Christine And The Queens has revealed she has mixed feelings about singers like Taylor Swift filling music videos with LGBTQ+ stars because “being queer has been glossed out as this super-fancy accessory”.
The music video for Swift’s You Need to Calm Down featured some prominent queer celebrities, which some critics suggested was opportunistic.
French singer Christine told Cosmopolitan magazine: “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.”
The singer also discussed coming out as pansexual – meaning people who can be attracted to others regardless of their gender identity or biological sex – to the French media in 2014.
“It was like a detonation,” she said.
“When your sexuality is not the norm, you have to find words to express it.
“Sometimes I was made to feel dirty, or like it was obscene. It’s just a sexual orientation – there’s nothing perverse about that.
“Just being young, sexually active and proud of your sexuality is a problem for women. You’re a ‘slut’, so you’re shamed…”
The 31-year-old – whose real name is Heloise Letissier – added: “’Christine’ was born out of feeling frustrated that people would say no to me because I was a woman. She was this anger.
“Christine was a fantasy of escaping that.”
The full interview is in the November issue of Cosmopolitan, which is on sale on October 2.