Mick Jagger, the Danny La Rue of rock, impersonates a woman on the cover of the 1978 Stones album Some Girls. Vaudeville performers in the Jagger mould love to put on lipstick and ‘false bubbies’ (as Neil McKenna calls them). Boy X-Factor contestants, with their shaved eyebrows, diamond earrings and nails lovingly manicured, present an almost Gloria Swanson-like image of adornment.
Perhaps it is merely romantic to suggest that the stylised wigs and gowns worn by our bishops and high court judges also have a homoerotic component. The former Pope Benedict XVI’s ruby-red pumps were nothing compared to the faux ermines worn in the House of Lords.
Frederick ‘Fanny’ Park, a judge’s son, and Ernest ‘Stella’ Boulton, were Victorian-era transvestites who lived large and lurid on the streets of London. Stella, the more presentable of the two, liked to flounce up and down Burlington Arcade on the lookout for suitors.
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