Freedom! '21

It was nearly two years ago that I modelled for a friend's bodyart meetup and made up my own design. Lockdown had just ended (not that many people followed through in the UK), and the theme for the meet was Freedom. I had just been doing a short run of one of our original His & Hers Theatre Company productions, and the night before the meet, right during the intermission of the play I was doing, I got a message from my artist, Sammie Robyn Banks, saying that she had been incredibly busy and that I could be free to design my own paint, if I could send her pictures before we met up the next day. I, being due to be on stage in 5, wasn't able to send her pictures until the next morning, but we were able to text for a little bit after the play to ensure we were thinking something similar: she suggested George Michael's "Freedom! '90", which I absolutely loved, and we took it from there.

To be fair, Sammie works at a hospital, and even though "lockdown was over", the pandemic wasn't really over until way later, and, like I said, there wasn't truly an actual lockdown in the UK, no matter how much the Tories are trying to brainwash us into believing that they acted promptly and everyone followed through. But that's a story for another day, the point was that I understood why Sammie had been so busy and couldn't sort out a design over those weeks! In any case, my idea was very direct: George Michael's iconic bum-shaking blue jeans and leather jacket catching fire like it does in the video, and Pride flags on my skin under the burning clothes. Easier said than done, but we pulled it through!

For reference: George Michael's iconic wardrobe was from a previous video, Faith, in which he seemed to be embracing his sex symbol status, but he later recanted with the line "You gotta have faith in the sound, it's the one good thing that I've got" in Freedom!, where a series of explosions burn up his leather jacket and the jukebox ny which he had previosly shaken his bum during Faith. This video seemed to still bring out the sex symbol status, as Michael is barely in it but the video is instead full of mostly naked top models of the time (although the video itself is more gloomy than openly sexual, which is probably what makes it even more provocative, in my opinion).

The lyrics, though, tell another story! Specifically:

Everybody's got to sell

But when you shake your ass

They notice fast

And some mistakes were built to last

Freedom! '90 is now openly acknowledged as George Michael's coming-out song, even though it took a while for the audience to catch up with the message, but when you listen to the lyrics, the whole song is a very direct message! Every single line contains a significant meaning about his sexuality and who he genuinely wanted to be. Not that he didn't deserve to be a sex symbol, but he needed to say to the world that he was something else rather than what was being portrayed, and that he saw it as a mistake to have allowed himself to be led down that path. And with that he gave so many of us a great coming out song! Not that anyone notices when I shake my ass, or that I ever was or could he considered a sex symbol, except perhaps the person I'm already married to, but there's still a huge reassurance for me in a song which calls us to stop living in a lie, especially as a bisexual woman from as Catholic a background as Mexico is. I'm very aware that I wasn't Sammie's first choice for a model (I rarely am), but I will keep being grateful to her for transforming me into such a meaningful song through her art.

Thank you for reading my piece. There's so much that has changed for me since I first started modelling, but what I originally felt when I started was very very real, and I hope it helps others too. If you want to read more about this experience, here's my first piece on being a bodyart model, and a poem I wrote about one specific design.

A heart or a tip would also be much appreciated if you feel so inclined.