The first time I met my ex-girlfriend’s mother she greeted me with a kind of patient bewilderment. Her until-now unquestioningly straight daughter appeared to have gone gay, and said daughter’s new girlfriend wasn’t the crop-haired butch she’d anticipated. In fact, I wasn’t even a full-time lady lover, as we quickly established over dinner (because we talked about it. Not because I demonstrated my fondness for men and women during dessert. That would have been both socially awkward and logistically complicated).
My ex’s mum settled on ‘I’m happy if you’re happy, but it’s probably just a phase,’ and it took the three happy years my ex and I were together to convince her that bi life could be as fluid and flexible as we’d first tried to explain. We weren’t confused, or trying things out, or just plain greedy. We were happily bi and happy to fall in love with whoever came along.
It didn’t surprise me that we had to explain, define and defend our sexuality then, and it doesn’t surprise me that I have to do it now with new friends, partners and colleagues. Perhaps its no-one’s business but mine, but I’d rather have *that* conversation than let people’s automatic assumption of monosexuality persist.
But is it any wonder that misconceptions endure when most high-profile expressions of bisexuality pop out of a well-oiled PR machine as evidence of Angelina’s or some other actress’s rebel credentials, and celebrities like Lindsay Lohan seem to skip right over the sexual spectrum all the way from super straight to lesbian with no pause for bisexual possibilities in every gossip mag going?
From the boyfriend-baiting, ratings-boosting experimentation of The OC’s Marissa to over-sexed, witty, quippy Karen in Will & Grace who giggled about wanting to kiss girls more than she actually kissed them, bisexuality in both fact and fiction is swathed in stereotype, and misappropriated for the seediest of reasons.
And then came Katy Perry.
Before I actually heard I Kissed A Girl I harboured a vain hope that this number-one-in-billions-of-countries pop sensation might be more than just a straight-boy-tantalising, oh-so-naughty bi-try anthem conceived by canny, controversy-hungry record execs.
One look at the video told me it wasn’t to be. Everyone’s a media graduate these days, so I won’t dissect it on your behalf; you can enjoy the underwear-clad identi-beauties, slow-motion pillow fighting, coy giggling, cleavage close-ups, thigh gripping, crotch caressing, guilty-eyed pouting all by yourself (oh, and there’s a girl in just her pants under a bed with her legs sticking out. I don’t know why). What’s intriguing is that not one hint of actual girl-on-girl action (as has been dutifully inserted in countless YouTube tributes) made the final cut. It seems Katy Perry will happily tell you about kissing a girl – she’s just not prepared to show you.
Perhaps Perry’s lyrics would redeem the song, and celebrate her adventures in lady-loving, part-time or otherwise, just as Jill Sobule’s I Kissed A Girl did in 1995?
Um, no again. “I kissed a girl, and I liked it,” Perry intones guiltily, as the chorus reaches its Pro Tooled crescendo. Her lead lyric is a wicked confession of sin (“It’s not what good girls do,”) but worry not, Perry’s conservative audience share; she kissed a girl “just to try it,” so she doesn’t really like girls, and she’s certainly not turning bi or lesbian: “don’t mean I’m in love tonight.” Phew! And besides, she’s got a boyfriend, who she earnestly hopes “don’t mind it.” She’s certainly not doing a Megan Fox or a Paris and Elisha for his benefit. Oh no.
And then there’s Perry’s chequered history with the gay brigade. Her first single UR So Gay took issue with an ex who was apparently displaying too much ‘gay’ (read ‘sissy’) behaviour.
The song’s unfortunate anti-hero was too into fashion, classical music, poetry, vegetarianism and eyeliner (classic symptoms of gayness, indeed) for macho man-fan Perry. But she wasn’t worried about the pejorative problems of the word ‘gay’ because, “when people hear it, they’re empowered by it.”
And besides, she was sure us gayers would get the joke, because “gay people have a wonderful sense of humor.” She’s right, we do; particularly about flagrant stereotyping, gay-grouping and misrepresentation. We laugh our socks off about that. But really, Perry protests, the song is “very funny and positive… It’s an anthem for power of the people.” She’s serious.
In the end, Perry advises that “listeners have to read the context of the song and decide for themselves.” Well, if you insist…
Perry grew up with conservative Christian ministers for parents, listening to gospel and singing in church (where, if I’m not mistaken individuals of the gay persuasion aren’t traditionally welcome). After her first Christian album didn’t do so well, she headed for the bright lights of pop, where teasing, tantalising, permissive and controversy-courting are the name of the game.
While nouveau-liberal Perry waxes lyrical about how much she loves gay people and our funny, funny sense of humour, she lumps us all together in one big, bent box. She longs for the heady days of yore when boys didn’t wear make-up, but celebrates her freedom to be One of the Boys. She describes her foray into lady lust as “no big deal, it’s innocent,” but admits she only went there because she was drunk. Ultimately unable to escape her “pure” upbringing, she bangs on about how wrong it all felt, and wakes up at the end of the video, reassuringly, in bed with a man.
Perry describes herself as “metro-sexual”, but she spends the duration of I Kissed A Girl strenuously denying that anyone in possession of ladyparts would be welcome in her bed. For all her protesting to the contrary, she grabs a headline or two à la Howard Stern (“lesbians equals ratings”), and concludes that bi or lesbian longings are no more than a way to experiment, bait your boyfriend, or piss off your mother; she’s certainly not really into it.
All this is proof, if proof were needed, that it’s not bisexuals who were confused all along; it’s Katy Perry.