The World Famous *BOB*
“Break”
“When I was fifteen, I changed my name to *BOB* because of Robert Smith from The Cure, but also because I felt more comfortable with a masculine sounding name.”
“I’m moving to New York City! Even when I was fourteen and my father tried to teach me how to drive and after a few failed attempts I pulled over the truck and handed him back the keys and said ... I’m going to live in New York City and take taxi cabs.”
“Before I started doing burlesque, I was a lot more rock and roll and more punk looking.”
“We just have to keep an eye on things because bills are trying to be passed constantly to take away LGBTQIA+ rights and rights that have not even been solidified within mainstream society.”
“... it’s up to us to make sure that there’s a goal for holding up all members of our community and not just the ones that are easy to digest for a TV audience.”
“I trusted Amy right away. She just had this great energy that makes you feel very comfortable.”
“I look through the book I’m stunned by the beauty and the honesty of it.”
“Just be kind to yourself and ask for help.”
The World Famous *BOB*
Shoot the Arrow
INTERVIEW BY KAMILE KAKTYTE
PHOTOGRAPHY BY AMY TOUCHETTE
Dominating every stage, she steps on with her larger-than-life personality, which is a lot bigger than her blonde bouffant wig. This ambiguous female-female impersonator leaves a permanent memory within you and captures your heart as she has captured the hearts of the LGBTQIA community since the 1990s. The World Famous *BOB* is a neo-Burlesque icon as her shows and activism blur the lines of gender and sexuality, allowing her to inspire and create optimism for the community.
The World Famous *BOB* is described as “the ultimate postmodern gender story,” by the photographer Amy Touchette that gave up six years of her life to document *BOB*’s milestones on and off stage. The book Shoot the Arrow: A Portrait of The World Famous *BOB* displays *BOB*’s heartfelt story through raw and breath-taking black and white film photography that captures your attention instantly, allowing the audience to intimately discover the ups and downs of the world that she lives in.
The World Famous *BOB* currently lives in Austin, Texas, with her partner and their two baby poodles while carrying on her activism and serving as a Mother of the House of Famous. It was an absolute pleasure and honour to talk to *BOB*, to discover her past and get to know more about what inspired her to break away from a small-minded town in California to become the star is she today.
“With Pete”
From a young age, you have been pushing boundaries of conventional gender norms. How old were you when you were first interested in challenging gender norms?
I think the first time I realised that my gender wasn't a clear-cut path, I was about fifteen years old. My best friend and I were huge The Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees fans. We found out through some Teenybop death rock magazine from France, that a foreign exchange student had brought with them, that Siouxsie Sioux referred to Robert Smith as Fat BOB – and he called her Witch Janet. So, my best friend and I at the time quickly adopted these nicknames for ourselves and it was obvious that the female-presenting person should take Witch Janet and the assigned male at birth should take Fat *BOB* and so we did. The next day at school I looked at my best friend and he looked at me and said “You know I think you're Fat *BOB*” – I smiled and said “I think you're a Witch Janet!”
When I was fifteen, I changed my name to *BOB* because of Robert Smith from The Cure, but also because I felt more comfortable with a masculine sounding name. When I was nineteen, I dropped “Fat” as my first name and just went by *BOB*. I am now World Famous *BOB* which is my legal name – and off stage I go by *BOB* which is my last name. I think that's pretty much when I knew for sure as a young child that I didn't have language for gender. I was just attracted to really over-the-top performances of gender, like Dolly Parton, Charo, Cher and Donna Summer – and that's pretty much every gay man’s story, right?
Was there a definitive moment in your life that changed your perspective of gender and how you associate with it?
