I Believed I Was a Gay Woman - The Music Icon Enabled Me to Realize the Reality

During 2011, a couple of years before the renowned David Bowie show debuted at the renowned Victoria and Albert Museum in the UK capital, I came out as a lesbian. Until that moment, 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 recently separated mother of four, making my home in the US.

At that time, I had commenced examining both my sense of self and sexual orientation, seeking out understanding.

Born in England during the beginning of the seventies - prior to digital connectivity. During our youth, my peers and I didn't have Reddit or YouTube to reference when we had questions about sex; instead, we turned toward pop stars, and in that decade, artists were experimenting with gender norms.

Annie Lennox donned masculine attire, Boy George wore feminine outfits, and pop groups such as Erasure and Bronski Beat featured artists who were proudly homosexual.

I desired his lean physique and defined hairstyle, his angular jaw and masculine torso. I aimed to personify the artist's German phase

In that decade, I spent my time operating a motorcycle and adopting masculine styles, but I returned to traditional womanhood when I opted for marriage. My partner moved our family to the US in 2007, but when the marriage ended I felt an powerful draw back towards the manhood I had once given up.

Given that no one played with gender as dramatically as David Bowie, I decided to spend a free afternoon during a summer trip back to the UK at the museum, hoping that perhaps he could provide clarity.

I was uncertain precisely what I was searching for when I entered the display - possibly I anticipated that by losing myself in the extravagance of Bowie's gender experimentation, I might, as a result, encounter a clue to my personal self.

Quickly I discovered myself standing in front of a compact monitor where the film clip for "that track" was recurring endlessly. Bowie was performing confidently in the primary position, looking polished in a charcoal outfit, while off to one side three supporting vocalists in feminine attire clustered near a microphone.

Unlike the performers I had witnessed firsthand, these female-presenting individuals weren't sashaying around the stage with the self-assurance of born divas; rather they looked unenthused and frustrated. Placed in secondary positions, they chewed gum and showed impatience at the tedium of it all.

"The song's lyrics, boys always work it out," Bowie performed brightly, seemingly unaware to their diminished energy. I felt a fleeting feeling of understanding for the accompanying performers, with their pronounced make-up, awkward hairpieces and restrictive outfits.

They seemed to experience as awkward as I did in women's clothes - annoyed and restless, as if they were longing for it all to conclude. Precisely when I realized I was identifying with three male performers in feminine attire, one of them ripped off her wig, wiped the makeup from her face, and showed herself to be ... Bowie! Surprise. (Of course, there were further David Bowies as well.)

At that moment, I was absolutely sure that I wanted to remove everything and transform like Bowie. I craved his narrow hips and his defined hairstyle, his strong features and his male chest; I sought to become the lean-figured, artist's Berlin phase. However I found myself incapable, because to genuinely embody Bowie, first I would need to be a man.

Coming out as homosexual was one thing, but personal transformation was a much more frightening prospect.

It took me additional years before I was prepared. In the meantime, I did my best to become more masculine: I stopped wearing makeup and threw away all my feminine garments, cut off my hair and started wearing men's clothes.

I changed my seating posture, changed my stride, and adopted new identifiers, but I paused at surgical procedures - the potential for denial and second thoughts had left me paralysed with fear.

After the David Bowie show completed its global journey with a engagement in New York City, following that period, I returned. I had reached a breaking point. I couldn't go on pretending to be a person I wasn't.

Standing in front of the familiar clip in 2018, I knew for certain that the challenge wasn't my clothes, it was my body. I wasn't a masculine woman; I was a man with gentle characteristics who'd been in costume all his life. I wanted to transform myself into the individual in the stylish outfit, dancing in the spotlight, and then I comprehended that I had the capacity to.

I made arrangements to see a doctor not long after. It took further time before my transition was complete, but none of the things I worried about came true.

I still have many of my female characteristics, so others regularly misinterpret me for a homosexual male, but I accept this. I sought the ability to explore expression following Bowie's example - and now that I'm comfortable in my body, I have that capacity.