Laverne Cox

In high school.

But I did start wearing girls' clothes that I would purchase from the thrift stores in Mobile and in Birmingham.

And it was such a fun, wonderful exploration.

And it felt like an extension of, I think it was in high school, I had read about Oscar Wilde.

Oh.

You talked about creating yourself as a work of art, and I loved that as a concept, you know, and I think it was... Was this also around the time when, I mean, androgynous musical artists were pretty big?

Was this like the 80s?

It was certainly the 80s.

It was post, like, the heyday of Culture Club.

Culture Club's first album came out in 1983, so I would have been 11 years old, and that was like...

Boy George was pivotal for me in my childhood and Annie Lennox and just the whole British New Wave that was filled with androgyny and gender bending and of all sorts.

Even looking back at old episodes of Soul Train, there was some real gay stuff going on.

The 80s, like stuff that would never fly right now, got through in the 80s.

Even Jermaine Stewart, who is a wonderful artist, we don't have to take our clothes off to have a good time.

I don't know if he was openly gay.

He unfortunately passed away in the late 80s or early 90s.

He had HIV AIDS.

And then his song was sampled later by LM AFO, I think.

But his hair was pressed out and it was laid.

The hair was laid.