and Nicky?
[Image credits: Andrew H. Walker/Getty, Vanity Fair ]