Sawyer Fredericks, who stole the hearts of millions when he won the eighth season of American television series The Voice in 2015, scored a personal victory when he came out as bisexual to fans on Instagram in February.
Bridgers and Fredericks are not alone in embracing their queerness as public figures.
Rapper and singer Lil Nas X scored a No 1 single with a song whose music video features him giving Satan a lap dance; Troye Sivan donned a dress at last year’s annual fundraising Met Gala in New York; and major pop stars like Sam Smith and Demi Lovato have both come out as non-binary in recent years.While such bold visibility may seem like the norm in 2022, it’s a far cry from pop music’s recent history.
Boy George, lead singer of the ’80s pop group Culture Club, playfully dodged questions about his sexuality in interviews or conceded he was bisexual, although he would later come out as gay. An arrest for committing a “lewd act” in a public park would prompt singer George Michael to declare his sexuality in 1998.
Former NSync member Lance Bass refrained from coming out as gay during the pop group’s early-aughts run for fear of jeopardising the band’s career. American Idol alum Adam Lambert was dropped from a major morning talk show in 2009 after an awards show performance drew backlash over his same-sex kiss.So, what’s changed between then and now? The advent of social media, the visibility of LGBT trailblazers, and cultural change are some of the factors accounting for this vibrant wave of queer pop stardom.
Myles McNutt, associate professor of communication and theatre arts at Old Dominion University in the US state of Virginia, says the open-ended nature of social media has given LGBT artists the ability to organically develop fanbases centred on the expression of their authentic selves.
“We’re seeing more artists being more comfortable expressing that part of themselves because they have access to platforms where [their identity] is more valued and less marginalised than the traditional industry standards that are there, opening up a new form of representation in the process,” McNutt says.
Electropop singer Hayley Kiyoko, affectionately referred to by fans as Lesbian Jesus, came out with the release of her single Girls Like Girls in 2015. The song’s music video, which tells the coming-of-age story of two girls realising their romantic feelings for one another, went viral and marked a turning point in Kiyoko’s self-perception as a burgeoning public figure.
“People told me how much they related to it,” Kiyoko told Paper magazine in 2018. “I was shocked at how people weren’t judging me. I was ready to be judged, and I was ready to be labelled.
“That was a moment for me where I was like, I can be myself and people are OK with that.”
More LBGTQ characters on TV than before as streaming services multiply
Jeremy Blacklow, director of entertainment media at NGO Glaad, says the sense of connection facilitated by technology has expanded LGBT representation, which helps bring “the queer world together” and creates “more opportunities for queer people to see themselves and to find community”.
But these advances in representation have been a long time coming.
Karen Tongson, professor of gender and sexuality studies at the University of Southern California, says the current generation of LGBT pop stars echoes a legacy of artists, including David Bowie, Prince and rock pioneer Little Richard, who incorporated queer aesthetics into their work.“Stylistically, these artists are evocative of artists who always played with gender binaries, who implied, intuited and maybe even projected queer sexuality,” she says.
What role has mainstream society played in this sea change of queer representation?
Tongson says there has been a broader cultural shift “where people are interested in exploring identities that are not ‘normal’, mainstream, basic”.
Rapper Bad Bunny typifies this exploration. The Grammy-winning reggaeton star has incorporated androgyny into his presentation as an artist, sporting acrylic nails on the cover of Playboy magazine and even wearing full drag in his music video for Yo Perrero Sola.
Pop singer Harry Styles is another famous face who’s played around with norms of gender and sexuality. When Styles appeared on the cover of Vogue in 2020 – the first man to ever be featured on the American fashion bible’s cover – he wore a black blazer over a light blue dress.
Styles has taken his experimentation with gender nonconformity a step further with the launch of his beauty brand Pleasing, which features a nail polish line. He joins a growing number of male celebs embracing the cosmetics realm: Machine Gun Kelly, rapper Lil Yachty and Backstreet Boy AJ McLean have also launched nail polish lines.
“It’s less about a story of necessarily political progress but more a story about how we relate to different styles and different aesthetics over the course of time and when we feel more daring in that regard,” Tongson says.
Still, media representation and record contracts are not a cure-all for achieving deeper societal progress for the LGBT community. Tongson says systemic issues, such as a lack of diversity, are still present within the infrastructure of the industries supporting LGBT artists.
“We can say all we want about … acceptance from a broader culture, but the people who run the music industry still are often the same people who run every industry, and that’s cis[gender] white men,” Tongson says.
McNutt says increased representation only scratches the surface of remedying the inequalities that have excluded queer people from the mainstream.
“It’s chipping away as part of that broader social progression,” McNutt says. “But ultimately, it doesn’t solve marginalisation. It simply is a tool by which marginalised individuals can help to push back against that in a meaningful way.”
On an individual level, the growing prominence of LGBT artists can give a sense of belonging to those who need it most.
“As more pop stars or musicians of any genre come out and are more visible, that’s going to lead to greater acceptance overall,” Blacklow says. “It’s going to let LGBT people who are figuring out their own identities feel more comfortable and like there’s a world that’s out there for them, waiting and welcoming them with open arms.”