I would say that when I was fifteen and changed my name to *BOB*, that was definitely a definitive moment in how I was presenting myself to the rest of the world. It was 1985, I believe, and that was a couple of years before I saw Jimmy James on Phil Donahue. I was watching Solid Gold which was a weekly top ten hit[s show]. Different bands would come on and perform the top ten hits live, and Culture Club came out and performed; it was the first time I saw Boy George and I knew the moment I saw him that there was something warm and comfortable about his presence. My biological mother asked me “Is that a boy or a girl?” The moment she said that I took in his beautiful braids and the ribbons twisted in his hair and the face painted like a doll perched right above that Adam’s apple and to me that was so enticing and so beautiful. I immediately went into the bathroom locking the door and shaved off my eyebrows at age thirteen so that I could draw them on every day and look more like him. I think between that and then changing my name and seeing Jimmy James that was kind of the trifecta of when I decided to change my perspective of gender from that of the average person.
“Fishing for Martini Olives in Her Panties”
“The Limelight, Chelsea, No. 2”
What gave you the confidence to move to New York City and truly become the person you identify as now?
I grew up and spent my childhood years on a 115-acre farm on the outskirts of California and I always dreamt of moving to the big city. When I saw Fame the original motion picture I was around ten or eleven. I just couldn't believe how isolated I was physically from civilisation – it’s about a 45-minute drive into town for a gallon of milk and we didn't have a cow on the farm! Not only geographically and socially isolated but culturally too, and when I saw Fame; the scene where they go out into the streets and they’re dancing, Bruno’s dad is playing his son's music on the taxicab speaker and the city just comes to life. I saw that and I made up my mind right there – I'm moving to New York City! Even when I was fourteen and my father tried to teach me how to drive and after a few failed attempts I pulled over the truck and handed him back the keys and said thank you but no thank you! I'm going to live in New York City and take taxi cabs.
I feel like it was always this dream that I held on to, it was the future dream that I was building towards and I think before I went to New York City, it was critical for me to go to Hollywood in 1988, when I was sixteen, then I later moved up to San Francisco from about [19]91 to [19]94 before I moved to New York City and I think that gave me the confidence to really move to NYC. I always had the desire but being able to use other cities as training wheels was a really good choice for me, as I was able to create my drag persona in San Francisco before I got to New York City which was super helpful.
'“With Allison, Waiting to See Dolly Parton”
Where did you get your inspiration from, and what influenced your stage looks?
I drew inspiration and continue to from so many different people. As a young person it was from the album covers that were in my house that included Dolly Parton, Charo, Donna Summer, Blondie, and Stevie Nicks from Fleetwood Mac. I was so obsessed with Charo and Dolly Parton and came to a conclusion at a very young age that I wanted to look like a combination of them both – which I think reflects very strongly in my burlesque on stage presence. Before I started doing burlesque, I was a lot more rock and roll and more punk looking and I drew my inspirations for visuals from Divine as well as Nina Hagen. It was kind of a combination of those two with my own twist on it. One of my major inspirations arised in 1987 when I saw Jimmy James impersonate Marilyn Monroe on the Phil Donahue talk show. Not only did that inspire me and plant the seed, but he also inspired me to just go into the world and become whoever I wanted and becoming so essential for my Marilyn inspired looks later on in my career. My jaw just hit the floor… I was still living on the farm, and I had never seen someone so beautiful and with this ethereal energy around them. The fact that this person woke up and said I'm going to do this, I'm going to be this! It was very empowering to me and I still consider Jimmy one of my dearest inspirations.
With a lot of your inspiration coming from the LGBTQIA+ community, would you say that there is a sense of family and acceptance that welcomes individuals struggling with their identity?
My inspiration does come from the queer community which includes trans people and oftentimes is where the source of drag performers comes from – but not always – and there is a huge sense of family and acceptance in those communities. In any marginalised community you're going to have this strong sense of bond of connection, and I immediately found my chosen family when I was about fifteen and a half. I started going out more and I was able to break that cultural desert and find like-minded people who enjoy the same music as me, that was a great place for me to start. I think a chosen family in general is just this really beautiful thing where you have the opportunity to choose your family and they have the opportunity to choose you back. I think when somebody describes a family as blood-related that's fine if that empowers you and that works for you but if you are in a situation where your blood-related relatives who call themselves your family are giving you little or no acceptance or they're even hurting you for being who you truly are (!), you don't have to settle and there's this really beautiful power about a family that chooses each other. It's more special, to be honest. I found that the night clubs of San Francisco and New York City – they are the perfect places to look for and discover my family.
