ABSTRACT
Re-enter the pop dandy, he who queers for the moment of a three-minute song, a video performance, a live act or the crackle of a melodic strand on a car radio. Nowhere is masculinity more put-on-display than in the masquerade of pop. One reason for this is that pop depicts gender in quite extraordinary ways, often driving home the arbitrariness of sexual categorization. Bowie's Ziggy Stardust character must be the ultimate example of the flaunted queer identity, firmly imprinted in the memories of those of us who were around in 1972. Not unlike Jagger, Bowie's physicality has always been slight, his mannerisms affected, as he flirts with Otherness. Dominant types of masculinity, however, are considered exclusionary, and the dualistic approach to 'natural' and 'socially constructed attributes' enforces a silence that circumvents important experiences. Pop dandies have given music volume and sexual attitude.
