Androgynous Archetypes

Modeling and music are speckled with figures whose personae simultaneously attract and repulse both genders. David Bowie, Annie Lennox, and more recently Billy Corgan and Imogen Heap appear to consider themselves above gender; both (or neither) sex seems to identify with them. Why the intrigue?

Gender, to most, is the most basic building block of identity and personality development. It is also elementary, even for toddlers, to identify another's gender. But watch Bowie's Life on Mars? video and if you weren't familiar with the forty-year rock legend, you'd have a hard time deciding if the singer is a man or a woman. My fascination with Bowie began as a child, watching the eighties fantasy flick, Labyrinth. Co-starring with a pre-Ron Howardized Jennifer Connelly, Bowie plays Jareth, the evil and seductive goblin king. A perfect part for Bowie, not only because of the singing involved (he wrote original songs for the film), but because it was a role his larger than life persona could fit comfortably into. I thought he was gorgeous - strangely in both a feminine and masculine way, but ultimately appealing to my heterosexual orientation rather than my mere observation of feminine beauty.

But outward appearances are only part of the musically androgynous aspect. Some artists portray a hermaphroditic sound while being easily recognizable in person as belonging to a certain gender. Brian Aubert of Silversun Pickups (below, third from left) comes easily to mind as a manly-looking man with an edgy, alternative-sounding tenor voice. Part of the intrigue, upon first hearing Lazy Eye, is wondering whether a guy or a girl is trolling the catchy lament of young infatuation. Especially since the bass player is a girl and sings backup occassionally. And Bowie, on the other hand, sings with a fairly obviously male voice. Imogen Heap and Billy Corgan both look their gender, while singing with lower and higher than usual voices, respectively.



Many times when hearing a new artist or band for the first time, there's no visual to go with the sound. So after you've done some detective work on Google or MySpace to find out the sex of this new voice, and the initial intrigue of the unknown is gone, what draws you back to that sound?

At least part of it has got to be the mere strangeness of it. Most people we meet are easily distiguishable as male or female, and exploring the otherness is tantalizing. And what wider appeal can an artist have than to have the ability to identify to both genders? Of course, by pushing traditional boundaries and making what many would say a mockery of a basic God-given assignment, they'll also repulse many. A minority of people will identify with transgender-esque figures who mirror their own gender identity confusion, but this is surely the exception rather than the rule, and the aforementioned artists have managed to gain and hold widespread appeal.

So, maybe it's solely the abnormality that attracts us. Rock and roll, is after all the soundtrack for the off-kilter. And Bowie, in my mind, is after all the godfather of alternative rock.