Rita Ora ‘kissing girls’ backlash forced star to reveal bisexuality (dailystar.co.uk, May 2018).
The song features a series of female relationships and had a hit back from listeners who argued that it was mostly about being drunk and kissing a girl, which does not depict the LGBTQ+ community accurately.
And that the “anthem” doesn’t represent them, seemingly not being as niche as perhaps imagined, rather following the manner in which bisexuality has long been teased, not just in pop culture but in any glamour-related Web 2.0 forum and on the now more prevalent social media where peacocking and its female equivalent peahening are vigorously indulged often with faux female bisexuality for attention.
After duping [or perhaps “dubbing” rather] the song “insensitive” the singers Rita Ora, Cardi B and now Charli XCX—were forced to speak out.
Rita Ora was the first to share a comment on the new single by releasing a statement explaining how it is about her own experiences with women.
With Rita’s lyrics in the track including “I ain’t one sided, I’m open minded. I’m fifty-fifty and I’m never gonna hide it” and Bebe Rexha following Rita’s lead pointing out that “My sexual life is nobody’s business” but that “we’re singing a song about kissing girls and that remains true to who I am. It’s the life that I live and it’s honest to me” (billboard.com, May 2018).
While rapper Cardi B—at the start of the year embroiled in homophobic lyric controversy (nme.com, Jan. 2018)—shared that she has had experiences with women—and many of them seemingly depicted in her “it tastes good just rolling off your tongue right” lyrics.
And Charli XCX saying “I think the conversation and dialogue around this song is really important” and that she tries so hard to be involved with the LGBTQ community as without them “my career would not really be anything”.
Her lyrics in track besides the chorus of “Sometimes I just wanna kiss girls, girls, girls” being “And last night, yeah, we got with the dude / I saw him, he was looking at you”.
Indeed, and then said dude was green with jealousy looking at both presumably locking lips—but in reality often more red with indignation and lesbian insults born of rejection.
But Charli astutely also putting things back into pop-cultural perspective while appealing to virtue:
“Of course, the intention of the song was never to hurt anybody. None of the artists on this song would ever want to hurt or upset anyone.”
And the reality being that pop-cultural representation of bisexual relationships is still to a large part fantasy representation of two girls scissoring while sticking tongues out and chap watching and pulling one off. Indeed, had Charli’s track from summer last year “Boys” (GoogleTube) featured similar lip locking, but male lip-locking lyrics, then the bisexual double-standard would have not even considered placing it anywhere but in a rather spectacularly pink niche.
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