Dead or Alive, or......Gender Ambiguous?

So, we went to San Francisco last weekend, and hung out with some cool people, and watched that TOTALLY AMAZING SUPERBOWL, and good times were had all around.  And hey, did you know that if you're a little hungover (mostly from not getting enough sleep), and then you eat bacon twice in one day and drink a bunch of club soda and eat a hamburger, you might wake up the next morning with high blood pressure?    Who knew?    Yes, I know, that's alot of sodium-- someone should've warned me.  At any rate, it went away in a day, after I switched back to regular water.

Still working on the rewrite, which (after some brainstorming with my witty and brilliant husband-- who once again deserves a medal), seems to have picked up its pace again.  Even so, I'm going to call this "the hardest project I've ever worked on," maybe because I have a mental block going on in another area of my life and it's carrying over.  Who knows?   I don't think you want to hear about that, and frankly, I'm not going to become the kind of blogger who just complains all the time.  Not fun!

Anyhoo, the main topic of today's post is that eighties band Dead or Alive, because frankly, this is JUST the kind of thing that belongs here-- strange and baffling.  Saturday night we were in this bar in SF that just happened to be playing nothing but eighties music.  I love bars like this, because they give me a chance to re-experience my youth while I'm listening to bands like Bronski Beat and Tears for Fears.  About halfway through the round of drinks, that Dead or Alive song "You Spin Me Right Round" comes on, which leads to, no kidding, a FASCINATING discussion about whether or not the lead singer, Pete Burns, is now a dude or a chick, or a dude who looks like a chick, or maybe a transitional chick-dude, or maybe a dude who really, really looks like a chick.    I mean, it's not like any of us really have any INVESTMENT in this, but it's good bar convo.    Everyone had a different opinion, which intrigued me.

As it turns out, no one could answer the question, and even after several days of research and near-obsession on the topic, neither can I.  The (man) just can't be pinned down, ok?  He defies ALL stereotypes.

Now, for the photos.  Just in case you're just joining us on the "Pete Burns might be a she-male" discussion, Pete Burns is the guy from Dead or Alive who used to look like this:

And now, for some reason, looks like this, while continuing to call himself "Pete" and use the masculine gender pronouns:

I'm just going to let you sit here for a second and try to get your head around this.  Of course, it's been FOUR DAYS since I saw this, and I still don't get it.   Go ahead, look at this photo a few times.  Take in the gorilla skin coat, and the giant lips, and the black roots. 

Ok, was that enough time?  I'm not kidding when I say that I Googled this guy, then sat up until 3:00 am on Saturday, trying to make sense of all this.    Here were some of my theories, which were then disproved by further research.

1.  Maybe he's a pre-op transsexual.

Nope.  He says in an interview that he still gender identifies as a man, and there is even a picture of him with this face and his genitalia exposed on Google Images, though I know I'm not going to include that here because some of you would be all "I can't believe I opened that up at work!" or "Dude!  You gotta warn me before you put up a picture of balls!"  So, that's all I'm going to say about that.   In fact, he is still a man.

2.  Maybe he's just a transvestite who seems to have cut his face to look like a woman's, in some sort of bizarre perma-drag.

Nope.  He's also gay, and married to a guy.  There is even a rumor on Wikipedia that a tour with he and Morrissey broke up after Burns RAPED THE MOZZER!    And if Eddie Izzard has taught us anything, it's that most transvestites are straight men who like to wear women's clothing.  He's not either of those, and as far as I can tell, he ONLY wears women's clothing, though he does it with some GIGANTIC man hands and no boobs.

3. Maybe he was involved in some sort of industrial accident, and a woman's freaky face is all they could make out of what was left.

Nope.  This was all elective surgery, though he does say in one interview that one (or more) of them was botched, and they're still repairing that.    Though, not to be mean, I'm actually wondering which part was intended, and which part was botched.

4.  He's a performance artist, and his face and body are his canvas.

This was the closest I got to an actual, functional theory, about which I could nod my head and go "yes, yes....that makes sense!  I can put that in a category in my mind!"  Although, he does still call himself a singer and isn't a professor in a art department (and doesn't have a book on performance art out), so this thing he's doing might not be an intentional challenging of cultural and gender boundaries.

I know this will surprise you, but in the interviews I read, he does sound a little bit mental, like he belongs in the "Too Weird to Do Practical Things" category from last year.  So, I guess the only conclusion that I can confidently draw from the information I have is that Pete Burns is the true meaning of the term "androgynous."  This is the way he feels inside, and he's just letting his freak flag fly for all to see.  And, I guess-- good for him.  Still, I think you'll agree, it IS weird if you haven't even thought about him since 1984, and then suddenly you see a photo of him in his new (ahem) iteration.  Shocking even!

And now, back to the book.