David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust —in his heels and feathers, eyebrows shaved, lip-sticked, and glittered —redesigned the dominant model of the queer. See more:
David Bowie's alien alter-ego, Ziggy Stardust, crashed landed amongst the ruins of the hippie dream in 1972, and at that moment pop culture was refashioned in his image. An inexplicable image -- androgynous, glamorous, erotic, terrifying and articulate -- Bowie became the avatar for queer sexuality as something rebellious, desirable, and powerful.
Bowie -- in his heels and feathers, eyebrows shaved, lip-sticked and glittered, sticking his nail polished finger seductively down the lens of TV cameras, and hanging off the shoulders of his guitarist Mick Ronson -- redesigned the dominant model of the queer. Arguably in 1972, the archetypical fag was Oscar Wilde: aristocratic, well dressed, quipping and coded, but ultimately tragic. When Ziggy appeared, the version of queer he offered could not have been more different.
Of course the cynics amongst us say that Bowie was merely jacking the style of more obscure artists, and usurping the gay lib rhetoric for personal gains. This claim can't be ignored, and looking at Bowie in later life, married to Iman, the father of two sons, it would be easy to make such a judgement.
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