I Believed That I Identified As a Gay Woman - The Legendary Artist Enabled Me to Uncover the Actual Situation

Back in 2011, a few years prior to the acclaimed David Bowie display launched at the famous Victoria and Albert Museum in London, I came out as a gay woman. Previously, I had solely pursued relationships with men, one of whom I had entered matrimony with. Two years later, I found myself approaching middle age, a freshly divorced parent to four children, making my home in the United States.

At that time, I had started questioning both my gender identity and sexual orientation, searching for answers.

Born in England during the dawn of the seventies era - before the internet. As teenagers, my companions and myself were without social platforms or video sharing sites to reference when we had curiosities about intimacy; instead, we turned toward celebrity musicians, and in that decade, everyone was challenging gender norms.

The iconic vocalist sported masculine attire, The flamboyant singer embraced women's fashion, and musical acts such as Erasure and Bronski Beat featured artists who were proudly homosexual.

I wanted his slender frame and sharp haircut, his angular jaw and male chest. I aimed to personify the Bowie's Berlin period

During the nineties, I lived riding a motorbike and wearing androgynous clothing, but I went back to traditional womanhood when I opted for marriage. My spouse relocated us to the United States in 2007, but when the union collapsed I felt an irresistible pull revisiting the male identity I had previously abandoned.

Since nobody challenged norms to the extent of David Bowie, I opted to use some leisure time during a seasonal visit back to the UK at the museum, anticipating that possibly he could provide clarity.

I didn't know exactly what I was looking for when I entered the display - maybe I thought that by immersing myself in the richness of Bowie's norm-challenging expression, I might, in turn, discover a insight into my personal self.

I soon found myself standing in front of a compact monitor where the film clip for "Boys Keep Swinging" was continuously looping. Bowie was strutting his stuff in the foreground, looking stylish in a slate-colored ensemble, while positioned laterally three accompanying performers dressed in drag clustered near a microphone.

In contrast to the performers I had witnessed firsthand, these ladies failed to move around the stage with the self-assurance of natural performers; rather they looked unenthused and frustrated. Positioned as supporting acts, they chewed gum and rolled their eyes at the tedium of it all.

"Boys keep swinging, boys always work it out," Bowie sang cheerfully, seemingly unaware to their reduced excitement. I felt a fleeting feeling of empathy for the accompanying performers, with their thick cosmetics, ill-fitting wigs and constricting garments.

They seemed to experience as uncomfortable as I did in female clothing - 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 revealed herself to be ... Bowie! Revelation. (Understandably, there were additional David Bowies as well.)

In that instant, I knew for certain that I wanted to remove everything and transform like Bowie. I wanted his slender frame and his sharp haircut, his defined jawline and his flat chest; I wanted to embody the slender-shaped, Bowie's German period. And yet I was unable to, because to genuinely embody Bowie, first I would require being a man.

Declaring myself as gay was a separate matter, but transitioning was a considerably more daunting outlook.

It took me several more years before I was prepared. In the meantime, I tried my hardest to embrace manhood: I ceased using cosmetics and threw away all my skirts and dresses, trimmed my tresses and began donning male attire.

I changed my seating posture, modified my gait, and adopted new identifiers, but I halted before medical intervention - the chance of refusal and remorse had caused me to freeze with apprehension.

After the David Bowie show concluded its international run with a stint in New York City, five years later, I revisited. I had arrived at a crisis. I couldn't go on pretending to be something I was not.

Positioned before the same video in 2018, I knew for certain that the problem wasn't my clothes, it was my physical form. I didn't identify as a butch female; I was a man with gentle characteristics who'd been presenting artificially since birth. I aimed to transition into the person in the polished attire, dancing in the spotlight, and at that moment I understood that I could.

I made arrangements to see a physician shortly afterwards. It took another few years before my transition was complete, but not a single concern I anticipated materialized.

I still have many of my feminine mannerisms, so others regularly misinterpret me for a homosexual male, but I accept this. I desired the liberty to explore expression following Bowie's example - and given that I'm content with my physical form, I have that capacity.