Jones’ fearsome image

Grace Jones is deliberately intimidating, says Tom Doyle in Mojo. With her crewcut, wild makeup, and fierce teeth, the statuesque singer and actress makes more conventional people nervous, and she knows it. Disney has reportedly banned her from their theme parks because she’s been known to flash her breasts at impromptu moments; she’s also gone to parties wearing nothing but jewelry around her neck. “It was really, I guess, just freeing myself,” she says. “I guess exhibitionism is what you’d call it.” Jones says her outrageous persona is a reaction to her strict upbringing in Jamaica as a preacher’s daughter. “I realized that I was knowing nothing of life. I decided as soon as I could get away, I was going to live and discover what life is.” So in the 1970s, after coming to the U.S., she plunged into the downtown club scene in New York and never looked back. “I’m not scary at all, but let’s say I’ve got my own vision, I’ve got my own ways. I would not be in the situation that I grew up in, the church, which puts the female always in an inferior position. So I’m butch. Tough. The female is still there. But I don’t take no s---, you know what I mean. Because I learned how to fight like a man and play like a man and”—she howls with laughter— “love like a man!”

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