The Androgyne: Grace Jones

"Back in college, I used to live with an adorable gay boy who was obsessed with avant garde R&B chanteuse Grace Jones. I heard Miss Grace’s music day and night and I grew to love it as well. The famously androgynous Grace broke both race and gender barriers."
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There's always been more to Ms Jones than singing, of course. (Or modelling. Or acting.) Since the late Seventies, her muscular, athletic body and sculpted features have achieved a kind of celebrity status mainly thanks to her French photographer boyfriend, Jean-Paul Goude, who delighted in portraying his squeeze as an "exotic" jungle creature. Other designers and snappers glossed her massive lips, burnished her coal-black skin, topiarised her luxurious hair like a garden hedge, zipped her into a thousand S&M and dominatrix costumes. Long before Melanie Brown turned up in the Spice Girls, Grace Jones was Scary: lanky, androgynous, feral, sensuous, leather-clad and amazingly cruel around the eyes, she held the promise of cold blood, hot sex and extreme peril.

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Where Are They Now? -- Grace Jones
Category: Music News Posted 239 days ago by NewsHound
Then: Striking supermodel Grace Jones was a disco inferno back in the day -- the late `70s  vogueing before vogueing was cool at Studio 54 and being famous largely for being famous, as a muse to Andy Warhol. She did have successful records like "Portfolio" and ... more"Muse" that were wildly popular on the dance floor. She continued to record, having some success in the United States and United Kingdom with discs like "Slave to the Rhythm."

Now: Still ravishingly androgynous-looking, Jones has continued to record, though several albums she reportedly finished in the early `90s have never been released. She got herself banned from all Disney properties by flashing her breasts at Disney World in 1998 (oops!). She reportedly finished a new album in 2008 titled "Corporate Cannibal," but we`re still waiting for it, patiently, while nightclubbing.
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"Even her best friend says her name equals danger. She's the world's most daunting diva, who once pummelled 007 in hot pants and whacked Russell Harty in what is still described as television's most shocking moment.

Grace Jones is a living legend, and a scary one at that. Only last week, there was a tangle when she demanded to be taken to her seat seconds before the James Bond world premiere of Quantum Of Solace began.

Then, at the first-night party, she became incandescent with rage, shouting and shrieking, after a hapless man trod on her voluminous vintage fur coat.

She famously keeps interviewers waiting for hours - when she's not conducting them from her bath, that is. But when I arrive, early, at her local Italian riverside restaurant in Southwest London, she is already in situ. This is the first shock of the evening.

Grace has been an icon in the music and fashion world ever since her former partner and collaborator, French photographer Jean-Paul Goude, transformed her from a human being into an androgynous alien, with cropped military hair and angled shoulders, poised like a panther ready to pounce."