Circus Sideshow Dressing Room, Coney Island
Your life and performances have been an inspiration to others since the 1990s. Would you say there has been a shift in acceptance of the LGBTQIA+ community throughout the years or there is still a lack of support from other corners of society?
I feel like every step forward that the LGBTQIA+ community takes, people are looking to put us two steps back and becoming complacent with any victories we have achieved or any progress we have made towards having equal rights and equality. Issues on employment, HealthEquity and discrimination laws don’t help. In the trans community, especially for trans women of colour, it seems like they have done so much to push us forward. If you look up Marsha P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera these incredible trans activists from New York City, there's a video of Sylvia Rivera on stage talking at Stonewall; Stonewall in 1969 spurred the gay pride movement and I'm not saying that other events hadn't happened but the huge gay pride parades that everyone is familiar with, now exit as a result of that three-day long riot. But when Sylvia Rivera was up on stage and the entire gay audience booed her; it just shows that there was this extreme amount of disrespect for trans women, and specifically more towards trans women of colour.
I've worked at Sage which is the nation's first LGBTQ senior centre in New York City, and I spoke to a lot of the older generation that identifies as lesbians. They shared with me about the disconnect when the feminist movement moved forward and how lesbians were pushed aside because they weren't mainstream. They weren't the image that the Feminist’s wanted to project in order to become accepted and have their ideas adopted into the mainstream of society. I feel like the trans community, from what I've researched, feels a lot like that as well, and I think it's really incredible and about time that trans women of colour are getting the props and the exposure in a positive way, they deserve it! We just have to keep working on it.
I live in Austin, Texas, now; I work with a lot of non-profit organisations and I'm very politically involved. We just have to keep an eye on things because bills are trying to be passed constantly to take away LGBTQIA+ rights and rights that have not even been solidified within mainstream society. As things seem to get better, they don't get better evenly for everyone and we need to make sure that if one of us isn't getting those benefits none of us are getting those benefits! So, it’s up to us to make sure that there’s a goal for holding up all members of our community and not just the ones that are easy to digest for a TV audience.
“At the Mirror”
Detail of “Late Night”
The radical subgroup of feminism called ‘TURF’ have expressed their need of exclusion of trans women from women’s spaces and have opposed to the transgender rights legislation. They claim to explore the concept of womanhood, what are your views on womanhood and gender identity?
This is a simple answer to a complicated question. Gender identity is however a person identifies their gender and that is the choice for them to make and not somebody else; that person's choice should be respected by everyone. I actually have some experience working with this ‘TURF’ population when I worked in New York City. I called a meeting and identified people who had this attitude and sat them down with a piece of paper, and I just let them talk to me. I wrote down lines from what they said, and I just listened until they had exhausted that space. When there was a pause, I looked to each of them in the eyes and repeated the statements back to them word for word. I think if you identify as a woman and there is a women's event, you should be allowed to go and if cis-gendered women want to hold space specifically for cisgender women they should be allowed to do that and there should be no need to hurt other people in order to achieve that. It seems to me that it's a form of social stratification and anger which is a reactive emotion from fear. My experience with this group of people is that they were afraid of being left out, they were afraid of becoming outdated, they were afraid of being pushed out similarly as they were during the feminist movement and that was called the ‘Violet menace’ where the lesbian and dyke image wasn't what the feminist wanted to attach themselves to, so they were pushed out. It is not okay to take your pain and cause pain for somebody else and in any community to be disregarded by the people who hold power; it's unaccusable, it's completely unforgivable to suppress another person because you're feeling suppressed.
