What Does It Take to Be a Gay Icon Today?

Cher, it’s worth noting, was not really a gay icon in her Sonny & Cher days, but once she began wearing skimpy, sparkly, belly-button-bearing Bob Mackie creations — particularly on her solo show and at various Oscars telecasts — an icon emerged in full-feathered glory.

Of course, it also helped when, after some initial difficulty with her daughter Chastity’s coming out, she became a vocal supporter of gay rights and started recording songs aimed specifically for gay clubs; gay men tend to hold those in highest regard who have demonstrated a high regard for them. But it was initially the eye-popping fashion — and the assertive attitude that went with it — that gay men venerated and imitated, a look that announced, “I demand to be noticed, and I don’t care what anyone thinks of it.”

Barbra Streisand, another great source of inspiration for drag queens everywhere, also evidenced that kind of healthy egotism. When she appeared on Judy Garland’s TV show in 1963, the two’s banter hinted at a playful rivalry, and the difference in their personalities, styles, and attitudes was clear, highlighted by the fact that at 21 years old, Barbra was already going head to head with a star of Judy’s stature without any hint of trepidation.

It’s not a meek person, after all, who can sing “Don’t Rain on My Parade” from the bow of a boat and command the screen, as she did so memorably in her first film, Funny Girl (1964). If Judy Garland’s vibrato was tinged with the sadness and conflicted emotion of the closet, Barbra’s voice exuded the extreme confidence and strength of character required to break out of it — and gay men ate it up.

In some ways, Liza Minnelli owes her own iconic status to a combination of these varied qualities — a mixture of Barbra’s show stopping pizzazz with her mother’s vulnerability. Bette Midler, on the other hand, cultivated a performance personality uniquely her own — and clearly directed at a gay audience. Bette (whose mother named her after that other icon, Bette Davis) famously kicked off her career in gay bathhouses, with Barry Manilow as her pianist, right from the start showing her comfort with and support of the gay community.

It wasn’t her singing, though, that made Midler such a beloved icon, but her comedy routines that spoke with a raunchiness and shocking frankness about sexual acts (she told jokes, for example, about the porn film Deep Throat [1972]) that contradicted what was considered appropriate conversation, particularly for women. It also mirrored the ways in which gay men themselves spoke about sex and the male anatomy, something even straight male comedians wouldn’t dare comment upon at such length.

Today, Margaret Cho and Kathy Griffin are examples of comediennes who follow in Midler’s divine footsteps, earning iconic laurels by making it clear how much they admire their gay admirers and talking graphically about sexual matters that gay men can relate to.

When it comes to some icons, gay men love women who talk and act like men, at least in matters of the bedroom. This accounts for the iconic status of female characters on Absolutely Fabulous and Sex and the City, freely non-monogamous women who analyze and obsess over the romantic, bodily, and sexual quirks of the male of the species in a way familiar to many gay men.

Both shows ignited some speculation that the women on them are in fact meant to be gay men, but this theory detracts from their true power. While gay men might recognize something of themselves in these women’s attitudes toward men, what they admire about them — what truly makes them gay icons — is their refusal, much like Bette and Joan did before them, to kowtow to societal conventions about appropriate behavior.