Bisexual Chic - Emergence of Bisexual Chic

Emergence of Bisexual Chic

Though the terminology is attributed to the 1970s, a former bisexual chic came about as early as the 1920s. In Vice Versa: Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life, Marjorie Garber argues "the twenties has been linked to the popularization of Freud (or "Freudianism"), the advent of World War I, and a general predilection for the daring and unconventional: bobbed hair, short skirts, the rejection of Prohibition and Victorian strictures." Examples of this include drag balls, and the success of artists such as Ernest Hemingway, D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, and Marlene Dietrich. Looking back from the 70s, writer Elaine Showalter accused Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group of bisexual chic when she warned Woolf and her friends of indulging "the fashion of bisexuality."

In 1972, the highly popular musical film Cabaret featured a love triangle with a man and woman fighting for the same (male) lover. The author who inspired it, Christopher Isherwood, was among the first openly homosexual celebrities. Other prominent cultural representations of the 1970s include The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Sunday Bloody Sunday. David Bowie grew to fame and outed himself during this time period also. Later in the decade, the androgyny of glam rock and softening of male fashion in the disco movement allowed new recognition for bisexuality as a perceived form of sexual liberation.