I Thought I Was a Lesbian - The Legendary Artist Helped Me Realize the Reality

In 2011, a few years before the celebrated David Bowie display launched at the renowned Victoria and Albert Museum in England, I came out as a homosexual woman. Up to that point, I had exclusively dated men, with one partner I had entered matrimony with. After a couple of years, I found myself in my early 40s, a newly single caregiver to four kids, making my home in the America.

During this period, I had started questioning both my gender identity and attraction preferences, searching for answers.

Born in England during the dawn of the seventies era - prior to digital connectivity. During our youth, my companions and myself were without social platforms or digital content to reference when we had questions about sex; instead, we sought guidance from pop stars, and in that decade, artists were playing with gender norms.

Annie Lennox sported boys' clothes, The Culture Club frontman wore girls' clothes, and pop groups such as popular ensembles featured artists who were proudly homosexual.

I wanted his lean physique and defined hairstyle, his defined jawline and male chest. I wanted to embody the artist's German phase

In that decade, I passed my days riding a motorbike and wearing androgynous clothing, but I reverted back to femininity when I decided to wed. My partner relocated us to the US in 2007, but when the marriage ended I felt an powerful draw back towards the masculinity I had once given up.

Given that no one challenged norms to the extent of David Bowie, I decided to devote an open day during a summer trip back to the UK at the museum, with the expectation that possibly he could help me figure it out.

I was uncertain exactly what I was looking for when I stepped inside the exhibition - possibly I anticipated that by submerging my consciousness in the richness of Bowie's norm-challenging expression, I might, consequently, discover a hint about my true nature.

Quickly I discovered myself positioned before a small television screen where the film clip for "Boys Keep Swinging" was playing on repeat. Bowie was strutting his stuff in the primary position, looking sharp in a charcoal outfit, while to the side three supporting vocalists dressed in drag crowded round a microphone.

Unlike the entertainers I had seen personally, these female-presenting individuals failed to move around the stage with the poise of inherent stars; rather they looked unenthused and frustrated. Placed in secondary positions, they had gum in their mouths and showed impatience at the monotony of it all.

"The song's lyrics, boys always work it out," Bowie sang cheerfully, seemingly unaware to their diminished energy. I felt a momentary pang of empathy for the backing singers, with their heavy makeup, ill-fitting wigs and constricting garments.

They appeared to feel as awkward as I did in women's clothes - irritated and impatient, as if they were longing for it all to end. At the moment when I understood I connected with three individuals presenting as female, one of them ripped off her wig, smeared the lipstick from her face, and unveiled herself as ... Bowie! Revelation. (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 craved his lean physique and his precise cut, his angular jaw and his masculine torso; I sought to become the slender-shaped, Berlin-era Bowie. And yet I found myself incapable, because to genuinely embody Bowie, first I would require being a man.

Declaring myself as homosexual was one thing, but personal transformation was a significantly scarier outlook.

It took me additional years before I was prepared. In the meantime, I made every effort to become more masculine: I ceased using cosmetics and threw away all my skirts and dresses, trimmed my tresses and started wearing masculine outfits.

I sat differently, modified my gait, and modified my personal references, but I halted before hormonal treatment - the possibility of rejection and second thoughts had rendered me immobile with anxiety.

After the David Bowie display finished its world tour with a engagement in the American metropolis, after half a decade, I revisited. I had experienced a turning point. I couldn't go on pretending to be a person I wasn't.

Facing the familiar clip in 2018, I became completely convinced that the problem wasn't my clothes, it was my body. I didn't identify as a butch female; I was a male with feminine qualities who'd been presenting artificially all his life. I desired to change into the person in the polished attire, moving in the illumination, and at that moment I understood that I had the capacity to.

I made arrangements to see a medical professional soon after. The process required additional years before my transformation concluded, but not a single concern I anticipated came true.

I maintain many of my feminine mannerisms, so people often mistake me for a queer man, but I accept this. I wanted the freedom to experiment with identity like Bowie did - and given that I'm content with my physical form, I can.