I realize that I was so young when David Bowie became famous decades ago that I may have misinterpreted everything the pop icon did.
But there’s no question David Bowie’s impact on me was real and not imagined. That young, hot, beautiful boy-girl with the almost lurid eye makeup, the tight-fitting jumpsuits and the platform shoes, who made the glam rocker poseurs that followed look like cliches, made me believe anything was possible, sexually speaking.
In the wake of his death, obit writers – especially in the UK – have sniffed that his persona was fabricated, that from the start he closely controlled a faux image – including hinting that he might be an extraterrestrial (with one iris much bigger than the other to prove it) – and that he promoted his sexual ambiguity as a means of getting noticed.
To which I say, “Ya think?” He was obviously a master manipulator of media. But that doesn’t make those early excursions into previously uncharted sexual territory any less courageous. Rock ‘n’ roll was then the purview of macho men – it took decades after Bowie painted on the eyeshadow for a rocker to come come out as gay – but Bowie gave the finger to all of that. And for those of us desperate for a gender-bending role model, he was a saviour.
He was actually as much a chameleon artistically as he was sexually. By the end of his life – his brilliant new release Blackstar notwithstanding – he probably wouldn’t have called himself a musician. As last year’s superb show at the AGO demonstrated so powerfully, he could do – and did – just about anything as an artist. His stage appearances were performance art, he was a fashion icon, a visual artist and more.
For all I know, he may have been straight as an arrow. God knows, he was a convincing heterosexual during his Let’s Dance phase, with that cropped hair and those sharp suits. But it didn’t matter who he was married to – I bristled when he took up with Iman – because, to my pre-lesbian self, he was a beacon of sexual and gender possibility.
He brightened my life spectacularly.
susanc@nowtoronto.com | @susangcole
