There’s no denying that Taylor Swift’s “You Need to Calm Down” has been a huge hit for the 29-year-old singer but Christine and the Queens is calling her out for appropriating “the queer aesthetic” in the song’s video.
Speaking with Cosmopolitan, the French singer — real name Heloise Letissier — recently admitted that she felt “conflicted” by the video, which is bursting with gay imagery and even an appearance from the “Queer Eye” Fab Five.
“I guess somewhere, young gay men might watch that Taylor Swift video and feel a sense of relief,” she explained. “Five years on [since she entered the music industry] and you can tell that being queer has been glossed out as this super-fancy accessory.”
She added: “You can tell that the queer aesthetic is being used to sell things. The mainstream needs that life because it’s so vibrant. But I think the core of the queer aesthetic cannot be sold.”
The way she sees it, there’s a fine line between authenticity and marketing.
“When I changed my name from Christine to Chris on the second album, some people said, ‘That’s a cool marketing thing you did.’ It was so painful,” she said. “It’s never been marketing for me. It’s about jumping into the unknown and saying things loudly.”
Letissier then took to Twitter to clarify her comments, insisting the coverage had been reduced to the “sexist narrative of a cat fight.”
