This only gets funnier as the weeks go by.

I haven't been able to stop thinking about this. There's so much going on here. I genuinely love the conception of gender as mystic autodeism. Gender as divine microcosm. Gender as Great Work. It's gnostic, it's alchemical, it's got notes of bacchanalian worship of the body and the inherent magic of self-discovery. This but unironically.

Shoutout to transphobes for thinking gender is this fucking badass

@little-bloodied-angel

Absolutely losing my mind here. Like it's not just the INCREDIBLE art, it's every single detail incorporated into Crowley's presentation driving me insane with both History Nerd Hyperfixation and The Genders.

The ruff was worn by both men and women. (See Aziraphale in ep3). This one's larger, as if it were meant for a dress perhaps, but it's deliberately hard to tell what upper garment that is. A doublet or a bodice? The pearl chains are feminine; the buckle and strip across the chest are not, to my knowledge, or at the very least not commonly. The adornments on the sleeves are anyone's guess; the flattened chests of the era only contribute to further questions. The hair is long, but the style could only be feminine in a private context at odds with the formal clothing. Men wore their hair down; women didn't, as a rule (again see ep3, but this time Crowley). That bonnet/cap (? Trying to find the proper English word) is also pretty ambiguous, but funnily enough it reminds me of descriptions made of Rosalind's cap in her male outfit (from As You Like It). Which, in Shakespeare's time, would have been a young man pretending to be a woman pretending to be a man. How's that for gender fuckery? The kind that Crowley has a penchant for?

Specifically, it reminds me of the description Dorian Gray makes of Sybil Vane wearing that outfit, the "dainty little green cap with a hawk's feather caught in a jewel" (only, obviously, in Crowley's color, and with what appears to be an Angel's feather instead, supremely interesting that; we don't know if the jewel is there or not, as it would have been at the back), which was a heavy nod to queerness since he specifies "she had never seemed to [him] more exquisite" than crossdressing as a boy, and that she reminded him of a male Tanagra figurine in Basil's possession. That style of pearl earring was all the rage during the Elizabethan era, both for men and for women, but it was much more common for men to only wear one. That seems to be what's happening here, but due to the way that Crowley's hair is arranged we can not know whether it's one or two being worn. That makeup is not regular makeup, at least not around the eyes: the lily white skin and rouged cheeks and lips may well be worn by an affluent woman, but not those heavy dark shadows and shapes on and around the lids. It's theatrical makeup. Women weren't allowed onstage, but there's also plenty of theory about individuals we would today categorize as some flavor of transfem taking to the profession and the female roles. The "fair youth" the artist references is established to have been a man, but who that young man was is anyone's guess, a subject of contention, and of plenty of theories, one of the most popular being that it was one of the actors in Shakespeare's own company, whose age and physical description as per the sonnets would have made him suited for the female roles. And let's not forget the centuries-long erasure and insistence that Shakespeare could only be talking about a woman.

In short: the portrait manages to capture an almost perfect androgyny and plaster a giant question mark over Crowley's current gender while simultaneously visually referencing the mystery and misdirection applied to the inspiration for said portrait, this "fair youth" of the sonnets that, in the Good Omens universe, could very well have been Crowley themself, and create a visual impression that is nothing short of masterful both in those regards and in its sheer beauty, and my little queer history nerd Crowley-loving nonbinary heart couldn't possibly be more thrilled.

Wow, thanks so much for writing such a long analysis!!! It's so spot on. Indeed this portrait is all about gender fluidity and a mix of men's and women's styles of the era (Crowley seems to like dressing themself this way in the TV Series). I also thought about the fair youth in the GO universe could very well be Crowley themself! Whee!

I'll just add a few portraits I used as references for Crowley's style here. The sitters' dates are pretty close together but I wasn't being too strict...

• The Earl of Southampton (1573 - 1624). Known for his beautiful long hair. He is also a popular candidate for Shakespeare's 'fair youth'.

• The Duke of Buckingham (1592 - 1628). He was James I's lover and seemed to have a penchant for pearls (which were indeed more commonly worn by women), as he was painted with LOTS of them in two of his portraits.

• Sir Walter Raleigh (1552 - 1618). No reason, I just really like his little bonnet in this portrait.

y’all welcome my friend 🥰