Hope this isn’t offensive. Who preceeded Marilyn Monroe as a Gay icon? I thought of this when I heard that Alan Turing commited suicide by eating a poisoned apple (ala Snow White).
Since when is Marilyn a gay icon?
Yeah, I’m not so sure that Marilyn Monroe was a gay icon — Judy Garland, her contemporary, has more of that reputation (and may well have preceded her in that role.)
Of course Marylin was (and is) a gay icon . . . but not so much until after her death.
Before Marilyn, there was Judy Garland, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, and several less famous ones. There was also Dorothy Parker, but probably less widespread.
I know lots of female impersonators liked to represent her, but I never got the impression there was much emotional resonance with her and gays re her being any kind of a specifically gay “icon”. She was a cultural icon of sorts, but gay specific not so much.
Re mass culture “icons” in general how far back does the modern notion of a popular icon really go?
That’s not a gay icon, THIS is a gay icon!
I was going to suggest Mae West.
She never really became a gay icon until after her death. And of course Andy Warhol helped a lot. As far as impersonators are concerned, she’s one of the easiest to identify, but one of the most difficult to truly capture.
There’s a whole lot in that article that I disagree with. I wish they treated the icons of gay men separately from those of lesbians. They’re not the same thing at all.
Marilyn Monroe is a gay icon, but not a uniquely gay icon.
That is, if I saw a Liza Minelli poster on a man’s wall, I’d assume he was gay.
If I saw that a man had a complete DVD collection of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford movies, I’d assume he was gay.
But a Marilyn poster or a Marilyn DVD collection? Could be gay, or could be just a horny straight guy with a specific celebrity fetish.