Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, and Princess Diana are arguably the three most famous and celebrated women of the 20th Century; they are also three of the greatest of the gay icons; for, gay men have a penchant towards idolizing the so-called diva: usually entertainers with larger than life personas that lend themselves to be caricatured by drag-queens - Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Bette Midler, Madonna, Beyonce. But, why, in particular have Garland, Monroe, and Diana received special adulation? For the most part, subliminally it has to do with that fact that each woman experienced what I have labeled the “classic gay boy syndrome:” childhoods filled with tragedy and disappointment: the super-talented, but awkward Garland was pushed into the spotlight by a controlling mother and bisexual father; the father-less Monroe was raised in a series of foster-homes after her mother was committed to a sanitarium; after the rather ugly and messy divorce of her parents, with the father winning custody, the tom-boyish Diana grew up a shy girl who, before her birth, everyone hoped was a boy.
Later in life, all three women married much older authoritarian “daddy” types: Garland to director Vincente Minnelli, Monroe to playwright Arthur Miller, and Diana to Prince Charles. In these father-figures, each was trying to fill the loneliness of an absent or unloving father, the loss and isolation of a chaotic and uncertain childhood, or to heal the hurt from early experiences with a grossly dysfunctional family. Tragically, as is the case with all tortured souls who try to self-heal themselves - all of these men proved entirely too-human and surely incapable of providing the super-human love each needed. For instance, several of Diana’s many biographers remarked that she had a “wounded, insatiable need for love…as wide as the sky.” And, Diana, has probably proved to be the most tragic - as the hapless Charles reacted coldly and with instinctive indifference when confronted by the emotional neediness of Diana - his inability to sympathetically relate causing her near madness that resulted in several pathetic botched suicide attempts. Currently, we see this reenacted in the rash of gender twisted teen suicides that the sick gay media quickly blame on what they perceive as the fault of the evil and bigoted mourning parents.
Throughout their turns in the limelight - Garland, Monroe, and Diana kept gay men as their closest confidants: the likes of Peter Allen, Montgomery Clift, and Elton John all served as platonic pal and priest for their prospective friends: oftentimes, usurping the function of a husband - except, without the sexual component. Why? With male homosexuals, tormented and traumatized women feel an immediate kinship; with those who have also suffered - it is a bond of the abused. Yet, these relationships ultimately prove to be self-centered and counter-productive: as the shared commiseration of pain never leads to healing. In the end, it breeds a false familiarity - I witnessed this in the wider phenomena of “fag hags” (the usually older, divorced, and bitter heterosexual women who sometimes hang about gay men;) and, to a lesser extent what I perceived as the often bizarre relationships between homosexual men and lesbians - most perversely, when a lesbian woman would give birth to a child for a gay couple. In these circles, a sort of catty bitchiness pervaded: originating in some, usually the females, as a defense mechanism against past abuse at the hands of men, or, in the gay males, as a way to deal with earlier masculine rejection and current dissatisfaction. The true love and understanding that they all need remains elusive. And, instead of resolution, in these relationships, and in the continuing adoration of homosexual men towards gay icons, there is only an uneasy realization that shared misery offers little peace. This tragedy was most horrifically materialized in the final days of Princess Diana: a constant flurry of activity, jet-set bashes, exotic holidays, and a devolving series of increasingly reckless boyfriends - exposing a fatalistic dance with danger that inevitably caused her death; this false shield of happy busyness covering over a discontented life is also witnessed in the frantic calendars of gay men with their relentless carousing, theme parties, and parades; it’s the same cycle of nervous destruction, only in gay men - it shot directly to a nightmarish death in the horror of AIDS. Sadly, their idols failed to save them.