Heavy music and its subcultures have always been closely related to sex, decadence, and rebellion. Starting with pioneers as The Rolling Stones, Jimmy Hendrix and The Doors in the 1960s, Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, AC/DC and KISS in the 1970s, they all have had the unifying pursuit of unattached love, musical success, and drugs, thus coining the timeless slogan “sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll”. Nevertheless, while proclaiming values as personal freedom, sexual liberation, and open-mindedness, the heavy music stays to a greater extent conservative, when it comes to sex and gender issues. Hard rock and all of its forms are considered as “essentially a male form of expression”: there are hardly few women as Patti Smith and Janis Joplin who managed to become “one of the boys” and to reach a cult status in time. In fact, the male connotation in the genre is present over all: starting from the macho look, through the lyrics, actually, the whole rock star attitude.
A deviation from this norm embodies glam rock and later glam metal subgenres which beginnings in the 1970s are marked by David Bowie with his high theatricality, the glittering Marc Bolan from T. Rex in the UK and by the controversial Jobriath and New York Dolls, who appeared almost at the same time in the USA. This book analyses various questions, concerning sex, gender and performance in glam rock music using theories from the fields of gender studies, media studies, feminism, and psychoanalysis. The book also discusses the socio-cultural context in which glam rock was born and the colossal shift in sexual politics, which it has brought with itself. Furthermore, the relationship to historical events, postmodern values and consumerism are taken into consideration.

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