Video Girls
A Unified Theory of Lesbian Music Videos
This is the Sunday edition of Paging Dr. Lesbian. Plus, this week’s dispatch from the lesbian internet. If you like this type of thing, subscribe!
It was the summer of 2015. Among a sea of pop video hits that year (Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood,” Drake’s “Hotline Bling,” Adele’s “Hello,”), one video stood out among the sapphic denizens of the internet, a video that would reverberate even outside the Tumblr circles in which it initially emerged. That video was Hayley Kiyoko’s “Girls Like Girls,” which was released on June 24th, 2015, and has since been viewed more than 138 million times.
I bring up Kiyoko’s famous video because I think in some sense it marks a starting point, or at the very least a renewal, of the lesbian music video genre. What I am interested in exploring is the breadth and depth of this landscape, and how these videos fit into the music video scene at large, as well as within the context of online queer culture more specifically. Is there an overarching aesthetic or narrative/visual form that defines these videos? Can we tie them to sapphic trends in pop culture more broadly? These questions are particularly interesting to consider because of how these music videos have come to make up a significant portion of sapphic “representation” on YouTube. (The other, larger portion of this content is made up of de-contextualized clips of lesbian couples on various international television shows, as well as the numerous “real-life” lesbian couples with their own YouTube channels, but those are both topics for another day).
As I alluded to above, any discussion of this so-called lesbian music video renaissance must begin with a consideration of Hayley Kiyoko. At the time of the release of “Girls Like Girls,” Kiyoko was just another wannabe popstar in LA, trying (and for the most part failing) to make a dent in the music industry. But upon the release of the now-legendary video, Kiyoko entered a new phase of her career, officially coming out as a lesbian pop star and subsequently gaining a passionate and dedicated fanbase.
Kiyoko’s status as perhaps the first lesbian pop star can be largely attributed to the success of this video, which led to the release of her debut album Expectations in 2018. (Obviously, there have been other popular lesbian or queer musicians in the past – most notably Melissa Etheridge, k.d. lang, Tracy Chapman, and The Indigo Girls, as well as numerous women in the blues and rock tradition such as Sister Rosetta Thorpe – but Kiyoko’s place within mainstream pop music is a departure from the rock and folk legacies of past stars). Since 2015, Kiyoko has released 10 such music videos – all self-directed – most of which involve an explicitly or implicitly (usually the former) lesbian storyline.
“Girls Like Girls” follows the love story of two best friends (played by Stefanie Scott and Kelsey Chow) as they reckon with their feelings for one another and confront a jealous boyfriend. “What I Need” follows Kiyoko and R&B singer Kehlani as they run away from home, and “Curious” follows Kiyoko as she confronts a girl who she feels is using her (both videos end with dramatic makeout sessions – on the side of the road and in a bathroom, respectively). Kiyoko is undoubtedly the most prolific and influential producer of lesbian music videos, but she is not the only one in the business.
Another artist who has achieved success in this arena is the singer FLETCHER. The first video that caused her popularity to skyrocket was for her song “Wasted Youth” which starred her then-girlfriend, popular YouTuber Shannon Beveridge (who herself was previously part of a wildly popular lesbian YouTube couple whose breakup triggered mass devastation among fans). The video is stripped-back and casual, and was filmed on a whim as FLETCHER (whose full name is Cari Fletcher) and Shannon jaunted around LA one night, stopping at various locations such as the laundromat and the beach.
Last year FLETCHER released an even more-talked-about EP, entitled THE S(EX) TAPES, which is all about her breakup with Shannon. The EP’s release coincided with the revelation that FLETCHER and Shannon had been living together during quarantine, broke up during quarantine, and continued living together for some months afterward. (Lesbian drama never disappoints). To make matters even juicier, Shannon filmed every video for every song on the EP, (which again, is about their breakup), two of which include shots of them in bed together (the aptly titled “Sex (With My Ex), which includes vlog-like footage of the two, and “If I Hated You,” which is shot like a VHS-style cam video).
