Bill Arning

“The beauty and magnitude of a diva's voice resides, so the iconography suggests, in her deformity. Her voice is beautiful because she herself is not-and her ugliness is interpreted as a sign of moral and social deviance. Reading biographies of divas, I can't ignore the repeated references to physical flaws-for example, Benedetta Pisaroni's "features horribly disfigured by small-pox," prompting spectators to shut their eyes "so as to hear without being condemned to see." Audiences speculated that Maria Malibran was not anatomically a woman, but an androgyne or hermaphrodite-an aberrant physique to match her voice's magic power.”
― Wayne Koestenbaum, Queen's Throat: Opera, Homosexuality And The Mystery Of Desire

“At the height of his fame, he would reassure his audience: “You’re not alone—give me your hands” [61], and then stretch out his own emaciated arms toward them, coyly allowing the tips of his fingers to graze theirs for an instant, before he withdrew, keeping their tantalizing dream of contact alive while remaining ultimately aloof and alone.”
― Peter Doggett, The Man Who Sold the World: David Bowie and the 1970s