My views on womanhood and gender identity are simple in that if you identify as a woman that is what you are and your gender identity is a choice, not a handy-down sweater that somebody is going to force you to wear and unfortunately, our society doesn't really support that. There needs to be a community strength within our community and that fear of being erased or the fear of having your identity stripped because somebody else is expressing their true identity. There's no room for putting other people down, it just doesn't work.
“National Arts Club Drawing Class, Gramercy Park”
As an activist, what do believe next steps could be to generate lasting change within society?
As an activist, I think the next step to creating lasting change within our community and society is to hang out with people twenty years younger than you and twenty years older than you. I call this theory straddling the middle and to do it the best you can – the older your friends the better. It’s placing value on every stage of life and if we can have face to face; authentic connections, perhaps not around alcohol or at a bar or the internet, create this sense of hope to see examples of fully self-expressed happy elders that have survived the struggle. The younger generation provides a sense of joy and creativity in our community and they get to exchange these new ideas, as well as the people in the middle that form a support system.
I produce a monthly event that is free for people ages eighteen to 110 here in Austin, TX. They happen in the afternoon or early evening so it's easy for both groups, as the younger people can go out afterwards and older people who don't stay up late can still attend. This beautiful exchange of not only our history but also our future, we get to build our future together when we are in the same space. So, that's my suggestion to have authentic connections with not only people you know but with someone at least twenty years younger and twenty years older than you.
“Shoot the Arrow – A Portrait of The World Famous BOB” by Amy Touchette, UnGyve Limited Group
“Shoot The Arrow: A Portrait of The World Famous *BOB*” by Amy Touchette was a six-year project capturing every detail of your life. Was there an end goal that you and Amy wanted to achieve?
It was a very organic project. Originally, Amy emailed me asking to meet after seeing me perform with a plus-size dance troupe called The Glamazons at CBGBs in New York. When we met for coffee, she asked if she could photograph me for a couple of hours a week once a week no matter what I was doing and I could set boundaries if needed. I remember thinking what if I just do my laundry and she said that would be great! So, she showed me examples of her work and I really liked her energy, a lot of people had asked to photograph me out of drag or getting ready or out of my wig and I told them all no; including Annie Liebowitz. I felt like my character wasn’t baked enough to reveal the ingredients to the world. But when Amy approached me, I was at a place where I wanted to hand over my space to someone that I trusted. Even though I didn't know her, I trusted Amy right away. She just had this great energy that makes you feel very comfortable. I don't think we knew exactly what the outcome would be but she said we'll just see where it goes and it just kept going. Then she introduced the concept of the 24-hour shoot; where she would stay with me for 24 hours, the only boundaries I ever gave her were that she wasn't allowed to attend or drop me off at any of my twelve-step meetings or while I was using the bathroom – but everything else I was pretty open to. She would sleep in my bed and I'd wake up to her taking pictures, which I always found funny. The result is the published work, and also just this incredible friendship and respect that we have for each other, which is very surreal at times. It was such an honour to have such a great artist as Amy tell my story through her storytelling process.
“Winter Morning”
Did it take a while for you to get used to being constantly observed through the lens? Where there any overwhelming moments or perhaps moments you felt uplifted because of the photography?
As we were together for 24 hours a day, it naturally started to include any major life events. She would say if something really big is happening make sure to let me know so that I can schedule attending and I can photograph it – she even went to my first solo show; photographing every milestone. I guess as an artist, I was taking leaps of faith, so I didn't feel overwhelmed at all, it was very uplifting to have your own personal photographer whose work you love. Normally you would have the photographer at your beckoning call but that wasn't the case. The truth was we were collaborating on this project, she wanted to be present for all the aspects of my life and I just benefited in the hugest way to have this amazing artist capturing these moments. When I look through the book I'm stunned by the beauty and the honesty of it, not because it’s based on me, but if you just replaced me with anyone in those photos. I think there's just a truth to her work that is really refreshing and breath-taking. I feel very uplifted when I get to see those moments over again, especially as Amy was witnessing major relationships in my life, like my chosen son Jeff and working on this project. She had also fallen in love with Jeff, which everyone did, and she ended up dedicating the book to him as he ended up dying from AIDS. She came to Jones beach with me and Movistar, my poodle daughter, and josh my best friend to scatter Jeff’s Ashes. And to have those moments full of love and loss that we were experiencing caught in a beautiful frozen frame, it’s like they're floating in amber, these moments of pure love and to be able to flip through them and see that page after page I feel incredibly lucky.