The videos themselves are mildly salacious – as you may have guessed by the aforementioned descriptions (and the title of the EP) – and are made all the more so when you know the juicy details behind the songs. FLETCHER herself has garnered a large audience in part by smartly playing into this desire for pulpy lesbian drama, while also making broadly accessible pop music that still speaks to the specific experience of being queer. Like Hayley Kiyoko before her, much of her success can be attributed to her music videos – both the aforementioned videos along with several others in-between such as “Undrunk” and “If You’re Gonna Lie”. FLETCHER’s confessional style of pop music and revealing (in both senses of the word) videos have thus garnered her legions of sapphic fans, who come both for the music and for the people behind (and in front) of the camera.
Another interesting case of this phenomenon is the singer Zolita as she, like Kiyoko, primarily gained success because of a wildly popular lesbian music video. Following the success of this first video (“Explosion,” which at this moment has 17 million views), she released several other videos, including the similarly popular “Holy,” which follows a lesbian at a strict private school who starts a feminist cult with her girlfriend. I say Zolita is an interesting case because I never hear about her until she releases a new music video (and it immediately pops up on my feed, of course) and I have literally never listened to her outside these videos nor have I ever seen anyone claim to be a fan of hers. (The only other thing I know about her I learned from researching this article, which is that she is apparently a witch and posts various spells on her YouTube channel). Now I’m sure she must have some fans outside the people who absentmindedly hit play on her videos, but in my years studying sapphic culture online I’ve not once heard anyone mention her apart from a quick reblog of one of her videos.
Kiyoko on the other hand does have a very dedicated fan base (fans literally call her “Lesbian Jesus”), and although much of this fandom has similarly coalesced around her videos, the popularity of these videos has also translated to ticket and album sales, not to mention a large online following. (To give you a sense of her influence, while interviewing people at ClexaCon for my thesis, I talked to multiple duos who literally met at Hayley Kiyoko concerts). So Zolita being known primarily (or even exclusively) for her lesbian music videos without having the large following that Kiyoko does says something interesting about the currency of these lesbian music videos – that they can exist both as self-contained objects (in the case of Zolita) or objects that exist within a more expansive context of fan engagement (Kiyoko and FLETCHER).
There are numerous other videos and artists that could be considered among this cohort. For example, I would also include British Shura among this generation of sapphic pop singers. Like Kiyoko, she has a video about a gay high school crush (“What’s It Gonna Be”) and an entirely original one about lesbian nuns getting married (“religion (u can lay your hands on me)”). I would also be remiss if I did not mention the queer, Gen Z pop/rock star King Princess within this discussion. What is interesting about King Princess is that her videos are in some cases less explicitly sapphic in terms of containing lesbian storylines and more so because of the inexorable gay swagger that she embodies in every performance (see, for example, “Prophet,” pictured below).
That these videos exist primarily on YouTube rather than traditional video outlets like MTV or VHI is another important component of this phenomenon. Part of what connects these videos to one another is the YouTube algorithm itself. As anyone who has ever used YouTube knows (particularly those who use the site to search for “gay content”), once the algorithm notices you watching a certain type of video, related videos will be recommended to you for the foreseeable future. So if you watch a couple of Hayley Kiyoko videos, a FLETCHER video or a Zolita one might show up on your homepage the next time you log on. (Because of my particular YouTube habits this happens to me frequently, and I often find myself getting recommended clips from shows or movies that I have never once interacted with because they include a sapphic character). This particular function of the YouTube algorithm is why it has become such a popular site for finding queer content overall – once you go down the rabbit hole, it’s difficult to get out.
But back to the question of style. Perhaps the relative diversity of these videos in content and form – from witchcraft to high school crushes to sex tapes – means that there isn’t a unified generic aesthetic that these music videos have in common. But maybe there is also something to be said for looking at the videos from a demographic standpoint – with the exception of Kiyoko (who is half-Japanese), all of the artists I have mentioned (and most I have not) are white, and with the exception of King Princess (who is genderqueer), all the artists lean towards the feminine.
