Why is barbara streisand a gay idol

There's barely an episode of Glee that doesn't feature Streisand's music, name, or image. You don’t let a legend perspire – and Barbra Streisand is the epitome of an American treasure: a consummate singer with a timeless mezzo-soprano; an Emmy, Oscar and Grammy award winner; and the woman who stole hearts in A Star is Born.

The flip side of narcissism, of course, is self-doubt, and for Streisand, the two have always gone hand in hand. Nearly half a century later, Streisand is suddenly cool again. Not long into the interview, a makeup artist waiting in the wings pats any remnants of forehead sweat.

In the early s, when Streisand was just starting out, gay audiences instinctively recognized something very familiar about her, a shared sensibility. But Streisand has never been an extrovert performer -- a Liza Minnelli -- thriving in the spotlight.

And that is why, in a world where the spotlight is too often the raison d'etre for celebrities, Streisand still matters. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. Inwhenever a teenage singer from Brooklyn named Barbra Streisand appeared on the television talk show PM East, gay bars all across the country turned off their music so their patrons could watch.

Do gay people like Barbra, too? Also next year, if the showbiz gods are kind, Streisand will star in a new version of Gypsy. No – I love being an icon to anybody. Equal rights, you know! I didn't know that. Instead, she wanted to become an actress, and a successful one, where she could choose parts that would allow her to flee an unhappy childhood and become somebody else.

And this was hardly a new phenomenon.

Interview Barbra Streisand on

For gay men, Streisand was fabulousness defined. Every album she frets over, and this latest one will surely be no exception. At the clubs, Duck Sauce's irrepressibly catchy mix, "Barbra Streisand," rules the dance floor.

Even her detractors concede she has a point on that score. Instead, from the beginning, she took fame on her terms. Streisand was unpredictable. SR: Yeah. In “My Name Is Barbra,” Streisand's connection and allyship with the LGBTQ community are a through line in the memoir.

To us, a gay icon. BS: He doesn't see me as an icon. After a short stint of recent sold. That was only logical, given that her sensibility had been nurtured by gay men, after all. She didn't want "to be a star having to sign autographs or being recognized and all that," she pointed out.

He sees me as his mother who touches his hair too much. Good reviews were always quickly forgotten, but the bad ones she could recite nearly verbatim, because part of her thought they were the only ones telling the truth.

And this week she releases a new album, her 64th, What Matters Most. And, as always, what the gays first identified as special eventually became the thing everybody wanted, and it wasn't long before Barbra Streisand was the biggest star in the world. Funny Girl, the show that launched her Broadway stardom inis being revived, and next year her road-trip comedy with Seth Rogen, Guilt Trip, is set to hit theaters.

Excellence had been the goal -- not the adulation that came with it, not grown men bursting into tears. Me too. Barbra, how do you feel about the label of "gay icon" – and do you think your own son, Jason Gould, thinks of you as one?

When she released her last album, Love is the Answer, inhundreds of fans thronged a private concert she gave in New York's Greenwich Village. Yet the very fact that Streisand was always questioning herself, that she was never satisfied with her work or, frequently, with the work of othersensured that she never settled for anything less than the best -- though sometimes she seemed to overshoot the best and expect perfection, especially from herself.

When she was very young, hunched down in a Brooklyn movie theater, watching Gone With the Wind, she wasn't dreaming of being a glamorous movie star in the "usual sense," she'd explain. The unlikely fame that Streisand grabbed for herself 50 years ago has endured.

Part of the reason she didn't have pierced ears, Streisand explained to Oprah Winfrey, was because "each ear is a different length, so how could you possibly put a hole in exactly the same place on different ears? Inwhenever a teenage singer from Brooklyn named Barbra Streisand appeared on the television talk show PM East, gay bars all across the country turned off their music so their patrons could.

Grown men cried when they caught a glimpse of her.