Watch: Caitlyn Jenner Emerges from 'The Masked Singer,' Wants to Inspire Trans Youth

Caitlyn Jenner turned out to be the celebrity within the magnificent "Phoenix" costume on Fox's competition show "The Masked Singer."

Though her unmasking meant she was sent off the show after performing just one song, Kesha's "TiK ToK," Jenner's character made a splash - and, she told People Magazine in a recent interview, that was the idea: she wanted to inspire trans kids.

"I want to show young people that you can go through this," Jenner said. "You can live your life authentically and still have a life out there." She added that coming out as trans, as she did, "at a later stage in life," is "a big issue."

Jenner revealed she chose the character Phoenix not so much for the mythical bird's association with reinvention as for its "gender-neutral" quality.

"I thought it would be harder for them to figure out who I was," Jenner said. "It could be either way. You can have a woman under there, you could have a man in there, and so I thought it would be harder" for her identity to be guessed.

When the judges picked Phoenix to be unmasked on the March 17 episode, it seemed that Jenner had chosen well; the judges' "initial impression" guesses, which had been held in reserve, were read out, with guesses of Laverne Cox and Perez Hilton (by Robin Thicke and Nicole Scherzinger, respectively) missing the mark.

Two judges, Ken Jeong and Jenny McCarthy Wahlberg, had guessed right, though Jeong changed his mind just before the unmasking and said he thought it was RuPaul under the fabulous plumage. Wahlberg, taking note of a clue saying that Phoenix had worn a mask their whole life, stuck with her initial guess.

Jenner addressed that clue at length in the interview.

"When anybody suffers from gender dysphoria, you do kind of wear a mask in life about who you are," Jenner explained, saying that was particularly true of people like her, who came of age in the 1960s. "You just put your face on, and went out into the world, and did the best you possibly could."

"Today, because of the internet and television and society, they're much more accepting of the differences people have," Jenner said. "You can eventually feel more comfortable with yourself and be more honest with yourself and everybody else around you, so you can kind of take that mask off."

Jenner marveled at the work that went into her elaborate costume and praised her son Brandon, a musician, for having helped her prepare several songs for her participation in the show. However, she told Entertainment Weekly, she did have one regret: Having been sent off the show after only her first performance.

"I had three songs down, I was ready to go," Jenner said. "I actually would have liked to get to the second show, because the second show I thought was a little better. I was doing a Temptations song, 'Ain't Too Proud to Beg.' "

Watch the reveal clip below.