Chastity Bono
Encyclopedia
Chaz Salvatore Bono is an American transgender
advocate, writer
, actor
, and musician
. Bono is the only child of American entertainers Sonny
and Cher
, though each had children from other relationships. Bono is a transgender man
.
In 1995, after several years of being outed
as lesbian
by the tabloid press, Bono publicly self-identified as such in a cover story in a leading American gay monthly magazine, The Advocate
. Bono went on to discuss the process of coming out
to oneself and to others in two books. Family Outing: A Guide to the Coming Out Process for Gays, Lesbians, and Their Families (1998) includes the author's coming out account. The memoir, The End of Innocence (2003) discusses the author's outing
, music career, and partner Joan's death from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Between 2008 and 2010, Bono underwent female-to-male gender transition
. A two-part Entertainment Tonight
feature in June 2009 explained that Bono's transition had started a year before. In May 2010, Bono legally changed gender and name. A documentary on Bono's experience, Becoming Chaz, was screened at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival
and later made its television debut on OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network.
and Sonny Bono
of the pop duo Sonny & Cher
, stars of a TV variety show on which the young child often appeared. Bono was named Chastity Sun Bono after the film Chastity
, which was produced by Sonny and in which Cher (in her first feature film) played a bisexual
woman.
Bono came out to both parents as lesbian at age 18. In Family Outing, Bono wrote that, "as a child, I always felt there was something different about me. I'd look at other girls my age and feel perplexed by their obvious interest in the latest fashion, which boy in class was the cutest, and who looked the most like cover girl Christie Brinkley
. When I was 13, I finally found a name for exactly how I was different. I realized I was gay."
, and percussion
. Other members were Steve March Tormé
(backup vocals), Heidi Shink a.k.a. Chance, Pete McRae
, Steve Bauman, Louis Ruiz, and Bryn Mathieu. All but one of the band's songs were written or co-written by Bono, Shink, and Mark Hudson. They used no synthesizer
s or digital effects on the album; Shink noted, "We turned our back on technology. [ ... ] It's reminiscent of the 60s, but more a tip of the hat than emulating it. We took the music we love and rejuvenated it, made it 90's."
The song "Could've Been Love" was released as a single from the album. The album's other tracks are "Goodbye Sunshine", "Steal Your Heart", "Day by Day", "Ready for Love", "Ready for Love (Refrain)", "Hang Out Your Poetry", "Turn It Over", "Trust", "2 of 1", "First Day of My Life", "Breathless", "Living in a Paradise", and "Livin' It Up". Sonny and Cher recorded backing vocals (uncredited) for the last song.
, a national gay and lesbian magazine. The 1998 book Family Outing detailed how Bono's coming out "catapulted me into a political role that has transformed my life, providing me with affirmation as a lesbian, as a woman, and as an individual." In the same book, Bono reported that Cher, who was both a gay icon
and ally to LGBT
communities, was quite uncomfortable with the news at first, and "went ballistic" before coming to terms with it: "By August 1996, one year after I came out publicly, my mother had progressed so far that she agreed to 'come out' herself on the cover of The Advocate as the proud mother of a lesbian daughter." Cher has since become an outspoken LGBT rights activist.
Bono's paternal relationship became strained after Sonny became a Republican
Congressman
from California
. The differences in their political views separated them, and the two had not spoken for more than a year at the time of Sonny's fatal skiing accident in January 1998.
Bono worked as a writer at large for The Advocate. As a social activist, Bono became a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign
, promoted National Coming Out Day
, campaigned for the reelection of Bill Clinton
for US President, campaigned against the Defense of Marriage Act
, and served as Entertainment Media Director for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation
(GLAAD). Bono was a team captain for Celebrity Fit Club 3
(2006) and was supported by girlfriend Jennifer Elia, who orchestrated exercise and training sessions.
from female to male. This was confirmed in June 2009 by his publicist, who identified Bono's preferred name as Chaz Bono and said, "It is Chaz's hope that his choice to transition will open the hearts and minds of the public regarding this issue, just as his coming out did." GLAAD and the Empowering Spirits Foundation
were quick to offer praise and support for the announcement. Bono's legal transition was completed on May 7, 2010, when a California court granted his request for a gender and name change. He chose the name "Chaz Salvatore Bono" in honor of his parents. Bono made Becoming Chaz, a documentary film about his gender transition that premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival
. OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network acquired the rights to the documentary and debuted it on May 10, 2011.
