Dennis Rodman Bad As I Wanna Be
BASKETBALL'S star rebounder and notorious cross-dresser certainly plays his bad-boy image to the hilt. But Dennis Rodman is not as bad as he pretends. His phenomenal success -- he's a media sensation and his book, part memoir, part transvestite dressing guide, has been Number One on the New York Times best-seller list for four weeks now -- shouldn't shock anyone.
Rodman's persona is the unsurprising product of a culture that equates anything bizarre with artistic merit or genuine individualism. Karen Finley smears chocolate over her naked body -- and critics burble as if she were displaying talent of a degree unknown since Michelangelo. The Crying Game, a perverse movie in which a guy discovers that his girlfriend has a little something extra, is treated like a cinematic masterpiece. Enter Dennis Rodman. The Chicago Bulls forward paints his nails pink and dyes his hair orange and all of a sudden -- to use his description -- he's a "real person."
Rodman milks that carefully crafted persona -- bad boy/pretty girl -- for all it's worth. Even if some of the comments he has received are wounding, Mr. Rodman, who makes $2.5 million per year, can cry all the way to the bank -- and wipe his smeared mascara once he is safely inside.
Equally disingenuous is his claim to be flouting social conventions. If that were what he wanted to do, Rodman might wave a Confederate flag at his next Chicago Bulls game. Or next time he's hanging out with his buddies at a gay bar (he frequents but does not partake) he might comment on the benefits of reparative therapy that has allowed homosexuals to shed their ways and live as heterosexuals.
If his book were simply a memoir cum make-up guide it would be a little less irritating. But Rodman seems intent on infusing his every action with grand significance -- and assumes that his banal statements render him basketball's philosopher king: "I feel I have the power to express my sensitivity to everybody in the world."
Quite an ambition for someone from such humble beginnings. Raised in a Dallas housing project, Rodman won a Southeastern Oklahoma University basketball scholarship in 1983 and was drafted by the Detroit Pistons three years later. After helping his team win two championships, he was traded to the San Antonio Spurs in 1993 and sent to the Chicago Bulls two years later. Although Rodman has played rough from the beginning of his career -- he frequently head-butts referees and other players -- his trademark cross-dressing came much later. Indeed, as Mr. Rodman tells it, he was contemplating suicide in April 1993. Then he decided to be his own person, and the real Dennis Rodman was born.
Now, he does his own thing over the alleged objections of the NBA -- particularly commissioner David Stern. In a bit of race-baiting (at which he is adept despite complaining that he feels alienated from his fellow blacks), Rodman says that the NBA's white commissioner "didn't come from where I came from" and therefore can't understand his off-court antics. It's not clear that people in Rodman's old neighborhood would be any more understanding of guys who use eyeliner.
Rodman claims that none of the "pretty boys" of the NBA can market their teams the way he can. As a "pretty girl," though, he's quite a draw -- which makes him valuable to both his team and the NBA. People want "something different . . . From the first time I colored my hair I knew that. I walked out into the court in San Antonio with bleach-blond hair, and right away I saw how much those people loved what Dennis Rodman was giving them."
Part of Rodman's persona is his penchant for expressing homosexual fantasies, though he himself is heterosexual. (Indeed, the book details his stint as Madonna's boy toy, plus his dalliances with white basketball groupies.) He attributes his liking for the company in gay bars to his empathy with folks outside the mainstream.
Rodman claims that just as he visits gay bars without caring what people think, so he accouters himself regardless of others. So what the hell, when Rodman hits the road he always packs some women's clothes. Perhaps a "halter top" or "leggings" or "tight leather shorts." (But never underwear. "I don't do lingerie." Every girl has her limits.)
Fortunately for the mascara industry, Rodman will probably keep his bad-boy/pretty-girl image for a while. Why shouldn't he? Given that dying your hair green is a mark of distinction according to prevailing social mores, Rodman conforms quite well.
Underneath his sequined halter top he's just a man in a grey flannel suit.
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