An Unpronounceable Symbol: How Prince Transcended Identity
By Anastasia O’Reilly.
Popular music in the 1980s was all about image. MTV first aired in August 1981 debuting the music video for The Buggles’ Video Killed the Radio Star; a fitting song for the upcoming success of visual media within the industry. Music videos were fun, innovative and an effective marketing tool for artists who could propel their music by displaying a certain persona. At the time, it was glam metal bands such as Aerosmith and KISS and new wave bands such as Duran Duran and Talking Heads that heavily dominated the music scene. These predominantly white, all-male bands perpetuated a hostile environment within American and British society by establishing and upholding societal norms.
Despite this, alternative approaches and personas continued to exist. And no one rejected norms more than Prince.
Michael Montfort/Michael Ochs Archives
Born in Minneapolis during the 1950s, Prince was a revolutionary figure for the conception of androgyny. His ‘queerness’ oozed from all aspects of his career, with his appearance and gender fluidity leading people to continually speculate whether he identified as gay.
His stage presence was very bold, as can be seen in his 1985 GRAMMY’s performance of Baby I’m A Star. Prince glides fluidly across the stage before falling into multiple splits as if elastic. Alongside the physical performance, his wardrobe added to his non-conformating persona. He wore tantalizing outfits, such as a linen white shirt which can be seen draping off his shoulders during the GRAMMY performance.
Sometimes he would wear revealing bikini briefs, and even more often he would wear high heels. This flamboyancy shocked audiences such as those who booed Prince off-stage in 1981 when he opened for the Rolling Stones in LA.
In addition to his clothing, Prince’s queerness manifested itself in his art. On the cover of Lovesexy the artist is pictured nude, sat on a flower, hiding his modestly with a delicately lifted leg. This classically ‘feminine’ posing is contrasted by stereotypical ‘masculine’ features such as thick dark eyebrows, a sprinkling of chest hair and a groomed beard.
Cover of Prince's 1988 album, Lovesexy.
Prince further played into people’s fascination with this apparently contradictory identity in his 1981 album Controversy, singing the lyrics ‘am I Black or white’ and ‘am I straight or gay’. Additionally, in I Would Die 4 U Prince states ‘I’m not a woman, I’m not a man. I am something you will never understand’. The uncertainty accentuated his mystique, and in an interview with Musician magazine, Prince was forced to address his non-normative persona. When asked whether people thought he was gay, Prince replied ‘there is something about me… that makes people think that’.
From a branding point of view the elusiveness of his identity eludes our ability to comprehend (and therefore control) the singer. This unwillingness to be tied down is demonstrated in Prince’s adoption of the ‘Love Symbol’. This symbol was an accepted moniker for Prince, used in-place of his name. Resembling a fusion of male and female gender signs, the ‘Love Symbol’ was adopted to mark a new era in his life, protesting unfair treatment by his record label and publicly embracing this bi-sexual persona. As an extension, the symbol meant that journalists couldn’t write his name, signifying that Prince refused to live under a binary and oppressive regime of gender.
The 'Love Symbol'. Source.
Comedian Chris Rock questioned Prince about ‘the androgynous thing’ in an interview. Was Prince searching for his sexual identity through flamboyant clothing and smudged black eyeliner, or was it a calculated act to increase his brand identity? Prince retained an ambiguous answer; ‘I don’t suppose I was searching, really… I think I was just being who I was… and there was a little acting going on too’. From this we can conclude that his queer persona was therefore simultaneously real and a performance.
Regardless of whether people liked Prince, and whether he was gay, straight, cis or trans, what matters is the profound and inspiring effect he had on conceptions of gender. Prince was foundational in deconstructing perceptions of masculinity and blurred the lines between binary hard definitions of gender. His very existence embodied bisexuality.