Austrian ‘bearded lady’ wins Eurovision
Print Edition
AUSTRIAN drag queen Conchita Wurst, popularly known as “the bearded lady,” won the Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday with the James Bond-theme-like ballad “Rise Liwke a Phoenix,” before a global TV audience of about 180 million people in 45 countries.
Wurst, sporting high heels, butterfly eyelashes and a full beard, topped the Netherlands’ modern-country duo the Common Linnets, who sang “Calm After The Storm.” Sweden’s Sanna Nielsen was third with her new-age pop song “Undo.”
“For me, my dream came true,” Wurst, 25, whose birth name is Tom Neuwirth, told a news conference after the win.
The Danish organizers had declared tolerance a main theme for this year’s event, and the rainbow-colored flag symbolizing gay pride has been flying in many places in Copenhagen during the past week.
“I hope we can change just a few minds,” said Wurst’s agent René Berto. “It is just a lady with a beard. But it is like we have landed on the moon.”
Wurst, Austria’s first Eurovision winner since 1966, received the biggest cheers from the audience but also stirred controversy in some countries.
Online petitions were started in Belarus, Armenia and Russia — whose government passed a law last year banning “gay propaganda” among minors — to have Wurst removed or edited out of broadcasts in their countries.
“We did it. It is the most amazing thing. But I knew she would win. I just knew it,” Austrian fan Damel Saric said. “I have traveled to Copenhagen just for this moment.”
The Eurovision competition, which has been held annually since 1956, was created to help foster unity after World War Two and is meant to be non-political. But political strife slipped between the cracks at this year’s contest.
Many in the audience booed when 17-year-old Tolmachevy twin sisters from Russia were presented at Saturday’s opening ceremony and again when they were awarded points.
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