It’s probably safe to say the Eurovision Song Contest is no stranger to camp – both witting and unwitting – nor has it had a dearth of openly LGBT contestants in the past. Indeed one of the contest’s most famous winners, and perhaps the apogee of all Eurovision, was the Israeli transgender superstar Dana International in 1998 with her hi-NRG anthem “Diva” (her second entry for Israel, “Ding Dong”, in 2011 fared less well). And both singer and song were not without controversy, with many Israeli Orthodox Jews and other conservatives fiercely opposing her participation; on arrival at the contest in Birmingham, she needed a constant police escort.
This year’s Eurovision entry for Vienna, the 25-year-old drag queen Conchita Wurst, is performing a song, “Rise Like a Phoenix” that has more than a nod to “Diva”, with a touch of Bond theme. And while Wurst (real name Tom Neuwirth) is emphatically a gay male performer rather than being trans, his look is perhaps Eurovision’s most genderqueer yet: he’s a drag queen with a beard. This is not the comedy butch bloke in a frock look but something altogether more striking (and apparently hard for many people compute); Conchita’s look is what might be termed in the trade as “femme réal”, except for his face fuzz: feminine, alluring, pretty (his dark wig and smoky make-up also perhaps a homage to Dana International).
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