#jayne county

Fumble-geddon, 1970s New York City ⚰️🕳️

The collective cultural memory of the '60s suggests the decade was a safe haven for male femininity. Long hair on both genders abounds in retellings of the era—the hippie is a soft and shaggy archetype. But most of the imagery now associated with the '60s didn't arrive until the end of the decade. The United States was slow to metabolize shifting gender norms; years after the Beatles were televised into American homes, men could still catch flak for wearing their hair past their collars. "People would chase you for ten blocks, screaming, 'Beatle!' They were out of their fucking minds—that was the reality of the sixties," said artist Ronnie Cutrone. "Nobody had long hair—you were a fucking freak, you were a fruit, you were not like the rest of the world." Trans punk singer Jayne County similarly remembered getting flak in high school for growing her hair out like the Beatles. "I walked all the way [to the record store] and back and every once in a while somebody would yell out their car, 'Sissy!' or they'd yell, 'Look, it's Ringo!' because I had a little Beatles haircut and everything," she said. "Way back in the dark ages, when I was in high school, people still didn't know what gay or queer was or anything like that." That the word "Beatle" could ever have been used as a homophobic slur—that it fit right next to "sissy" in the vocabulary of bigots—seems outrageous by contemporary standards. In retrospect, the Beatles' gender transgressions look as tame as their innocent melodicism. But the Stooges grew up in an environment that punished deviations from normative masculinity, and being bored numb by their surroundings, they sought as much punishment as possible.

Fave underrated LGBTQ+ icons and why?