Let’s talk about Katy Perry’s song “I Kissed a Girl”*

Here’s the video. If your tummy starts to hurt, don’t feel like you have to watch the whole thing. It’s pretty much all variations on a theme: pin-up women in fishnets and f*ck-me pumps.

On one of my favorite internet spots last week, Sergio Cilli asked if Katy was really a lesbian or if she was just making this song for attention/sales boost. The answer is obviously the latter, but what is a more interesting question is: Is this song really even about lesbians?

My short answer is no.

The long answer follows.

Perry’s already taken quite a bit of heat for this song, as well as her other f’d up mess “ur so gay,” so part of me doesn’t even want to write on this and give her more attention. Yet, I’m compelled nonetheless, and I was a Media Studies major…so hopefully the scathing critical commentary will make up for my conflicted opinions on posting.

When asked about this song, she had this to say in an interview:

“TNG: I saw. Are you a lesbian now?
KP: I love my men. I’m not a lesbian, but I can appreciate the beauty of women. That’s what the song is about: me opening up a magazine and seeing Scarlet Johansen and saying “if she wanted to to kiss me I wouldn’t say no.”
…
TNG: So you haven’t actually kissed a girl. Then the whole song is a fantasy?
KP: Yeah, it’s fantasy, it’s a song about curiosity.
TNG: Isn’t that kind of like those straight girls who make out at frat parties to get guys’ attention?
KP: It’s not about that. Everyone takes the song and relates it to their situation, they can see it however they want to see it. Love it, hate it, for me it was about us girls. When we’re young we’re very touchy-feely. We have slumber party sing-alongs, we make up dance routines in our pajamas. We’re a lot more intimate in a friendship than guys can be. It’s not perverse but just sweet, thats what the song is about.”

~~

Lies. All lies. The song is not sweet at all.

Rather, (here comes the thesis) Perry’s song/video fetishizes and undermines the validity of queer relationships, casting woman-on-woman sexuality as:

1. A sin.

“It’s not what good girls do.” “It felt so wrong. It felt so right.”

This is pretty much the oldest trick in the book. The “I have homosexual encounters-to-rebel” syndrome. Good girls go on dates with men, don’t sleep around, and get married…finishing off with the production of 2.5 kids and a happy home. Any deviation from this path constitutes a sin, a subversive act. This song was not about sweet, innocent curiosity, it was about faux-subversiveness and queer encounters from a hetero-normative paradigm. Surely Katy didn’t consider that for some women, kissing girls just feels right. Period. No addendum.

2. An enforcement of hetero-normative femininity

“us girls we are so magical. Soft skin, red lips, so kissable…so touchable”

All the women in this music video are the most femme-y women imaginable. Of course, all lesbians are. Right? Right. Perry has a delightful way of erasing the majority of the spectrum of gender expression with her vision of girl-on-girl encounters. The girl she purportedly kissed has on “cherry chapstick” and, from the women in the video, we can reasonable assume that all lesbians are these hyper-sexualized, hyper-feminine harlets. This is not about attraction from a lesbian perspective, it is about parading scantily-clad women around for the enjoyment of straight men. Because hot women kissing each other is hot. A surefire way to guarantee a hetero-hook up later in the evening. As I watch the portrayal of more or less interchangeable women squirm across the screen, I resent the fact that Perry manages to box all womenkind into being soft, magical, and touchable—basically, a straight man’s ideal fantasy of the white woman he’d like to screw. Fuck that.

I’m sitting here wondering: where are the studs? where are the masculine women? where are the genderqueer women? where are the transwomen? Where are all the people that have to take the public ridicule and shouted slurs for being butch/gender ambiguous? Where are those people Katy? I suggest you go find them and give them a kiss, because they take all the homophobic public bullshit everyday so that you can have your fun for the night.

3. A minor slip up in a otherwise good heterosexual relationship

“hope my boyfriend don’t mind it”

Heavens knows that if Katy had been screwing another guy, she wouldn’t be half as flippant about her boyfriend’s response to the interlude. So why the “oopsie” *shrug* response? Because Katy doesn’t take woman-on-woman relationships seriously. The entire song revolves around the fact of her having a queer encounter, but not being in anyway committed to continuing said relationship. This is exactly the kind of attitude that makes bi-sexuality something that people don’t take seriously–because at the end of the day, kissing a girl was about: “just wanna try you on” “your my experimental game” “i don’t even know your name. it doesn’t matter” and “don’t mean i’m in love tonight”.  Random hook-ups with other women is for kicks, for revenge, for a rush, for attracting straight men’s attention/arousal but not for love. Not for serious. Not for permanent.

The end of the music video sums this point up quite nicely. Katy wakes up from her “lesbian fantasy,” only to find that it was all a dream, and that she is safe and sound in bed with her boyfriend. She looks dis-oriented, and then–realizing where she is–relieved. Cut to black. Don’t worry Katy! Your heterosexuality is still intact and you are as straight and safe as ever!

~~~

*Apologies ahead of time…this is a pretty ranty post, but I will try my best to be critically sound.