I was in my early teens when Katy Perry released her 2008 single I Kissed A Girl. It was an immediate hit, but it also received heavy backlash from the LGBTQIA+ community for trivializing and sexualizing the experiences of queer women – the effects of which are still being felt.
In the video, Perry spreads out ethereally across pink silk sheets singing about her “experimental game,” which she describes as “Not what good girls do / Not how they should behave.”
She “got so brave, drink in hand” that she “lost [her] discretion,” she sings, as gets friendly with the women behind her dressed in fishnet stockings, black lingerie and leather gloves. While they engage in a giggly slow-motion pillow fight she sings, coyly, “I kissed a girl just to try it / I hope my boyfriend don’t mind it.” Despite the lyrics, Perry never actually kisses a girl in her video.
“There’s just a magical beauty that women hold that can definitely slay men of all kinds,” Perry told the Ventura County Star in June of 2008. But Perry’s lyrics and video certainly weren’t made for women. Instead, they had an eye towards satisfying the male gaze. They weren’t made for me.
Sure, gender and sexuality are fluid in nature. As long as it’s honest, consensual and safe, sexual experimentation can be a really good thing. But this is something I didn’t really understand when listening to her song in middle school.
When I was growing up, homophobic slurs were thrown around by kids as a way to bully classmates, or to signal that something or someone was uncool. In 2008, the BBC reported that “gay” was the most frequently used term of abuse in schools. During my formative years, I was taught by my peers that homosexuality was wrong, and that attraction to someone of the same sex would be met with ridicule.
In popular culture, girls kissing girls is only acceptable when it occurs between conventionally attractive women who identify as heterosexual. It’s never taken seriously queer women are often dismissed as “going through a phase” or “attention-seeking.” Some of the boys in my class would go on about how “lesbian sex is so hot,” perpetuating the patriarchal notion that women perform on each other for the sole purpose of pleasing straight guys – that relationships and sex between queer women don’t exist outside of this expectation.
These comments made me question the validity of my own sexuality. It was around that same time that I realized I was attracted to women, but I was ashamed of my feelings and terrified that anyone might find out.
I kissed a girl for the first time when I was 15, but it wasn’t until I hit my early 20s that I was able to embrace my bisexuality and finally understand that being gay is okay.
Pop music, too, is finally figuring this out, but it’s still stumbling.
In February of 2018, Perry, who has since come out as queer, told Glamour that if the song were to come out this year, she would rework some of the lyrics. “We’ve really changed, conversationally, in the past 10 years,” she says.
This is true – openly queer musicians like Janelle Monáe, Kelela, Kehlani and Hayley Kiyoko are making waves in the music industry right now, proving that audiences are becoming more open to art by members of the LGBTQIA+ community. But despite this, some musicians still can’t seem to get queer themes right, especially when it comes to women attracted to other women.
Just last month Rita Ora released Girls, an upbeat pop track featuring the star-studded lineup of Cardi B, Bebe Rexha and Charli XCX. The hooky chorus feels familiar a decade after Katy Perry’s I Kissed A Girl: “Sometimes, I just wanna kiss girls, girls, girls / Red wine, I just wanna kiss girls, girls, girls.” Ora cites Perry’s song as inspiration.
Despite massive backlash from the queer community, Ora put out a music video last week featuring Cardi B, Bebe Rexha and Charli XCX. In one scene, a holographic Rita Ora and Cardi B share a kiss, while Cardi B raps about “scissoring.”
Kiyoko was one of many to criticize Ora for her “tone-deaf” lyrics. “I don’t need to drink wine to kiss girls I’ve loved women my entire life. This type of message is dangerous because it completely belittles and invalidates the very pure feelings of an entire community,” she wrote in an Instagram post. “We can and should do better.”
I wish someone had told me this when I was a young girl trying to navigate my sexual identity.
Although it’s been 10 years since Perry “kissed a girl,” I don’t think the dialogue around queerness has changed as much as we like to congratulate ourselves for. But I hope that when kids today hear Ora’s lyrics, their conversations are different than the ones from my youth.
Don’t miss this week’s cover story: The future of music is queer
