Bruce Jenner was an Olympic gold medalist (1976, Montreal, decathlon) and father, by marriage, to the Kardashians. But beneath that exterior was another reality that Jenner kept hidden from the world. No more.

At 65, Bruce has finally undergone transition to become a woman, and we got a first glimpse of that process on the cover of Vanity Fair‘s July edition.

“Call me Caitlyn”. With those words emblazoned on the cover of Vanity Fair, Caitlyn Jenner, glamorous in a satin corset, debuted before the world. Vanity Fair decided to release the cover image, shot by iconic photographer Annie Leibovitz, a month in advance, to build on rising curiosity among the American public, and indeed a global audience, on how the transformation of Bruce to Caitlyn will come about.

Any way one looks at it, Caitlyn’s coming out is a big push forward for trans visibility. As a former Olympic gold medalist and reality TV star, Jenner is that rare commodity: a highly visible media presence with enough gravitas to make a real, substantive difference to the LGBT cause.

Even as several high-profile celebrities have come out in recent years, no one of Caitlyn’s stature and media cachet has walked the walk. This is big news. Already her Vanity Fair cover has taken social media by storm. A slew of celebrities, including LGBT icons such as Laverne Cox and Ellen Degeneres, congratulated Jenner on the coming out. Meanwhile, a Twitter bot goes about correcting you if you make the mistake of still referring to Jenner as “he”.

Not all the attention has been edifying though. One of the issues with Jenner’s celebration is the question of what exactly is being celebrated. In the video that accompanied the Vanity Fair photoshoot, she comes across as this trendy, desirable middle-aged woman, the kind of beauty who conforms to our cisgender expectations of beauty. The question of whether she was ever a man does not arise and in not arising, it also shadows a disturbing link to what makes us so comfortable about her transition. She “passes”.

This is problematic. Jenner has the money and influence to undergo gender reassignment surgery. News reports of her taking hormones to feminise her body have been making rounds for some time now.

Good for her, but equally, in our celebration of her, we need to be careful that we do not end up celebrating only those trans lives that conform to our expectations of what “passes”. If Jenner’s face were not as feminine as it is, if her body not as lissome as it is, would we still celebrate her beauty?

The unstated premise of calling attention to Caitlyn’s beauty is the fact that the same people who are celebrating her today would have turned their faces in disgust if her face and body had retained any of their former masculinity.

Laverne Cox hit the nail on the head when she wrote a passionate appeal on her Tumblr asking that Jenner’s case be used to further strengthen the fight for equality for all LGBT people. “Now, there are many trans folks because of genetics and/or lack of material access who will never be able to embody these standards. More importantly many trans folks don’t want to embody them and we shouldn’t have to, to be seen as ourselves and respected as ourselves. It is important to note that these standards are also informed by race, class and ability among other intersections,” Cox wrote.

In fact, Caitlyn’s coming out and our responses to it frame not only the debate around trans issues but broader feminism too.

On Twitter pictures of Caitlyn were pasted next to those of her former wife Kris, with the caption. “When your ex-husband looks better than you.” This was inappropriate on so many levels. Kris is not merely Jenner’s former wife, but also mother to their children. They raised a family together for the 24 years that they were married. (Their divorce came into effect in March this year.) Is it right to reduce a personal and difficult journey to a game of who looks better than whom? It is important that words like beauty and good-looking are not bandied about carelessly, at least in a case like this, where the conversation needs to be educational as much as informative.

Yes, Caitlyn’s media-saturated coming-out is a big boost to the LGBT cause and deserves to be celebrated. To the extent that a former athlete has chosen to publicly undergo transition will go some way in busting myths about what masculinity is and how society defines it. Even so, the conversation now needs to go further and address other pertinent issues that affect trans lives.

As with other forms of discrimination, poverty plays a debilitating role in hampering the LGBT cause too. Cases of black transgender women losing their lives to violence have been rising. Back home, the transgender continue to suffer a lack of choice owing to poor education. As a recent report in The News Minute pointed out, there have been no claimants to the transgender quota in Bangalore University. That should come as no surprise when most of them drop out of school and never finish secondary education. It is in areas such as these that civil society and government need to redouble their efforts so that the kind of choices that a Caitlyn Jenner can make today are available to a broader swathe of society tomorrow.