But in these instances, these exceptions do carry some weight. If Kiyoko is the most prolific music-video-maker of this group, then the “diversity” she brings to the table (both her own presence as well as the other women of color who have starred in her videos), is not insignificant. And King Princess’ considerable success as a genderqueer pop star (and indeed, her gender presentation and sexuality are a large part of her image) is a meaningful addition to the pop music landscape. Nonetheless, lesbian or queer representation overall does tend to skew both white and feminine in television and film, so it is not surprising that music videos might in some sense also uphold this bias.
There are also numerous other videos I have not had time to include here (such as ones by Elektra, Catey Shaw, and Matilda, to name a few) that make up part of this landscape. But perhaps what makes these videos both distinct and connected is the way they tend to reflect some part of the artist’s identity in a manner they seem to find liberating to share (Like Kiyoko, FLETCHER similarly struggled to find success in the music industry until the release of the “Wasted Youth” video in which she revealed that she was queer, a moment that she marks as in important turning point for both her career and personal life). This distinction carries more weight when we look at the history of lesbian music videos within pop culture more broadly.
There is another subset of sapphic-adjacent music videos that have proliferated amongst a more mainstream (see: Top 40) cohort of pop stars. This trend can be said to begin with the music video for Russian group t.A.T.u.'s 2002 song “All The Things She Said,” which portrays the duo as teen lesbians. This song (and video) was beloved by a generation of young queer women, only for the two women to later come out and say they were not gay nor were they in a relationship. (To make matters even worse, one-half of the duo even revealed herself to be a homophobe several years ago). This video comes off the heels of a trend in the 1990s that has been called “lesbian chic,” beginning with Cindy Crawford and k.d. lang’s famous Vanity Fair cover and continuing to t.a.T.u. as well as Madonna and Britney Spear’s shocking lesbian kiss at the 2003 VMAs. (Here I should also mention Katy Perry’s 2008 “I Kissed A Girl”, a song which arguably hurt more than helped queer women). Things have gotten at least slightly better since then as a lesbian “aesthetic” continues to be seen as a profitable currency within pop culture.
Other videos we might consider from female pop stars are Shakira & Rihanna’s “Can’t Remember to Forget You” or perhaps Beyonce and Lady GaGa’s “Telephone”, both of which are at least subliminally queer. (Though GaGa herself does actually identify as bisexual). I would also include Rihanna’s pretty explicitly sapphic video for “Te Amo” (in which she apparently falls in love with a Spanish-speaking woman?) or Lana Del Rey’s “Summertime Sadness”, which uses a lesbian storyline to illustrate the song’s tragic aesthetic. A more recent addition is Ariana Grande’s video for “break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored,” which ends with a twist wherein instead of kissing someone’s boyfriend, she kisses his girlfriend instead, who then transforms into another Ariana Grande (don’t ask me to explain this). There are a few artists in this more “mainstream” category that are actually queer – famous Tumblr bisexual Halsey achieved a lot of success with her video for “Ghost,” and also released a song with another bisexual singer, Fifth Harmony’s Lauren Jauregi (“Strangers”), though the video isn’t quite as sapphic as the song itself.
Even more strangely (or perhaps this is not strange at all), there are also a considerable number of lesbian music videos put out by (predominantly) male bands or artists, artists who you would assume have very little personal connection to actual lesbians. In this category, one of the ickiest of these is probably Metro Station’s “She Likes Girls,” which tells the story of two women from a decidedly male perspective. There’s also The Head and the Heart’s “Another Story,” which is a mini lesbian period piece starring Troian Bellisario, The Neighborhood’s “A Little Death,” (which, by the way, is a song about orgasms), and Avicii’s “Addicted To You,” which tells a lesbian version of Bonnie and Clyde.
What sets these videos apart from the videos of the sapphic singers I highlighted earlier is that there is not a clear connection between the lesbians depicted in the videos and the artists, nor even the songs, themselves. This is not necessarily a bad thing - the style of these videos range from culturally savvy camp (“Telephone”) to fetishization (“She Likes Girls”) – but these decontextualized lesbian moments often come from more of an aesthetic standpoint than an emotional one (which is not to say that queer images on their own do not produce an emotional effect in the viewer). Indeed, relationships between these more mainstream videos and queer viewers are often fraught – is it queer-baiting, fetishization? – while queer viewers of the more “niche” videos tend to have a more broadly affirming relationship to such content.
