In
her heyday in the 1980s, pop singer Samantha Fox would
easily have won the poll for Female Celebrity Least Likely to
Come Out as a Lesbian.
Fox’s career has seemed like a homage to heterosexuality,
or at least an indulgence of male fantasies. She has long cultivated
her image as a sexed-up yet accessible blonde girl-next-door
who oozes sex appeal, but knows how to toe the Madonna/whore
line without crossing over.
She
was doing this a dozen years before Britney, and without finding
it necessary to broadcast either her virginity or her affection
for Jesus.
So
Fox--whose seventh album, Angel With an Attitude, releases
in the U.S. today--shocked many a fan in 2003 when she acknowledged
that she and her manager, Myra Stratton, had been sharing a
home for reasons unrelated to business or finances.
Since
then, Fox has begun talking more openly about her sexuality,
now occasionally even using the "L" word in reference
to herself.
Born
in London’s East End in 1966, Fox became an overnight
sensation after appearing topless in the infamous Page Three
section of Britain’s Sun tabloid. She was just
16 years old. She had already nabbed second place in a (fully
clothed) beauty contest—the Face Shape of ’83 competition—when
photographers noticed she had other assets that the camera would
love.
Standing
just five-foot-one, Fox wasn’t exactly built for the runway.
But the photogenic teenager, who reportedly boasted a 36DD-23-36
figure (and that’s without surgical alteration), quickly
set off on a successful adventure as a professional model. Soon
she was adorning pinup after pinup. She joins Princess Diana
and Margaret Thatcher, according to her official website, as
“Britain’s most photographed women.”
After
four years of vamping for the camera, Fox completed her contractual
obligations and took her act to the stage and studio. She wasn’t
the only model to rustle up a successful singing career in the
late ’80s--Whitney Houston was another who did so at roughly
the same time. But, more like Vanessa Williams, Fox was already
hugely famous (and famously disrobed) by the time she launched
her musical career.
In
any event, making music was more of a homecoming than a foray
for Samantha. She had already been traipsing across stages since
she was a small child, attending a theater school at age five
and appearing in a BBC-televised play when she was ten. She
had already signed a record deal by age 15, but then was whisked
off into the world of modeling before she had the chance to
launch her musical career.
Fox
has arguably always been more notable for her figure
than for her musical talent. But while her music may not share
the serious merit of, say, Dolly Parton’s, in the ’80s,
Fox’s records were selling like crazy. And while Britain’s
Channel Four now lists her debut album, Touch Me (1986),
as one of the “100 Worst Pop Records” of all time,
the title song is still a club classic. It reached the top five
in the U.S. and was one of her many Top Ten hits in both the
U.K. and the U.S.
Touch
Me is also one of four Samantha Fox albums that clinched
number one spots in 15 countries.
Fox’s
fame has spread worldwide and she has toured throughout Europe
as well as in Australia, Israel, South America, and Asia. In
India she playing to crowds of about 70,000 in three cities,
breaking a record held by Bruce Springsteen. She describes herself
as the “first Western female to appear in a Bollywood
movie” and was even presented with an award by Mother
Theresa. She was banned from singing at a 1996 charity concert
in Calcutta, according to Lycos.com, because local police feared
she might cause a riot.
Legions of fans have been entranced by Samantha’s songs,
including such hits as "Naughty Girls (Need Love Too)"
and "I Wanna Have Some Fun." Other provocatively titled
songs from her musical catalog include "Do Ya Do Ya (Wanna
Please Me)", "I Surrender (To the Spirit of the Night)",
and "Hurt Me Hurt Me (But the Pants Stay On)". Not
all of her song titles include parenthetical phrases; there
is also "Pleasure Zone", "Deeper" and "All
Day and All Night". But these, too, typify Samantha Fox’s
piquant style
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