"Are you a boy or a girl?" asks a grinning shopkeeper as I thud
four Red Stripes onto the counter. At this moment, any feminine
23-year-old woman could expect to hear all manner of questions.
Queries ranging from the benign "Nice weather, eh?" to the
judgemental "FOUR beers?". And there's always the possibility of
the strangely comforting: "How old are you?" But these days I'm
used to my gender being called into question. With a crew-cut and a
dress sense which favours flats over heels, jeans over skirts, it's
what I've come to expect from strangers. Sometimes it thrills me,
but it can become a nuisance. I'm called "sir" at Tesco, illegally
frisked by male bouncers on my way into clubs, asked to leave the
ladies' toilets, and when I buy tampons, the surly looks I'm given
suggest that I've left a blobby trail of blood clots around the
"sanitary" aisle of Boots.
And I'm not even the butchest of the butch. I can't leave the
house without freshly-applied mascara and my chin recedes more
drastically than Jude Law's hairline. I wear a bra - a C-cup in
fact - and yeah, when I've got laundry to do, I'll - reluctantly -
don a thong.
Thousands of miles from my east London offie, on the very same
night, Lady Gaga insisted on being referred to as a man. Attending
the VMAs as alter-ego Jo Calderone, she refused to answer to any
name but "Jo", tried to snog Britney Spears and insisted on using
the little boys' room in guy guise. For a pop star whose musical
credentials are often overshadowed by her wacky sartorial choices
(latex nun's habits, Kermit onesies and a whole dress made of meat)
this was another outrageous pastiche. She took a look from the
fringes of society - in this case, drag kings - sanitised it by
performing it in a stylised way - and presented it to a mainstream
audience. From where I stand, she didn't want us to think she
was a guy, she wanted us to know she was Lady Gaga dressing up as a
guy.
As we've all known since Born This Way sounded exactly like
Madonna's Express Yourself, Gaga doesn't pave the way so much as go
back over it with a glittery mop. As well as having borrowed from
80s androgynes Annie Lennox and Grace Jones, going boyish seems to
be de rigueur among a significant clutch of female celebrities.
Pseudo-bisexuality used to be the marketing tool of choice to
attract male attention: Christina Aguilera, Megan Fox, Britney
Spears, Madonna, Miley Cyrus and Rihanna would tinge performances
with sapphism, or intimate to headline-hungry journalists that
they'd kiss other girls. Now, androgyny seems to be taking
bisexuality's place.
Read the rest of this feature in the December issue of
DIVA
PHOTO Atlantic Records
