Definitely a tongue-in-cheek song. Many cultures systematically tilt the power structure to men. (Some may opine "all" cultures do, but that's a different forum.) Hence the reference to "you can buy a home of your own" and how you can "learn to drive and everything" if your a boy, as these are privileges for men only in these cultures. But note how the song comes across like a sales pitch for boyhood? Like a guy needs to be convinced that being a guy is great? It seems almost like Bowie's addressing guys who over-compensate because they actually have some deep insecurities about their masculinity. The video seems to hint at this: Bowie dresses as three different drag queens, two of whom walk down the runway then suddenly rip of their wigs and smear their lipstick revealing that they are really guys. Oddly enough, the third drag queen stays in drag as an elderly old woman. Is that a commentary on how, with the effects of age, men and women just kind of end up gender neuter? Or was Bowie just having too much of a laugh as that last character to cast it off?
Definitely a tongue-in-cheek song. Many cultures systematically tilt the power structure to men. (Some may opine "all" cultures do, but that's a different forum.) Hence the reference to "you can buy a home of your own" and how you can "learn to drive and everything" if your a boy, as these are privileges for men only in these cultures. But note how the song comes across like a sales pitch for boyhood? Like a guy needs to be convinced that being a guy is great? It seems almost like Bowie's addressing guys who over-compensate because they actually have some deep insecurities about their masculinity. The video seems to hint at this: Bowie dresses as three different drag queens, two of whom walk down the runway then suddenly rip of their wigs and smear their lipstick revealing that they are really guys. Oddly enough, the third drag queen stays in drag as an elderly old woman. Is that a commentary on how, with the effects of age, men and women just kind of end up gender neuter? Or was Bowie just having too much of a laugh as that last character to cast it off?