The gender agenda: Tara Moss on blending traditional gender roles

Tara Moss is an author, journalist, TV presenter, feminist and human rights advocate. Since 1999 she has written 10 bestselling books, published in 19 countries and 13 languages.

Her first non-fiction book, a feminist memoir that also critiques media representations of women, titled The Fictional Woman, was published last year and became a national bestseller.

Here, the deconstructionist in Tara flirts with gender notions in a fashion story inspired by David Bowie.  Antonino Tati

Photography Lauren Horwood (www.laurenhorwood.com)

Model (and Concept) Tara Moss (www.taramoss.com)

Makeup Rachel Montgomery (www.rachelmontgomery.com)

Hair Paula Hibbard (www.fabuloushairup.com)

What motivated you to take on the guise of Bowie in this particular shoot?

For this shoot I put on a combination of my own clothes and my husband’s – in pursuit of a masculine rockabilly look – and once my hair was up and my makeup off we found that I looked very much like David Bowie. It fits, of course, because he is one of the most prominent pioneers of gender deconstruction and one of relatively few famous figures with sexually ambiguous personas. Androgyny is rarely genderless, of course. It generally involves a woman adopting masculine clothing, something that was sometimes historically done to be able to get around laws or gain entry to establishments that banned women, but in fashion is commonly represented as a young, beautiful woman in a tie, almost like she’s in her boyfriend’s clothing. It’s beautiful but of course the needle very rarely swings the other way. The beautiful young man in his girlfriend’s clothing is not shown. Bowie did push that envelope, however, as did the late Lux Interior of The Cramps. They wore a combination of male- and female-gendered garments on stage, women’s shoes, latex, glitter, the works. Every expression was open.

In my case I’ve become more active in the vintage and retro pinup scene with my vintage persona ‘Victory Lamour’, so after all my explorations of the highly feminine I felt it was time for ‘Victor Lamour’ as well. He’s another expression. Thankfully, [photographer] Lauren, [makeup artist] Rachel and [hairstylist] Paula were all on board and so we went for it.

Do your recent studies in the area of Gender & Culture have anything to do with it?

I was often called a ‘tomboy’ as a kid, in part because of I hated dresses. I have since come to love both traditionally male and female styles of dressing, including highly feminine dress, and I have become interested in the ‘performativity of gender’, to borrow Judith Butler’s term. In The Fictional Woman I touched on this issue, and how we label adventurous girls as ‘boys’ [ie: tomboys] and label boys ‘girly’ if they engage in certain caring behaviours or want to play with dolls – those toys designed to encourage nurturing. I’ve seen parts of me described as ‘feminine’ and other parts ‘masculine’ and found it all rather bizarre. What these traits are is human. There is no monopoly on caring or on leadership or courage. They do not belong to one gender, and I teach my daughter that every day.

I’m fascinated by the fact that gender roles were deemed so important and yet fragile that laws and regulations were put in place to police which garments people were to dress in. Incredibly, a law in Paris banning women from wearing pants was only just overturned in 2013. There have been some great pioneers of androgyny over the years, like Radclyffe Hall, but for the most part gender and dressing are still socially policed. My doctoral studies at the University of Sydney have revealed more complexity to what I have already witnessed or suspected when it came to gender. Gender is experienced and expressed differently from person to person. The gender binary is clumsy and does not define real people’s experiences of the world, in my view.

Why is deconstructing gender so important for the modern individual – straight, lesbian, gay, trans or otherwise?

As women and men, LGBTI or straight, it’s healthy to question the social constraints of gender. If we want to separate gender from biological sex, as many have before, you quickly see how much of gender is a social performance adapted by individuals within the broader context of cultural expectations. It’s in the way we dress, use our voices or mannerisms, and make choices according to certain ideas – or conversely, the way we choose to push against those same things to challenge those norms. That is not to deny the biological, of course, however gender norms have changed enormously over the decades and from culture to culture, and those norms and changes are felt by nearly everyone.

Taking on a masculine persona felt like a projection of some aspect of my genuine self. I own the jacket, the tees. I often go without makeup, though not on TV. Many argue that we all have ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ attributes, and I could project those so-called masculine parts of myself with ease, just as I enjoy projecting the ‘feminine’ and connecting with that part of myself and that feminine tradition. I enjoyed the exploration of my ‘masculine’ side on this shoot – the wider stance, the squinting eyes, the bravado. I took up more space, relaxed my posture, frowned, and basically got my swagger on. In short, it felt quite natural and a whole lot more interesting than being photographed in most womenswear outfits. When we went to the next level and I donned the moustache, it felt like theatre. We laughed a lot. I found myself talking like a stereotypical baddie from some black-and-white movie.

Victor was fun to hang with. Who knows, maybe we’ll see more of him!

‘The Fictional Woman’ is available through HarperCollins Publishers Australia.