I Kissed A Girl by Katy Perry, but make it aroace!

[Keith]

IT'S GREAT!!

[Mask3D_WOLF]

Heck yeah lol

[hemogoblin]

On 2/12/2023 at 12:41 PM, A User said:

hows it homophobic aint it gay as hell

OKAY, so let's get into this.

The song received a lot of criticism when it came out for two reasons. One, Katy Perry wasn't out yet. Two, many queer people felt like the song treated bisexuality as a phase and represented bisexuals as girls who went out to bars and kissed girls but didn't take girls seriously in a relationship kind of way. There was also controversy that it was portraying bi people as cheaters (since the song mentions hoping the boyfriend doesn't mind), as well as feeling like it played into the trope of fetishizing bisexuality as lesbians performing for men's pleasure. It's not a 'serious' representation of being bi: it's treated as a fun but drunken mistake.

This ire was compounded by the fact that Katy Perry had another song before this one (VERY shortly before this one, too) that used gay as an insult: Ur So Gay. (Which, unfortunately, it looks like the last word on it from Perry was her still defending it far after she came out and became somewhat of an advocate because "it's a joke and only insults that particular person I'm referencing, not gay people" even though it's LITERALLY using us as an insult/bad thing to be.)

I think what we lose when we are hypercritical of all our representation (because a lot of it is poor either because it's being done by people who didn't consult with the community OR because it's the only way to get representation into media*) is the fact that not all rep is going to represent every person or every experience. We are not a monolith, not even those of us that use the same label. People question in different ways. We discover in different ways. We experiment in different ways. We explore in different ways. And we are messy and fucked up and toxic - but we learn and grow and evolve. When you look back on the context of the song now, knowing that Katy Perry is indeed bi and knowing that she grew up with strict, conservative religion that supported conversion therapy, you might have a different perspective, seeing "I Kissed A Girl" less as someone fetishizing and objectifying bisexuality, but more as someone who grew up having to have really conflicted and harmful beliefs about her feelings being able to explore and come to terms with bisexuality in a manner that was accessible to her. I don't know the breakdown of this from critics, but I think it's really interesting that my high school friend group, from when this came out, was split. The one of us that strongly disliked it was someone who'd been out as trans and gay for over a year and doing heavy research into being queer for a long time before that. While the rest of us that found the song a jam were all still in denial about being queer. I think it speaks to two very different experiences/stages of our journeys.

*I reference the "Bury Your Gays" trope, which only became a trope in the first place because having our characters be violently killed off was the only way to see ourselves on screen at all. Us getting killed off was the only way we were allowed to be in stories. And while it's absolutely valid that media does you BYG to avoid doing the real work of good representation, you also have the other side of the coin where hypercritical folk want to call BYG on any queer character dying, regardless of story or context.

[A User]

13 hours ago, hemogoblin said:

OKAY, so let's get into this.

The song received a lot of criticism when it came out for two reasons. One, Katy Perry wasn't out yet. Two, many queer people felt like the song treated bisexuality as a phase and represented bisexuals as girls who went out to bars and kissed girls but didn't take girls seriously in a relationship kind of way. There was also controversy that it was portraying bi people as cheaters (since the song mentions hoping the boyfriend doesn't mind), as well as feeling like it played into the trope of fetishizing bisexuality as lesbians performing for men's pleasure. It's not a 'serious' representation of being bi: it's treated as a fun but drunken mistake.

This ire was compounded by the fact that Katy Perry had another song before this one (VERY shortly before this one, too) that used gay as an insult: Ur So Gay. (Which, unfortunately, it looks like the last word on it from Perry was her still defending it far after she came out and became somewhat of an advocate because "it's a joke and only insults that particular person I'm referencing, not gay people" even though it's LITERALLY using us as an insult/bad thing to be.)

I think what we lose when we are hypercritical of all our representation (because a lot of it is poor either because it's being done by people who didn't consult with the community OR because it's the only way to get representation into media*) is the fact that not all rep is going to represent every person or every experience. We are not a monolith, not even those of us that use the same label. People question in different ways. We discover in different ways. We experiment in different ways. We explore in different ways. And we are messy and fucked up and toxic - but we learn and grow and evolve. When you look back on the context of the song now, knowing that Katy Perry is indeed bi and knowing that she grew up with strict, conservative religion that supported conversion therapy, you might have a different perspective, seeing "I Kissed A Girl" less as someone fetishizing and objectifying bisexuality, but more as someone who grew up having to have really conflicted and harmful beliefs about her feelings being able to explore and come to terms with bisexuality in a manner that was accessible to her. I don't know the breakdown of this from critics, but I think it's really interesting that my high school friend group, from when this came out, was split. The one of us that strongly disliked it was someone who'd been out as trans and gay for over a year and doing heavy research into being queer for a long time before that. While the rest of us that found the song a jam were all still in denial about being queer. I think it speaks to two very different experiences/stages of our journeys.

*I reference the "Bury Your Gays" trope, which only became a trope in the first place because having our characters be violently killed off was the only way to see ourselves on screen at all. Us getting killed off was the only way we were allowed to be in stories. And while it's absolutely valid that media does you BYG to avoid doing the real work of good representation, you also have the other side of the coin where hypercritical folk want to call BYG on any queer character dying, regardless of story or context.

fair enough, thanks!