“Arriving Home”
How did you feel at the end of the project?
I felt really overwhelmed, but in a positive way, in a sense of awe over what we had accomplished and what Amy had put together – considering that when we started the journey neither of us knew how it would end. To see the end result was fantastic and I think it hit me when she had the gallery exhibition. We had the books there to hand to people. I also felt a little bit of sadness. We of course still have our friendship and I love her dearly and I'm just really proud of our work.
Do you think the project helped people relate to you and aspire to be as fearless as you?
I'm scared all the time. The only way you can actually have courage is to feel scared but still do those things anyways. “Fearless” is definitely not the word I would use to describe myself; I have low self-esteem and I'm afraid all the time, but I search and seek out tools to help me move forward and to live the life I want regardless, with my fear and low esteem living alongside it. But it’s helped me create a system that allows me to take risks larger than what I'm comfortable with, based on it not killing me to do so in the past. I'm an ultimate self-confidence coach and that's why I have created my coaching practises because I know how hard it is and I am more than happy to show my skinned knees and give others the tools that have helped me to push through that.
“Makeup with Karl Giant”
What advice would you lend to someone that is struggling with their gender and identity and related issues?
The advice I can give to anyone who's dealing with gender or identity issues is don't try to do this alone and you're not alone. It may feel that way and you may be surrounded by a lack of understanding and you may not understand things yourself but there are trans lifelines, which you can find on the Internet and they are 24/7 live lifelines. You can call and just speak to someone; the people that operate the phone lines are trans, I think it's a very powerful resource and if you're reading this and you can support them, please donate money to them as they are doing really great work. There's also the Trevor Project which you can find online, and I would highly recommend contacting those places, you don't have to be suicidal to ask for help and it doesn't have to get to that point. You can call them and explain to them how you're feeling and let them know that you're looking for resources and that you don't want to go through this alone. We weren't meant to go through things alone as humans, we’re pack animals. My advice is to be kind to yourself no matter what you're thinking to know that thoughts and feelings pass, and they change. Just be kind to yourself and ask for help.
Have you been involved in any more projects or activist jobs?
I've been involved in endless projects… I'm an artist so I'm continuously creating, I'm enjoying creating spaces for people to make authentic face to face interactions happen, pre-Covid that's what I was doing here in Austin, so we've moved all of our events online during the pandemic. I started the Austin LGBTQIA as a fun force group. I've been able to gather different people and the average age range of attendees at our events is anywhere from 26 to 83 which I'm very proud of. That's my main project right now but I’m also trying to create support for a ‘Sage affiliate’ here in Austin TX which would be the first LGBTQ senior programme under the Sage name in Texas if we were able to achieve that.
What are your plans for the future?
My plan for the future is to grow my family. I'm the mother of the ‘House of Famous’ and our drag house motto is “Nice is the new fierce” and my plans for the future include watching my children take over the world with love and to add to that family! …while continuing to adopt special needs poodles – and eventually my partner and I would love to foster a nonbinary teenager and adopt them on their eighteenth birthday!
I am also in the process of writing out all of my stories and loosely storyboarding the experiences that I have had in my lifetime. The end goal is to create a collection of short stories, that I'm hoping to get published. Also, I'm working on a short story that will be illustrated by my drag son Matt Knife, who is a brilliant artist. Those are my artistic projects. Now that Covid has for the most part kicked up its heels and taken time off from its job of shutting everything down and stealing precious lives; I have looked forward to getting on planes again and travelling to cities all over the world and be able to MC at different types of events as well as lead my confidence workshops!
Thank you very much.
2 a.m., No. 1