Bri Becerra
Editor-in-chief
As someone who finds themselves on the lesbian side of TikTok quite frequently, there has been much discourse around recent performances at the MTV Video Music Awards, or the VMAs. As a lesbian myself, I am here to weigh in on one particular performer: Katy Perry.
Katy Perry is someone whose career has been tinged with some degrees of queerness, such as her song “I Kissed A Girl.” Past interviews and speeches given by Perry hint at her sexual fluidity, but nothing has been quite as glaring as her 2024 VMAs performance.
In case you missed it, Perry performed several of her hit songs for the crowd, including “Roar,” “ET,” “I Kissed A Girl,” and “I’m His, He’s Mine.” During “I’m His, He’s Mine,” Perry was relatively intimate with fellow performer Doechii. At one point, the singers were laying on the stage in a way that mimicked scissoring.
Though many performers before Perry have engaged in sexual moments with other women on stage for shock value, nothing has been quite as explicit as this. Scissoring another woman while singing about a man demonstrates that this was purely a performative move, using queer sexuality to be appealing to men. This is what I have a problem with.
Sapphics have constantly fought off the fetishization of our sexuality by men, enduring comments such as “that’s hot” or “can I join?” Perry’s performance only added fuel to the fire of straight men ogling at sapphic sexuality. She is excusing this behavior as acceptable.
Being queer is not a performance. It isn’t something that one can simply turn on or off. Regardless of how Perry may justify her actions on stage, I think it’s pretty clear that she was performing queerness for the sake of attention.
Some may argue that because Perry herself has expressed that she is queer, her performance should be deemed as acceptable. I still disagree. Openly lesbian Chappell Roan also performed at the VMAs, and her set did not include anything that was overtly sexual. Just because a woman is queer does not mean that she has to prove it on stage.
Another point is that Perry was singing a song written about a man when the scissoring occurred. Lyrics such as “on him like a suntan” and “I’m what he likes” don’t necessarily conjure images of sapphic sexuality. If she were performing “I Kissed A Girl” during the time of that specific move, I may feel a bit differently.
I am not against expressing sexuality during performances. What I am against is using queerness, and specifically sapphic sexuality in this case, to garner attention. Perry is not liberating any queer person from years of shame with her actions, but rather inviting men to maintain their perverse thoughts about sapphics.