What these lesbian and queer artists have done is place themselves within this cultural lineage, defining themselves both against and alongside the pop culture that has come before them. Despite the relative disfavor that has now befallen them, songs like “All The Things She Said” and “I Kissed A Girl” were foundational moments for many young sapphics. Rather than totally eschew the cheekiness (and, indeed, the sexiness) of these influential artifacts, artists like FLETCHER and Kiyoko have remade these images on their terms, with – and this is important – the desires of their queer fans explicitly in mind. (On the topic of homage – King Princess’ videos at times abide by a broadly ‘90s aesthetic, and Zolita’s more often echo The Craft).
Rather than define these purely from a stylistic standpoint, perhaps what connects them as an audiovisual genre is their prized position within contemporary sapphic culture. While of course queer content exists in music and in literature, there is something particularly immersive and expansive about visual culture that I imagine is why so many queer youth have flocked to places like YouTube and Tumblr (a site known for its’ heavy circulation of GIFS and other images) in the last decade or so. Music videos are comfortingly simple and do not require the contextual knowledge of a television show, but are also a reliable source for repeat viewings (the view count on “Girls Like Girls” is surely made up of many such repetitions).
The tone of these videos – which range from earnest to tongue-in-cheek but skews towards the former – is important, but so is the intention behind them. As generations of queer women have grown weary of disappointment (see, again, t.A.T.u.), the images these videos present are often just as important as the people behind them. Indeed, it is both the confident displays of sex and sexuality in the videos and the confessional, knowing tone of the songs that draw viewers in, and it is their cherished place within the sapphic stratosphere as visual currency that allow them to remain relevant and endlessly circulated. If we are indeed creating a unified theory of lesbian music videos, this would be its central tenant. To Hayley Kiyoko and beyond.
Welcome to this week’s dispatch from the lesbian internet.
On Tuesday, Charlize Theron was profiled in Vanity Fair. In the interview, she reiterated her interest in starring in a lesbian version of Die Hard, an idea which someone floated around on Twitter last year. Charlize initially replied to this idea on Twitter, saying “Where do I sign,” and then Aisha Tyler also replied, saying “Where do I cosign.” Now, who knows if this action movie starring Charlize and Aisha as wives will ever happen, but Charlize says once someone writes it, she is all in. So what I’m saying is…who’s ready with the screenplay?
On Wednesday, Gallup released a new study detailing the rise of LGBT-identified people in the United States. Unsurprisingly, the study revealed that there are more LGBT-identified individuals in Gen Z (born after 1997) than in any generation previously. In particular, there are more than 2x more people who identify as bisexual among Gen Z than among Millennials.
This data comes after a year in which we have unfortunately seen a resurgence of transphobia among a minority of lesbians who feel the “trans movement” is stealing away lesbians by “forcing” them to identify as trans rather than as lesbians. (I will not link any examples here because this discourse is abhorrent and need not be spread any further). This so-called “disappearance” of lesbians is thus disproven by this study (and by common sense), which finds that nearly double the amount (.08% to 1.4%) of people in Gen Z identify as lesbians than do Millennials. But because bigots don’t generally respond to actual facts, jokes will have to do.
On Friday, Apple TV+ released the finale of their hit series Dickinson, which is an anachronistic romp about young Emily Dickinson starring Hailee Steinfeld. I don’t actually watch this show (sorry – the vibes are just not for me) so I literally can’t spoil it for you, but I am aware that a romantic bathtub scene between Emily and Sue (her best friend and paramour, duh) was involved. The only other thing I know about this show is that rapper Wiz Khalifa once played a personification of Death and there is a very memorable moment between Emily and Sue set to Mitksi’s “Your Best American Girl” (for this, the show earns my respect). For those of you that watch this show – congratulations. I am always happy to feel the reverberations of moments such as these when they occur in the sapphic stratosphere.
That’s all for this week, folks! Stay tuned for next week’s romp through the sapphic internet. I will leave you with this iconic image of Cindy Crawford and k.d. lang, which I mentioned above.
Your Sunday newsletters are my absolute favourite! Can't wait for the next one :)