Cynthia Nixon: Bald and gay by choice, bisexual by birth

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Cynthia Nixon would like to clarify: She might be choosing to partner currently with a woman rather than a man, but she had no choice in the matter when it came to being bisexual in the first place.

Nixon, who is currently rocking a bald head as the lead in ‘Wit’ at New York City’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, has found herself at the center of controversy recently after saying that, for her, homosexuality is a choice. Now she has parsed her words more carefully to be clear about exactly what she meant.

Initially, in a Jan. 19 interview with the New York Times Magazine, she defended her statements, explaining, ‘I gave a speech recently, an empowerment speech to a gay audience, and it included the line ‘I’ve been straight and I’ve been gay, and gay is better.’ And they tried to get me to change it, because they said it implies that homosexuality can be a choice. And for me, it is a choice. I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me.’

‘I am very annoyed about this issue,’ Nixon told The Times. ‘Why can’t it be a choice? Why is that any less legitimate?’

A few days afterward, she explained further. ‘I don’t pull out the ‘bisexual’ word because nobody likes the bisexuals,’ she told the Daily Beast in a Jan. 24 article. ‘Everybody likes to dump on the bisexuals. ... We get no respect.’

Did we mention she’s shaved her head for ‘Wit,’ in which her character deals with ovarian cancer? And that the hairstyle is a shocking transformation from her red-haired Miranda days on ‘Sex and the City’?

Buzz about her current work notwithstanding, Nixon finally on Monday issued a statement exclusively to the Advocate, putting her beliefs in black and white in case anyone wanted to interpret them, she said, ‘in a strictly legal context.’ Her statement, which can be read in full at the Advocate, includes this explanation:

‘While I don’t often use the word, the technically precise term for my orientation is bisexual. I believe bisexuality is not a choice, it is a fact. What I have ‘chosen’ is to be in a gay relationship.

‘As I said in the [New York] Times and will say again here, I do, however, believe that most members of our community — as well as the majority of heterosexuals — cannot and do not choose the gender of the persons with whom they seek to have intimate relationships because, unlike me, they are only attracted to one sex.’

So yeah, back to Nixon’s hairstyle, or lack-of-hair style -- was the shaved head, instead of wearing a bald cap, a good choice?

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-- Christie D’Zurilla
twitter.com/dzurillaville