Vogue at 25

Twenty Five years ago today Madonna released her mega hit Vogue. There was no escaping it. The song swept over the planet like a plague and secured Madonna as the God Mother of the gay rights movement. I wrote about this in Stonewall to Obama. Here is an excerpt…

Vogue

I was one of the most beautiful boys in Boston – in New York I was just another average shirtless muscle boy hanging out on the pier. I’d sit in the sun and watch the endless parade of beautiful men as they glided by. I was going to have to up my game if I wanted to make it here. Time to hit the gym!

My new position with New York Sports Clubs allowed me to work out at the best gyms in NYC. At the time they only had 6 clubs. But, the management was very ambitious and intent on dominating the fitness world. That energy was very attractive to me. I bought into the NYSC brand hook, line and sinker. Of course, when they learned that I was willing to teach fitness classes at any time of day and had unlimited energy, they began sending me to cover classes that other instructors didn’t want. I became one of the leading fitness instructors in NYC.

In 1990 there was a new fitness trend emerging. Step aerobics was a low impact alternative to traditional aerobics. Innovator Gin Miller was instructed by a doctor to step up and down on a milk crate after a knee injury. The rest is history. Gin partnered with Reebok to create an innovative and exciting low impact workout that swept across the globe. It was completely new and NYSC sent a few of their top instructors to a workshop to get Step certified. The idea of rhythmically stepping up and down on a platform seemed kind of crazy to me. But, of course, as usual, the universe positioned me to be in the right place at the right time to participate in a huge cultural shift. Step allowed anybody to participate in fitness classes. You didn’t even need to have rhythm. You just had to be able to climb stairs. Suddenly Step classes were filled to overflowing with chubby grandmothers, nerdy secretaries and even a few brave men. My sense of style, rhythm and great music allowed me to become one of the city’s best Step instructors. Soon, there were waiting lists for my classes. In the era before online reservations, people would call the gym first thing in the morning to secure a spot in my Step classes. I started picking up more and more classes and eventually found myself a full time NYSC employee. I also was a student at FIT. So, my body became hard from all the working out and I began making all my own clothes. I was becoming a style icon of sorts, if only in the fitness world.

The amazing thing about this period of my life was that I was completely oblivious to what was going on around me. I was so focused on fitness and fashion, I didn’t see that people were dying all around me. I lived in the West Village which was AIDS Ground Zero. I was surrounded by a plague and didn’t even see it. Sometimes, denial can be a powerful tool. I busied myself with school, working out and, of course going out dancing. I was 27 years old, with so much life to live. The universe was my oyster. All my desires, combined with a little elbow grease, became reality. I felt omnipotent!

One of the best songs for Step class was Madonna’s ‘Vogue.’ It was a single from her Dick Tracy soundtrack album ‘I’m Breathless’ and was released on March 20, 1990. Madonna was inspired by the vogue dancers and choreographers Jose and Luis Xtravaganza from the Harlem “House Ball” community. They introduced her to “Vogueing” at the NYC club Sound Factory. If you were young and into dancing, Sound Factory was the club for you. Every Saturday night at around 2 a.m. the club was filled with beautiful muscle boys, drag queens and artsy straight people. Around 4 a.m. the drag queens would do their Vogue runway slams. It was a fierce competition to show everyone who was the best Voguer. This was where the dance trend, born in Harlem, met the mainstream and hit the pavement. Madonna took the dance, repackaged it and capitalized on it. ‘Vogue’ became THE sound of the early 90’s.

‘Vogue’ is an upbeat dance-pop-house song. It combines deep house influences with a contemporary track. 70s disco and the spoken section, in which Madonna names various golden-era Hollywood stars are what make Vogue unforgettable. The song is about losing yourself on the dance floor and has an undeniable theme of escapism. The newly minted Chelsea Boy, a gay boy living in the gay ghetto of NYC’s Chelsea neighborhood, and building up a protective exoskeleton armor of muscle at the Chelsea Gym, was the Sound Factory customer. The Chelsea Boys were fighting for their lives. Developing huge muscles was an attempt to protect these scared little boys from a world of hatred, fear and disease. After all, it was not such a great time to be gay! Most of your friends were either dead or sick and the government wasn’t doing anything. It was only a matter of time before the grim reaper would be knocking at your door. Why not go out dancing and leave a buff corpse? We went to the Sound Factory every Saturday night to escape the devastation of AIDS. For a few hours, at least, that scary world would fade away and was replaced by beauty, fashion, music and muscle. ‘Vogue’ remains one of Madonna’s biggest international hits, topping the charts in over 30 countries, including Australia, Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. It was the world’s best-selling single of 1990, selling over six million copies. Madonna, already a huge gay icon, became the god mother to the Chelsea Boy. Jose and Luis Xtravaganza would tour with her and help choreograph the ‘Blond Ambition Tour.’ ‘Vogue’ remains one of the most recognizable songs ever written. It continues to be played in nightclubs and, of course, wedding receptions.

* This is an excerpt from my book Stonewall to Obama. Get your copy here.