Saturday, April 23, 2016

you don't have to be beautiful to turn me on

The “Kiss” video confirmed it: slim and made-up, this singer was challenging our limited sense of “man,” yet he was the manliest thing I’d ever seen—in an asymmetrical half-top. Moving in a way my young self couldn’t place as masculine or feminine, he was singing about someone being ‘his girl’ and there was a badass woman—fully clothed in a red suit—playing guitar. He was dancing half-naked around her (Wendy Melvoin). It was Derridean recognition at first sight. Not just of androgyny or gender-bending, but of sheer queer possibility.

- K.T. Billey