Sovok of the Week

This week’s Sovok was an easy choice, as you can probably tell from his picture to the right (the full gorgeous set can be viewed here). Azis, a cross-dressing pop star in Bulgaria appears to be dead set on stealing the laurels of the "most fabulous person EVER" from Kirkorov.

By what means, you ask? Well, here are a couple of his music videos:

As you can tell, Azis is not shy to flaunt his talent, even if he has to wear women’s clothing. Actually, it seems to me that cross-dressing has become the ultimate socialism-leaving and capitalism-entering rite of passage for numerous countries of the former Soviet block.

Take another cross-dressing phenomenon, Verka Serdyuchka ("Vera the Angry Woman"), who is selling out stadiums in Ukraine and Russia:

And what about Boris Moiseev?

And, of course, last but not least is Leonid the Magnificent, a wild card on the American show "America’s Got Talent" and a native of Odessa, Ukraine:

I dare to propose that the acceptance and the embracing of sexually ambiguous and openly flamboyant pop stars by the bigoted and gay-bashing music lovers in the former countries of the Warsaw Pact is a way for them to signal their readiness to enter the civilized world. This world, other attributes of which are Coca-Cola, Marlboro, BMWs, vacations in Turkey and Egypt, and latest Nokia cell-phones, would be incomplete without the tolerance of the other, the strange, the queer. This is the reason, I argue, for the popularity of Azis.

Or am I deeply mistaken and it is, after all, all about music and singing?

-DJ VadimJ