Who Is... AMANDA LEPORE? by Michael Musto
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Who Is... AMANDA LEPORE? By Michael Musto The world’s most famous transsexual and an “But who is Amanda Lepore?” is an often overheard effervescent fixture on the New York scene, remark, second only to “But WHAT is Amanda Lepore?” AMANDA LEPORE has been at the cutting edge Well, back in the 90s, a newspaper column blithely of culture since the club kid era, breaking and called Amanda a drag queen, so she mailed them re-making the rules for music, marketing and a Polaroid of herself giving them the finger (with gender. no clothes on, by the way). “I’m a transsexual,” the exasperated diva explained to me at the time. “I have a Her new album, I… Amanda Lepore, is the vagina!” culmination of her long reign as the queen of / Gotham’s button pushing (and button popping) She’ll even show it to you! In person! And as with a lot carnival, cementing her status as the most prevalent of her transformations, it came pretty cheap. (As a boy risk taking creative artist and good-time gal after in Cedar Grove, New Jersey, Amanda got hormones dark. A sort of woozy inflatable doll, Amanda comes from a trannie friend in exchange for outfits. She ended off like a Jeff Koons statue of Marilyn Monroe, a up dating a surgeon who gave her a free nose job, a walking work in progress whose nonstop array of later boyfriend paying for her sexual reassignment. surgeries have made her a unique comment on Who needs nationalized health care when you can just womanhood, and every inch a dame. marry well?) / In Milan, she was dubbed La Silicona. In New York, Things happen pretty enchantedly for Amanda, though she gets paid to enter a room, lips first. It’s not a this obscures the fact that beneath her vavoomy party until her benevolent presence is spotted on a exterior is an unflappable person with a will of steel banquette, like a space alien sex goddess crossed who invariably gets what she wants. Her obsessive with a curvy Disney goldfish, doling out insights, dabblings in rhinoplasty, liquid silicone injections, giggles, and occasionally free drink tickets. A eyelifts, and breast implants are calculated to make her dominatrix and a regular member of Michael Alig’s the world’s most beautiful lab experiment—an iconic clubland circus at Limelight’s weekly Disco 2000 presence that gay artists from Elton John to CAZWELL in the early 90s, Amanda went on to work Patricia have used to enhance their videos and that anyone Field’s makeup counter while finding her constantly with a camera—and half a brain—automatically aims changing face the most marketable object in town. her way. She has now fallen into the fantasy world of Jo It’s been used to promote Heatherette, M.A.C. and lance and what a perfect match that is. Swatch, to name just three trendy brands, and in 2006, way before he designed for that other first “Amanda has no interest in being a girl,” photographer lady, Jason Wu did an Amanda Lepore doll, which David LaChapelle—one of her longtime mentors—once represented her in plastic—a creative act that made told me. “She wants to be a drawing of a girl, a cartoon perfect (dollars and) sense. like Jessica Rabbit. When I told her that silicone is dangerous, she said, ‘I don’t care, as long as I look beautiful in the coffin.’ There’s something kind of profound in that, that she’s creating this moment of beauty for herself and is willing to make the ultimate sacrifice.” Amanda’s music also takes pains to serve a challenging product that, in its post-Warholian way, sardonically comments on capitalism while wholeheartedly embracing it. Playing a ditz comes naturally to her (she sang “I Know What Boys Like” for Another Gay Movie and “My Hair Looks Fierce” on her first album, 2005’s Introducing… Amanda Lepore), but it’s a pose, a winky attempt to portray a sort of modern day Ann-Margret, albeit one who once had a penis. Usually, Amanda would rather sing about more important things than just boys and hair—like her privates! Her 2007 club hit “My Pussy (Is Famous)” giddily reminded the world that, while it arrived without a price tag on it, her fertile crescent is now worth 42 millions. 42.