In September 2011, Bono became a competitor on the 13th season
of the US version of Dancing with the Stars, paired with professional ballroom dancer Lacey Schwimmer
. The duo was eliminated October 25, 2011.
Transgender
Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....
advocate, writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
, actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
, and musician
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....
. Bono is the only child of American entertainers Sonny
Sonny Bono
Salvatore Phillip "Sonny" Bono was an American recording artist, record producer, actor, and politician whose career spanned over three decades.-Early life:...
and Cher
Cher
Cher is an American recording artist, television personality, actress, director, record producer and philanthropist. Referred to as the Goddess of Pop, she has won an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, three Golden Globes and a Cannes Film Festival Award among others for her work in...
, though each had children from other relationships. Bono is a transgender man
Trans man
A trans man, transman, trans guy, or FTM is a transgender or transsexual man: a person who was assigned female at birth, but who identifies as male....
.
In 1995, after several years of being outed
Outing
Outing is the act of disclosing a gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender person's true sexual orientation or gender identity without that person's consent. Outing gives rise to issues of privacy, choice, hypocrisy, and harm in addition to sparking debate on what constitutes common good in efforts...
as lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
by the tabloid press, Bono publicly self-identified as such in a cover story in a leading American gay monthly magazine, The Advocate
The Advocate
The Advocate is an American LGBT-interest magazine, printed monthly and available by subscription. The Advocate brand also includes a web site. Both magazine and web site have an editorial focus on news, politics, opinion, and arts and entertainment of interest to LGBT people...
. Bono went on to discuss the process of coming out
Coming out
Coming out is a figure of speech for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people's disclosure of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity....
to oneself and to others in two books. Family Outing: A Guide to the Coming Out Process for Gays, Lesbians, and Their Families (1998) includes the author's coming out account. The memoir, The End of Innocence (2003) discusses the author's outing
Outing
Outing is the act of disclosing a gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender person's true sexual orientation or gender identity without that person's consent. Outing gives rise to issues of privacy, choice, hypocrisy, and harm in addition to sparking debate on what constitutes common good in efforts...
, music career, and partner Joan's death from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Between 2008 and 2010, Bono underwent female-to-male gender transition
Transitioning (transgender)
Transitioning is the process of changing one's gender presentation to accord with one's internal sense of one's gender - the idea of what it means to be a man or woman...
. A two-part Entertainment Tonight
Entertainment Tonight
Entertainment Tonight is a daily tabloid television entertainment television news show that is syndicated by CBS Television Distribution throughout the United States, Canada and in many countries around the world. Linda Bell Blue is currently the program's executive producer...
feature in June 2009 explained that Bono's transition had started a year before. In May 2010, Bono legally changed gender and name. A documentary on Bono's experience, Becoming Chaz, was screened at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
and later made its television debut on OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network.
Early life and education
Bono is the only child of CherCher
Cher is an American recording artist, television personality, actress, director, record producer and philanthropist. Referred to as the Goddess of Pop, she has won an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, three Golden Globes and a Cannes Film Festival Award among others for her work in...
and Sonny Bono
Sonny Bono
Salvatore Phillip "Sonny" Bono was an American recording artist, record producer, actor, and politician whose career spanned over three decades.-Early life:...
of the pop duo Sonny & Cher
Sonny & Cher
Sonny & Cher were an American pop music duo, actors, singers and entertainers made up of husband-and-wife team Sonny and Cher Bono in the 1960s and 1970s. The couple started their career in the mid-1960s as R&B backing singers for record producer Phil Spector....
