Patti Smith “dressed more masculine … my approach was different. . . . I was playing up the idea of being a very feminine woman...”

“... while fronting a male rock band in a highly macho game. I was saying things in the songs that female singers didn’t really say back then. I wasn’t submissive or begging him to come back. I was kicking his a--, kicking him out, kicking my own a — too. My Blondie character was an inflatable doll but with a dark, provocative, aggressive side. I was playing it up but I was very serious.”

Writes Debbie Harry, quoted in “In her memoir, Debbie Harry gives an unvarnished look at her life in the punk scene” by Sibbie O’Sullivan (WaPo).

Also:

She also loved drag’s performative qualities, especially its attention to fashion and gesture, two practices Harry perfected while shaping her own image. Drag queens saw Harry’s display of femininity as drag, “a woman playing a man’s idea of a woman.” Harry’s words are more revealing: “I’m not blind and I’m not stupid: I take advantage of my looks and I use them.”

The idea of a woman in drag as a woman is useful, but you see that the book reviewer is not getting that idea from Harry’s memoir. Harry seems to want to critique the man’s idea of a woman: She got herself up like that but then she resisted — she kicked his ass. Maybe some drag queens are on the side of women, helping fight male domination, but the book reviewer doesn’t even notice the issue, let alone give any depth.

And let me just say that I’m amused by Harry’s offhanded reference to her own great beauty: “I’m not blind.”