I Was Convinced Myself to Be a Homosexual Woman - The Music Icon Enabled Me to Uncover the Actual Situation

During 2011, several years prior to the celebrated David Bowie display debuted at the famous Victoria and Albert Museum in the UK capital, I declared myself a homosexual woman. Up to that point, I had exclusively dated men, including one I had entered matrimony with. After a couple of years, I found myself in my early 40s, a recently separated caregiver to four kids, making my home in the United States.

Throughout this phase, I had started questioning both my gender identity and attraction preferences, looking to find understanding.

I entered the world in England during the dawn of the seventies era - before the internet. As teenagers, my friends and I didn't have social platforms or video sharing sites to consult when we had curiosities about intimacy; instead, we sought guidance from music icons, and during the 80s, artists were challenging gender norms.

Annie Lennox donned male clothing, The Culture Club frontman wore feminine outfits, and pop groups such as Erasure and Bronski Beat featured artists who were proudly homosexual.

I desired his lean physique and precise cut, his angular jaw and flat chest. I wanted to embody the Bowie's Berlin period

During the nineties, I spent my time driving a bike and dressing like a tomboy, but I reverted back to femininity when I opted for marriage. My husband relocated us to the United States in 2007, but when our relationship dissolved I felt an powerful draw revisiting the male identity I had earlier relinquished.

Since nobody played with gender quite like David Bowie, I chose to spend a free afternoon during a warm-weather journey returning to England at the gallery, with the expectation that maybe he could provide clarity.

I didn't know precisely what I was searching for when I entered the exhibition - possibly I anticipated that by submerging my consciousness in the richness of Bowie's norm-challenging expression, I might, consequently, discover a clue to my own identity.

I soon found myself facing a compact monitor where the music video for "Boys Keep Swinging" was recurring endlessly. Bowie was performing confidently in the primary position, looking polished in a charcoal outfit, while positioned laterally three supporting vocalists wearing women's clothing gathered around a microphone.

In contrast to the drag queens I had witnessed firsthand, these female-presenting individuals didn't glide around the stage with the self-assurance of born divas; conversely they looked unenthused and frustrated. Positioned as supporting acts, they chewed gum and expressed annoyance at the tedium of it all.

"The song's lyrics, boys always work it out," Bowie sang cheerfully, appearing ignorant to their lack of enthusiasm. I felt a brief sensation of understanding for the accompanying performers, with their heavy makeup, ill-fitting wigs and constricting garments.

They seemed to experience as uncomfortable as I did in women's clothes - irritated and impatient, as if they were yearning for it all to conclude. At the moment when I recognized my alignment with three individuals presenting as female, one of them removed her wig, wiped the makeup from her face, and unveiled herself as ... Bowie! Revelation. (Of course, there were further David Bowies as well.)

At that moment, I was absolutely sure that I desired to remove everything and transform like Bowie. I craved his slender frame and his sharp haircut, his defined jawline and his masculine torso; I aimed to personify the lean-figured, Bowie's German period. And yet I couldn't, because to genuinely embody Bowie, first I would need to be a man.

Announcing my identity as homosexual was a separate matter, but personal transformation was a much more frightening prospect.

I required further time before I was prepared. Meanwhile, I did my best to embrace manhood: I ceased using cosmetics and threw away all my skirts and dresses, cut off my hair and began donning male attire.

I sat differently, changed my stride, and adopted new identifiers, but I paused at medical intervention - the possibility of rejection and remorse had left me paralysed with fear.

Once the David Bowie show finished its world tour with a stint in the American metropolis, after half a decade, I went back. I had arrived at a crisis. I was unable to continue acting to be something I was not.

Facing the identical footage in 2018, I knew for certain that the challenge wasn't my clothes, it was my biological self. I didn't identify as a butch female; I was a man with gentle characteristics who'd been presenting artificially since birth. I wanted to transform myself into the individual in the stylish outfit, performing under lights, and now I realized that I could.

I scheduled an appointment to see a doctor soon after. The process required additional years before my transition was complete, but not a single concern I anticipated came true.

I still have many of my feminine mannerisms, so individuals frequently misidentify me for a homosexual male, but I accept this. I desired the liberty to explore expression like Bowie did - and given that I'm at peace with myself, I can.