Now for someone who doesn't lie

Since all my blog posts today have been about how wrong it is to expect others to hide in the closet or tell lies so that we can all pretend the world is simple and straight, I thought it might be nice to add a female musician today who besides being good at her craft who also shows a healthy unwillingness to lie about who she is. It's hard to settle on one, but I think I'll go with Dusty Springfield. Now I'm not really the biggest fan, though I think she did some really good work in the 60's. But I do have to admire her stubbornness--she was never just a singer, but exerted a huge amount of control over the entire process of recording her music and from what I understand she struggled mightily with producers who weren't making her records sound enough like the American records she was inspired by.

She strikes me as a no bullshit kind of person, which is evident in the way that she blew off reporters who asked her about "rumors" regarding her sexuality. I wouldn't characterize her as an out-and-proud lesbian but she wasn't hiding in the closet, either. From my viewpoint, she mostly just did what she liked and was annoyed that anyone else thought that her personal choices had any bearing whatsoever on her work. (I'm not entirely sure if she was a lesbian or bisexual, but the important thing is she went about her business without letting other people put their stupid shame on her.)

Things have not really improved on the female-celebrity front. In fact, they've probably gotten worse. Female celebrities' lives are open to examination to make sure that they are sticking to the script--marriage, babies, the whole shebang. The gossip mags have opened up their script just a tiny bit to allow that some female celebrities might be lesbians, but all that means is another script was pushed on them, which is exactly the same script but with a girlfriend instead of a husband. When reality intrudes, the celebrity watchers get all befuddled--witness the giggling gossip columns about how Cynthia Nixon has left her long-time boyfriend to be with a woman--all the gossip I've seen about it implies that she's finally come out as a lesbian, ignoring the far more likely possibility that she's always been bisexual. Someone like Dusty Springfield who didn't work with them to make them understand probably drove the press bonkers.

It's never been a small feat for singers, especially female singers, to take firm control over the direction of their music like Dusty Springfield. She certainly opened an unlikely door and made it seem quite possible for English girls to see soul music if they so like. It's likely that we wouldn't have singers like Tracey Thorn today if it weren't for the fact that Dusty made it look easy.