The Problematic Sex Appeal Of Dennis Rodman
'Am I allowed to fancy Dennis Rodman?'
That is the question I (like many) have been musing over continuously, since binge watching The Last Dance, Netflix’s smash hit documentary chronicling the lives of Michael Jordan and the nineties Chicago Bulls basketball dream team.
As someone with almost zero interest in sport, it amazed me the ease with which I was able to sit through ten hours of largely vintage basketball footage. Maybe it was the drama…or the awe-inspiring athleticism… or maybe, just maybe, it was the thought of catching sight of the 6ft 7 nail-painted enigma that is Dennis Rodman.
Where to start with this complex juggernaut of virility? With the neon cheetah print hair? Or perhaps the mint-green manicure? Or the way he can pull off a Lurex crop top and still look like a Greek god?
I can’t stop thinking about him. And looking at his dating history – Madonna, model Carmen Electra and actor Vivica A. Fox – it’s clear I’m in good company.
In recent weeks, I’ve found myself Googling ‘Dennis Rodman sexy’, ‘Dennis Rodman fashion’ and ‘Dennis Rodman Madonna’ more times than I’ve used Deliveroo, but it’s always been tinged with the same torn feelings of guilt.
So, what’s the issue exactly?
Dennis Rodman was, in many respects, the archetypal ‘bad boy.’ His infamous temper saw him head-butt various referees as well as attack camera men during games, one incident of which left him with a million-dollar fine from the NBA. He liked to party hard and loved the ladies even more. Oh and calls North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, a ‘friend for life’. (I kid you not.)
So far, so inappropriate.
In his autobiography Bad As I Wanna Be, Rodman claims that he refused to go down on Madonna during their famous 1996 fling – a fact that fills me with utter rage, especially in light of the fact this is a man who admitted to giving a radio interview while receiving a blow job back in 2013. (The fact that he’s broken his penis three times, as revealed in a Vice interview, offers some solace.)
But then comes the really problematic stuff.
By that, I mean the his multiple charges and accusations of domestic violence, from his three ex-wives (Annie Bakes, Carmen Electra and Michelle Moyer) and recent girlfriend Gina Peterson, in 2008. Along with other reports of groping cocktail waitresses and sexual assault. Carmen Electra cited being Dennis Rodman’s partner as an ‘occupational hazard’, whilst both were arrested on battery charges after a fight that got out of hand in 1999.
Rodman had a tough childhood. His father claimed to have had 29 kids with 16 different women and left the family home when Rodman was three, leaving his mother to raise him and his two younger sisters in a Dallas project. Thrown out by his mother in his teens – for lacking direction and bouncing between jobs after graduation – Rodman was then homeless for nearly two years, during which he slept on the streets and in friends’ backyards.
After a late growth spurt, he eventually made it to the NBA, but his troubles quickly caught up with him. It was only after his aborted suicide in 1993 (abandoned only because he fell asleep in his car) that he started his flamboyant reinvention.
As he wrote in his book, ‘I killed the Dennis Rodman that had tried to conform to what everybody wanted him to be.’
A true anomaly, particularly in the conservative world of sport, Rodman flipped the social constructs of masculinity with his cross-dressing, both on and off the NBA court. He’s collected championship trophies with sparkly talons, decked his hair out in every colour of the rainbow and he famously showed up to his own book signing in a horse-drawn carriage, wearing a white wedding gown, escorted by female ‘usherettes’ dressed in tuxedos.
‘Cross dressing is just like everything else in my life: I don’t think about it, I just do it,’ Rodman has said with all the confidence of a man who keeps a pink Harley Davidson and pickup truck in his garage. (True. Story.)
‘To hang out in a gay bar or put on a sequinned halter top makes me feel like a total person and not just a one-dimensional man,’ Rodman continues.
In some ways, Rodman was hugely progressive. At the time, hardly anyone other than the New Romantics (like Boy George) and David Bowie dabbled in make-up and women’s blouses. And especially no one black, bar Ru Paul. Even in 2020, I challenge you to think of a sports hero so comfortable in the archetypal feminine.
There’s something about being so at-home in his eclectic taste and his complete lack of shame that couldn’t be sexier. Along with the bravery of expressing his true self whilst finding his fame in one of the ‘manliest’ sports in the world.
The ignorant amongst us will dismiss his cross-dressing as clear signs of being in the ‘closet’, but it’s about so much more than that. He flaunts a powerful retort against the masculine NBA image the sports world tried to control him with.
Did you know he was the first man to go naked for PETA in their 2005 ‘Think Ink, Not Mink’ campaign? Early in his career, Rodman was also known for driving into downtown Detroit handing out $100 bills to the homeless.
I’m absolutely not passing over domestic violence issues because he’s an animal lover or empathises with the homeless, but fancying Dennis Rodman is complicated.
He is almost impossible to define, he refuses to allow it. Rodman confuses stereotypical constructs of masculinity and it makes me weak.
Should he preposition me after reading this, I don’t think I could overlook his misdemeanours (sorry Dennis), but as for fantasising? Thank god for Google images.
As luck would have it, I have now acquired his phone number, forwarded by a friend’s husband who slid into Rodman’s DMs (I told you the basketball star's appeal is far reaching). It could be the pent up sexual frustration from lockdown talking – because let’s be honest, he’s looking a little worse for wear lately – but life feels a little more exciting knowing that he’s just a FaceTime away.
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