, stars of a TV variety show on which the young child often appeared. Bono was named Chastity Sun Bono after the film Chastity
Chastity (film)
Chastity is a 1969 drama romance film starring American singer-actress Cher.-Synopsis:Chastity is a 1969 film directed by Alessio de Paola and starring Cher in her first film role as a solo. It was written and produced by Cher's husband Sonny Bono as a star vehicle for her. It flopped badly and...
, which was produced by Sonny and in which Cher (in her first feature film) played a bisexual
Bisexuality
Bisexuality is sexual behavior or an orientation involving physical or romantic attraction to both males and females, especially with regard to men and women. It is one of the three main classifications of sexual orientation, along with a heterosexual and a homosexual orientation, all a part of the...
woman.
Bono came out to both parents as lesbian at age 18. In Family Outing, Bono wrote that, "as a child, I always felt there was something different about me. I'd look at other girls my age and feel perplexed by their obvious interest in the latest fashion, which boy in class was the cutest, and who looked the most like cover girl Christie Brinkley
Christie Brinkley
Christie Brinkley is an American model and actress best known for her three consecutive appearances on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue in the late 1970s and early 1980s, for her long-running contract with CoverGirl, the longest ever of any model in history, and for her marriage...
. When I was 13, I finally found a name for exactly how I was different. I realized I was gay."
Ceremony
Bono began a short music career with the band Ceremony, which released one album, Hang Out Your Poetry, in 1993. The band featured Bono on vocals, acoustic guitarAcoustic guitar
An acoustic guitar is a guitar that uses only an acoustic sound board. The air in this cavity resonates with the vibrational modes of the string and at low frequencies, which depend on the size of the box, the chamber acts like a Helmholtz resonator, increasing or decreasing the volume of the sound...
, and percussion
Percussion instrument
A percussion instrument is any object which produces a sound when hit with an implement or when it is shaken, rubbed, scraped, or otherwise acted upon in a way that sets the object into vibration...
. Other members were Steve March Tormé
Steve March Tormé
Steve March Tormé is an American singer and songwriter who currently resides in Appleton, Wisconsin. He is the son of the legendary Mel Tormé and former model Candy Toxton...
(backup vocals), Heidi Shink a.k.a. Chance, Pete McRae
Pete McRae
Pete McRae is an American rock guitarist.Born Robert F. McRae, Jr. in Austin, Texas in 1955, McRae and his family moved to California when he was aged ten. Pete graduated from Terra Linda High School, in Marin County, in 1973. He began serious guitar studies with Paul Miller, in Terra Linda, and...
, Steve Bauman, Louis Ruiz, and Bryn Mathieu. All but one of the band's songs were written or co-written by Bono, Shink, and Mark Hudson. They used no synthesizer
Synthesizer
A synthesizer is an electronic instrument capable of producing sounds by generating electrical signals of different frequencies. These electrical signals are played through a loudspeaker or set of headphones...
s or digital effects on the album; Shink noted, "We turned our back on technology. [ ... ] It's reminiscent of the 60s, but more a tip of the hat than emulating it. We took the music we love and rejuvenated it, made it 90's."
The song "Could've Been Love" was released as a single from the album. The album's other tracks are "Goodbye Sunshine", "Steal Your Heart", "Day by Day", "Ready for Love", "Ready for Love (Refrain)", "Hang Out Your Poetry", "Turn It Over", "Trust", "2 of 1", "First Day of My Life", "Breathless", "Living in a Paradise", and "Livin' It Up". Sonny and Cher recorded backing vocals (uncredited) for the last song.
LGBT activism
In April 1995, Bono came out as lesbian in an interview with The AdvocateThe Advocate
The Advocate is an American LGBT-interest magazine, printed monthly and available by subscription. The Advocate brand also includes a web site. Both magazine and web site have an editorial focus on news, politics, opinion, and arts and entertainment of interest to LGBT people...
