Girls Will Be Boys

Prologue

Marley Mounceaux for Rolling Stone. August 25, 2018.

Cracking open a cold one with the former boy-band superstar as they open up about identity, independence, and accidentally becoming a 21st-century queer icon.

A mixture of music, voices and sounds clash together on a warm, humid night. It's nearing midnight at Hongdae Playground in Seoul, and yet this part of the metropolitan city is still wide awake. Here, young couples walk their bubbly dogs and wear matching outfits, often with crepes and camera-clicking phones in hand. Meanwhile, many a drunken group of youths stops by to listen to one of the many musical acts playing here on their way to the next bar. All, it seems, are oblivious to the legendary popstar that currently sits in their midst. Among the crowd that night is one lone girl with a black French bob haircut hidden under a grey, backwards cap. Her hair curls at her ears from the damp night air and a black surgical mask cups her chin. She wears jean shorts, dirtied white and pink trainers, and a faded-blue t-shirt which reads 'Legalize Dreams'. A small handbag with a face of a penguin on it sits on her lap and a sweating, blue can of Cass beer is held in her hand. Her silhouette, glowing from the bright lights of the street behind her, illustrate an image of a person long believed to have vanished forever.

No one seems to notice Imogen Sinclair, and she appears somewhat content with this fact. There on that wooden bench in the shadows, in the form of an unassuming girl, sits the famous (albeit controversial) Cromartie Sinclair—the boy-band legend who'd shocked the world by revealing she was actually a girl in 2014. Looking at her now, it's hard to picture her as the outgoing, cutesy member of Yeah No Yeah. Here, she's just a quiet, contented girl, happy to be herself. She beats her heel to the ground along to one of the performers' songs—a cover of a pop classic—as though that urge to get up and dance in front of a crowd never truly went away for her. In fact, it hasn't, she tells me. Many a night she goes clubbing with the intention of busting out her world-famous dance moves, only to stay hidden in a corner out of fear of being recognised—perhaps even scrutinised. Instead, she spends her weeknights dancing alone in her one-bedroom apartment, reminiscing of times when she was on stage or in the dance studio with her former bandmates.

But what the world doesn't know yet is that Cromartie's renaissance is just around the corner; a former bandmate has recently sent her a message asking her to join him on a collaborative music project, and a few other pop sensations have reached out to her with invitations of their own. But getting back onto the world stage will bring harsh memories and new realisations that Imogen isn't sure she's quite ready to face yet.

'For a long time, I didn't want to think about Cromartie Sinclair anymore,' Imogen shares, her accent shifting from her native British to the American accent she's now adopted almost entirely. 'I was so embarrassed about everything that had happened that I just wanted to get away and figure out who I was, and who I wanted to be.' And that's what landed her here, on the other side of the planet, in South Korea. After coming out as Imogen Sinclair to her audience on Instagram four years ago, she disappeared from the world stage, not telling anyone but close relatives where she was going. But, behind the scenes, she'd decided to dig out a new path for herself, by travelling to a foreign country in order to lead a more normal life. Here, she has lived for nearly four years, spending the first two years as a student in the coastal city of Gangneung, where she now works as an English-teaching assistant. She's made new friends, learned the Korean language almost fluently (we all remember Cromartie's first interview on a Korean television show, right?), and has adapted to living a more peaceful lifestyle than the wild one she'd seemingly spent a lifetime living as Cromartie.

She was just a shy 16-year-old from a small town in Somerset, England when she became one of the decade's biggest pop icons as 1/5th of the British boy-band Yeah No Yeah. During a summer spent in Seattle, feeling desperate and stuck in life, Imogen saw an advert which invited young, aspiring musical acts to audition for a new reality TV programme in the UK: Britain's Next Boy-Band (AKA BNBB). There was only one problem, however: the show strictly asked for boys only. But after much consideration, Imogen made the desperate decision to dress up in her older brother's clothes—making sure to wear a small-fitted sports bra underneath and a cap to hide her long, dark hair—and, with that, she recorded her first audition tape. The video featured herself dancing to a pop song followed by a segment of her singing and playing the guitar. That night, she was ecstatic and proud of herself seeing as she'd sent in the audition tape and application that day, giddy with excitement and mischievousness because she hadn't told anyone about it and had no plan to unless, by some miracle, she passed the first round of auditions. But she did pass that first round. Having nearly forgotten she'd auditioned in the first place after a few weeks of waiting, her younger sister—whom she'd eventually told her secret to—told Imogen to check her spam mail. And, to both of their surprise, there was an email there which read "Congratulations! You've passed the first round of the Britain's Next Boy-Band auditions!", followed by information about where to go for the second round and what to prepare in the meantime.