Second Type Women - Amanda Lear

Amanda Lear has always been very enigmatic about her youth. She was probably born Alain Tapp in Saigon (or France) in 1939, but it might have been Hong Kong in 1941 or 1945 or even (as she now claims) November 1948. She's apparently of mixed parentage, at various times she's claimed to have British, French and Indonesian fathers, and English and Russo-Oriental mothers. The only thing really certain is that she was destined to become another of the gorgeous young transsexuals to emerge in France during the '60's, and was later was an icon of the 1970s'.

After an education [supposedly] in Switzerland and England, by 1959 at latest Amanda had moved to France - still a tall, gangly and rather Asian looking boy. Radically transformed by hormones and a nose job, she first became publicly noticed in 1960 when working as an exotic showgirl and stripper known as Peki d'Oslo at the Le Carrousel revue in Paris. Her looks attracted the eye of Salvador Dali, and she was to became his regular companion for many years.

Some pictures of Peki d'Oslo (later Amanda Lear) during
her Paris days in the early 1960's.

In 1963 she had her sex change operation, carried out in Casablanca by Dr Bourou, it was probably paid for by Salvador Dali. She soon afterwards moved to England where she soon became part of the trendy "Chelsea Girl" set. Her hair now a bleached blond, in 1965 she was signed by a model agency and was soon catwalking for top designers and appearing on magazine covers, but her modelling career was eventually to be hampered by rumours of her transsexuality.

(Left) Top photographer Brian Duffy described Amanda as an "incredible model".
(Right) Amanda doing a photo shoot for Nova Magazine in the early 1970's.

Supporting Ziggy at the London Marquee, 18-20 October 1973

In early 1973 Bryan Ferry saw the supposedly 25-year old (making her pre-teen in her showgirl days!) Amanda on stage modelling a collection for fashion designer Ossie Clarke, and invited her to feature as the cover girl for Roxy Music's new album "For Your Pleasure" (right). Their relationship apparently concluded with a brief engagement. Amanda was soon mixing with the likes of the Rolling Stones and Elton John, and in 1974 met David Bowie and became one of several beautiful transsexual women (Romy Haag was another) featuring large in his love life at that time, indeed they lived together for a year and he is one of her few admitted "lovers".

Newly weds Amanda and Alian in 1979 Amanda became part of David Bowie's stage act, and he helped start off her music career. In 1977 she signed her own record contract, and in the late 1970's she became a huge disco star on mainland Europe in her own right as her first two Albums - the 1977 I Am A Photograph and the 1978 Sweet Revenge - and the singles released from them sold in millions around the world. In one of her hits, Fabulous Lover, Love Me, she sings "the surgeon made me so well that you could not tell that I was not somebody else".

Paparrazi photo of Amanda, 1982 After her marriage to Frenchman Alain-Phillippe Malagnac in 1979 (right), she began to vigorously deny her transsexuality. Apparently as proof, she posed nude for several men's magazines (including Playboy in 1980) and probably deliberately allowed paparazzi photographers to frequently catch her topless and bottomless (left). While this certainly proved to her delighted fans that she still had an amazing body even [almost certainly] in her '40's, her case was very unconvincing given indirect evidence such as her masculine sounding voice, lack of children, failure submit to any medical gender verification tests that would prove her case outright, lack of any offered documentation (e.g. her birth certificate); and also more direct evidence such as old photographs and the statements of those (particularly April Ashley, and arguably David Bowie and Salvador Dali) who knew her in the 1960's & 1970's to be a transsexual.

In the '80's and '90's she continued to record and perform her music, although she was unable to repeat the success of her early disco albums. However she successfully made new career's both as a painter and as a TV host.

Tragedy struck Amanda in December 2000 when her home in France burnt down, killing her husband and destroying many of her and Dali's paintings.

In February 2007 she refused to be on stage with, or even near, transsexuals at a major gay event in Milan, Italy - thus causing significant bad feeling and the organisers to hint at the "ambiguity" of her past.