“I was black, but not black; woman, but not woman…”: Grace Jones is 77, let us praise her graces
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">Grace Jones in "A View to a Kill" by John Glen (1985) WENN.COM/SIPA / WENN.COM/SIPA
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We're celebrating Miss Jones's 77th birthday. A look back at the life of the unclassifiable Jamaican singer, as she recounts her life in "I'll Never Write My Memoirs," where she recounts her childhood "crushed by the Bible," evokes her "first orgasm," details the slow construction of her "non-race and non-gender" image, and expresses her disdain for Rihanna.
In 1970, when she left America to settle in Paris, Grace Jones was not yet Grace Jones. She was 22 years old and she was not the glamorous, extraterrestrial singer, monumentalized by the photographer Jean-Paul Goude, nor the laughing icon who insisted that "all men should be penetrated."
After having been a go-go dancer or having tried in vain to become a bunny at "Playboy" in Philadelphia, the Jamaican, born in Spanish Town on May 19, 1948, became a model. Her modest claim to fame was to pose on the cover of "Ebony Woman", Billy Paul's LP. Because, in America, another black model, Beverly Johnson, a "healthy and docile" woman, says Jones with disdain, ousts all her rivals, grabs all the contracts (Johnson...
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