“Welcome Back, Wendy!” The Playboy Interview (1979)

Abstract This chapter focuses on Carlos’s decision to disclose her transition and the series of interviews she gave to Arthur Bell in 1978 and 1979 that were eventually published in Playboy magazine. She decided to do so because staying in isolation was hurting her career and her relationship with friends such as Rachel Elkind, who kept covering for her. She also felt that attitudes toward transgender people were changing, in part because of Renee Richards’s story. Following the interview’s publication, Carlos was humiliated that Bell chose to focus the vast majority of the printed interview on her gender identity and transition instead of on her music and what she called her “soul.”