David Bowie and "Gayface"
by Jenny Boylan.
so i wrote, and posted here, a piece about David Bowie; I've been thinking about him over the weekend, having suddenly remembered how much I liked his music (and saw him live at the Tower Theatre in Philly during the Ziggy Stardust tour). I wrote about feeling a little betrayed that--apparently--Bowie's androgyny was really all play, and that he's really straight, and that all of That was just theatre. It made me feel grumpy about him.
But in the hours since I wrote and posted this piece, I've had occasion to wonder if it matters whether or not Bowie was "really" bisexual, or translike, or anything. Maybe what matters is the theatre, and the music.
Like I said, I want to think about it a little more now. So I've taken down the piece i wrote so I can do that. More soon.
jenny b.
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3 comments:
I thought of David Bowie's Ziggy incarnation as being more about androgyny than gayness. He played the part of someone who was outside gender, or at least any conventional gender. It didn't really say anything about his sexual orientation.
Glam was about violating gender expression norms. Yes, boys, you too can have wild hair and wear eyeliner. I did some of that in the 1980s (new wave glam). I was mainly heterosexual, and it was only the ignorant who yelled "faggot" at me. I wasn't being gay. I was being femme.
Whether he was gay or not, he did have a connection to the trans community... two different relationships with post-op trans women. He was involved with Amanda Lear while he was still married to Angie, and was later involved with Romy Haag when he lived in Berlin.
I had no idea, Gina. Thanks for that info.
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