I Believed That I Identified As a Lesbian - The Legendary Artist Helped Me Discover the Reality

During 2011, a couple of years before the renowned David Bowie display launched at the famous Victoria and Albert Museum in the UK capital, I publicly announced a lesbian. Up to that point, I had exclusively dated men, one of whom I had entered matrimony with. After a couple of years, I found myself in my early 40s, a newly single mother of four, living in the United States.

Throughout this phase, I had commenced examining both my personal gender and sexual orientation, looking to find clarity.

My birthplace was England during the early 1970s - prior to digital connectivity. During our youth, my companions and myself lacked access to online forums or video sharing sites to consult when we had curiosities about intimacy; rather, we looked to celebrity musicians, and in that decade, everyone was challenging gender norms.

The Eurythmics singer wore male clothing, Boy George adopted women's fashion, and bands such as well-known groups featured performers who were openly gay.

I wanted his narrow hips and precise cut, his defined jawline and flat chest. I aimed to personify the Berlin-era Bowie

During the nineties, I passed my days riding a motorbike and adopting masculine styles, but I went back to traditional womanhood when I opted for marriage. My partner relocated us to the America in 2007, but when our relationship dissolved I felt an undeniable attraction revisiting the masculinity I had once given up.

Given that no one challenged norms to the extent of David Bowie, I opted to use some leisure time during a summer trip visiting Britain at the museum, with the expectation that possibly he could guide my understanding.

I didn't know exactly what I was looking for when I walked into the exhibition - maybe I thought that by immersing myself in the opulence of Bowie's gender experimentation, I might, as a result, encounter a insight into my personal self.

I soon found myself facing a small television screen where the music video for "the iconic song" was recurring endlessly. Bowie was performing confidently in the front, looking stylish in a slate-colored ensemble, while off to one side three backing singers in feminine attire crowded round a microphone.

Differing from the entertainers I had seen personally, these characters failed to move around the stage with the confidence of natural performers; conversely they looked disinterested and irritated. Positioned as supporting acts, they were chewing and expressed annoyance at the tedium of it all.

"Those words, boys always work it out," Bowie voiced happily, seemingly unaware to their reduced excitement. I felt a momentary pang of understanding for the backing singers, with their pronounced make-up, ill-fitting wigs and constricting garments.

They seemed to experience as ill-at-ease as I did in feminine attire - frustrated and eager, as if they were yearning for it all to conclude. At the moment when I understood I connected with three individuals presenting as female, one of them tore off her wig, smeared the lipstick from her face, and revealed herself to be ... Bowie! Shocker. (Naturally, there were further David Bowies as well.)

In that instant, I knew for certain that I wanted to remove everything and transform like Bowie. I desired his slender frame and his defined hairstyle, his defined jawline and his masculine torso; I aimed to personify the lean-figured, Berlin-era Bowie. However I was unable to, because to authentically transform into Bowie, first I would need to be a man.

Coming out as gay was a different challenge, but gender transition was a much more frightening possibility.

It took me further time before I was prepared. During that period, I made every effort to become more masculine: I ceased using cosmetics and threw away all my skirts and dresses, cut off my hair and began donning men's clothes.

I altered how I sat, modified my gait, and changed my name and pronouns, but I stopped short of medical intervention - the potential for denial and regret had left me paralysed with fear.

After the David Bowie show completed its global journey with a engagement in New York City, five years later, I went back. I had arrived at a crisis. I couldn't go on pretending to be a person I wasn't.

Facing the familiar clip 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 male with feminine qualities who'd been wearing drag since birth. I wanted to transform myself into the man in the sharp suit, performing under lights, and then I comprehended that I had the capacity to.

I booked myself in to see a doctor not long after. It took further time before my transformation concluded, but none of the things I anticipated occurred.

I still have many of my traditional womanly traits, so individuals frequently misidentify me for a homosexual male, but I'm comfortable with that outcome. I wanted the freedom to explore expression following Bowie's example - and since I'm at peace with myself, I am able to.