He could never pass as normal.
It's appropriate that director Jeffrey Schwarz opens his 2013 documentary I Am Divine with news coverage of the world premiere of Hairspray in 1988 since that was the high-water mark of Divine's mainstream success as a performer. That he didn't get to capitalize on it is unfortunate, but the fact that somebody would come along two and a half decades later and make a film about his life says everything about the level of stardom (or, if you like, notoriety) he achieved and continues to enjoy to this day.
Born Harris Glenn Milstead, Divine gained cult fame by dressing in drag and starring in a series of increasingly outrageous features written and directed by John Waters, who's interviewed along with fellow Dreamlanders Mink Stole, Susan Lowe, Vincent Peranio, Pat Moran, and Mary Vivian Pearce. The real catches for Schwartz, though, are his mother, Frances Milstead, and his high school girlfriend, Diana Evans, who talk about what he was like before he was Divine.
For the most part, I Am Divine didn't tell me much that I didn't already know, but it was great to hear about his time with the Cockettes in San Francisco and see scenes from Women Behind Bars and The Neon Woman, two plays he starred in in New York. Then, of course, there's his recording career, which took off in a big way when he was between Waters projects in the '80s. In short, there's a lot more to Divine than the fact that he once ate dog feces on film (for 1972's Pink Flamingos), but if that's what it took for him to get noticed, he was willing to do it. Nobody ever said being a star was easy.