Christine and the Queens (aka Héloïse Letissier) accuses Taylor Swift of appropriating queer culture “to sell things” in a new interview with Cosmopolitan.
Said Chris of Swift’s “You Need to Calm Down” video: “I’m conflicted. I guess somewhere, young gay men might watch that Taylor Swift video and feel a sense of relief. Five years on [since she entered the industry] and you can tell that being queer has been glossed out as this super-fancy accessory. 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.”
Chris, who identifies as pansexual, said she has been accused of the same thing: “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. I’ve been singing iT [an early song, which she’s said is about ‘wanting to have a dick in order to have an easy life’] for the past five years. It’s never been marketing for me. It’s about jumping into the unknown and saying things loudly.”