, a national gay and lesbian magazine. The 1998 book Family Outing detailed how Bono's coming out "catapulted me into a political role that has transformed my life, providing me with affirmation as a lesbian, as a woman, and as an individual." In the same book, Bono reported that Cher, who was both a gay icon
Gay icon
A gay icon is a public figure who is embraced by many within :lesbian, :gay, :bisexual and :transgender communities...
and ally to LGBT
LGBT
LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...
communities, was quite uncomfortable with the news at first, and "went ballistic" before coming to terms with it: "By August 1996, one year after I came out publicly, my mother had progressed so far that she agreed to 'come out' herself on the cover of The Advocate as the proud mother of a lesbian daughter." Cher has since become an outspoken LGBT rights activist.
Bono's paternal relationship became strained after Sonny became a Republican
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
Congressman
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
from California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
. The differences in their political views separated them, and the two had not spoken for more than a year at the time of Sonny's fatal skiing accident in January 1998.
Bono worked as a writer at large for The Advocate. As a social activist, Bono became a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign
Human Rights Campaign
The Human Rights Campaign is the United States' largest LGBT advocacy group and lobbying organization; according to the HRC, it has more than one million members and supporters...
, promoted National Coming Out Day
National Coming Out Day
National Coming Out Day is an internationally observed civil awareness day celebrating individuals who publicly identify as bisexual, gay, lesbian, transgender—coming out regarding one's sexual orientation and/or gender identity being akin to a cultural rite of passage for LGBT people...
, campaigned for the reelection of Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
for US President, campaigned against the Defense of Marriage Act
Defense of Marriage Act
The Defense of Marriage Act is a United States federal law whereby the federal government defines marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman. Under the law, no U.S. state may be required to recognize as a marriage a same-sex relationship considered a marriage in another state...
, and served as Entertainment Media Director for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation
Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation is a non-governmental media monitoring organization which promotes the image of LGBT people in the media...
(GLAAD). Bono was a team captain for Celebrity Fit Club 3
Celebrity Fit Club (U.S. TV series)
Celebrity Fit Club is a reality television series which follows eight overweight celebrities as they try to lose weight.This show is based on the British version, which aired on the ITV Network from 2002 until 2006...
(2006) and was supported by girlfriend Jennifer Elia, who orchestrated exercise and training sessions.
Gender transition
In mid-2008, Bono began undergoing a physical and social gender transitionTransitioning (transgender)
Transitioning is the process of changing one's gender presentation to accord with one's internal sense of one's gender - the idea of what it means to be a man or woman...
from female to male. This was confirmed in June 2009 by his publicist, who identified Bono's preferred name as Chaz Bono and said, "It is Chaz's hope that his choice to transition will open the hearts and minds of the public regarding this issue, just as his coming out did." GLAAD and the Empowering Spirits Foundation
Empowering Spirits Foundation
The Empowering Spirits Foundation , Inc. is a national non-profit, non-partisan lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender civil rights organization in the United States...
were quick to offer praise and support for the announcement. Bono's legal transition was completed on May 7, 2010, when a California court granted his request for a gender and name change. He chose the name "Chaz Salvatore Bono" in honor of his parents. Bono made Becoming Chaz, a documentary film about his gender transition that premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
. OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network acquired the rights to the documentary and debuted it on May 10, 2011.
In September 2011, Bono became a competitor on the 13th season
Dancing with the Stars (U.S. season 13)
Dancing with the Stars returned for its thirteenth season on September 19, 2011. Carrie Ann Inaba, Len Goodman and Bruno Tonioli returned as the judges, and Tom Bergeron and Brooke Burke Charvet returned as hosts. Twelve couples competed in this season...
of the US version of Dancing with the Stars, paired with professional ballroom dancer Lacey Schwimmer
Lacey Schwimmer
Lacey-Mae Schwimmer is an American competitive ballroom dancer, singer, and the winner of multiple youth championships. She is best known as the fourth place finalist of the third season of So You Think You Can Dance...
. The duo was eliminated October 25, 2011.
External links
- The Official Chaz Bono Website
- [ Allmusic.com entry on Bono's band Ceremony]