Metal Mondays: Heavy metal history celebrates gender performance

Walking down California’s infamous Sunset Strip in the late ‘70s and ‘80s would permanently impact all people sober enough to remember their time at the hard-partying epicenter of glam rock. The 1.7 mile stretch of West Hollywood was the nexus of rock’s transgressive subgenre that defined the decade, shaping popular culture and defying traditional gender roles at a time in America when social conservatism was on the rise. 

American glam rock icons like Poison and Mötley Crüe were defined by both their  music — a highly polished form of the rock music popularized by bands like AC/DC — and their on-stage personas. Their music often centered lyrical content that can only be described as heterosexual (“Girls, Girls, Girls,” “Paradise City,” etc.), but the loud makeup and feminine clothing glam rockers donned were more experimental.

During the 1980s, the sensation of glam rockers putting on pounds of glaring makeup, wearing lingerie and tight leather pants, all while singing about their debaucherous behavior, can only be described as transgressive. The vast majority of bands at the time were not trying to make a statement about gender roles, but instead were shooting for attention, radio play and the central theme of doing whatever they wanted to do whenever they wanted to do it.