{"id":442,"date":"2025-06-04T06:10:23","date_gmt":"2025-06-04T06:10:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/?p=442"},"modified":"2025-06-04T06:10:23","modified_gmt":"2025-06-04T06:10:23","slug":"katy-perry-kissed-a-girl-or-did-she","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/?p=442","title":{"rendered":"Katy Perry Kissed A Girl (or did she?)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"I<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Firstly, I think speculating on the sexuality of a real person is not the right thing to do. And while the title of this post is attempting to do that, my goal is not uncover Katy Perry\u2019s \u201ctrue sexual identity.\u201d It’s really none of my business. I want to explore Katy Perry\u2019s song I Kissed A Girl as a piece of LGBTQ representation. From my limited research on Katy Perry\u2019s sexuality, as well as only slightly more informed knowledge of her music, she seems to identify as heterosexual but has kissed a girl at one point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"YARN<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a good song. It\u2019s catchy, the chorus is easy to sing along with and it has a thumping, danceable beat throughout. It came out in April of 2008 as a single by Katy Perry. It had massive commercial success, topping charts for over a month post release. Interestingly enough, it came out only a few months after her highly problematic song Ur So Gay, in which she sings her frustrations with a boy who fits all sorts of gay stereotypes but isn\u2019t gay. A brief diversion for this song, it came out in 2007, when discourse around gay people in media was pretty different than today, it still seems mysterious to me that a song that begins with the lines \u201c<\/em>I hope you hang yourself with your H&M scarf while jerking off listening to Mozart\u201d <\/em>would do as well as it did and also generate any popularity at all. But what do I know, I was four years old in 2007. Anyways, Ur So Gay was a crazy song, and its fascinating that it came out right before I Kissed a Girl. Equally fascinating is the fact that this information was edited off her Wikipedia page.\u00a0<\/em>I should also note that in the music video, while a cat is petted suggestively and several scantily clad women dance together, there is no actual kissing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I Kissed a Girl is sung from the (female) singer’s perspective and is about kissing a girl (duh) and liking it. It frames kissing girls and enjoying it as something taboo, something that while perhaps is just an \u201cexperimental game\u201d also \u201cfelt so wrong\u201d and \u201cfelt so right.\u201d The singer hopes her \u201cboyfriend won\u2019t mind it,\u201d but she doesn\u2019t seem that concerned about what her boyfriend might think given that it \u201cain\u2019t no big deal, it\u2019s innocent.\u201d It trivializes and dismisses a non-straight feminine sexuality. It seems to play into the fetishization of wlw relationships that is still pervasive in popular culture. Katy Perry appears to utilize the taboo nature to gain more plays, it is tempting because it is not quite allowed. Katy Perry can make this song because in all other ways she is normative. I Kissed A Girl perhaps cultivates something homonormative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Katy<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I Kissed A Girl is obviously not perfect representation. But I don\u2019t think it should be completely dismissed. It was one of very few explicitly LGBTQ pop culture moments when it came out. The song rose to fame at a particular moment in LGBTQ history in America. It was a time of new visibility and acceptance in straight popular culture, but only partially. I think there is still something to say for the ways that the song made visible female lesbian\/bisexual sexuality in such a popular way, even if it is perhaps flawed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Further complicating context that I don\u2019t get into is that this song was co written and produced by the now infamous Dr. Luke, and I don\u2019t know how that factors but it seems like there could be something there.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Firstly, I think speculating on the sexuality of a real person is not the right thing to do. And while the title of this post is attempting to do that, my goal is not uncover Katy Perry\u2019s \u201ctrue sexual identity.\u201d It’s really none of my business. I want to explore Katy Perry\u2019s song I Kissed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=442"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":446,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442\/revisions\/446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}