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I remember the first time I saw the video and heard the song “I Kissed a Girl.” It was emailed to me by a publicity person for Katy Perry, whom I had never heard of before. I thought “this song is crap and the video doesn’t even have women kissing in it.” I didn’t think it would be popular at all, and of course I was wrong. “I Kissed a Girl” was Katy Perry’s first hit and while I questioned her talent then and several times afterwards, she certainly has ambition and worked hard for her fame. When she first hit the scene we heard that Katy came from a strict religious upbringing, her dad is a preacher, and that she started out singing gospel music. She seemed to break free from her background and her parents stuck by her and became more progressive along with their daughter. I didn’t know that “I Kissed a Girl” was at all autobiographical, and if it was it wasn’t that scandalous. It sounds like an ode to drunkenly kissing your best friend to turn on a guy. “I hope my boyfriend don’t mind it.” It doesn’t come across as a sexual awakening, more like a dabbling, but maybe that was because Katy wasn’t particularly open about it at the time. At the Human Rights Campaign gala in LA over the weekend, where she was honored with a National Equality Award, Katy described struggling with an attraction to women while she was growing up and praying about it so that it would go away. She said that she did more than just kiss a girl:
Katy Perry opened up last night about her religious childhood at the Human Right Campaign Gala in downtown Los Angeles.
The gay rights lobbying group honored the pop singer with its National Equality Award.
“I’m just a singer and songwriter, honestly,” Perry said. “I speak my truths and I paint my fantasies into these little bite size pop songs. For instance, ‘I kissed a girl and I liked it.’ Truth be told, I did more than that.”
“However,” she continued, “But how was I going to reconcile that with a gospel singing girl raised in youth groups that were pro-conversion camps? What I did know was I was curious and even then I knew sexuality wasn’t as black and white as this [Rasario] dress. And honestly, I haven’t always gotten it right but in 2008 when that song came out I knew that I started a conversation and a lot of the world seemed curious enough to sing along, too.”
While Perry said she spent her adolescence trying to pray “the gay away in my Jesus camps,” things began to change when she made her foray into the mainstream music world. “I found my gift and my gift introduced me to people outside my bubble and my bubble started to burst,” she said. “These people were nothing like I had been taught to fear. They were the most free, strong, kind and inclusive people I have ever met.”
[From E! Online]
I like when celebrities admit that sexuality isn’t black and white in their experience. It would be impressive if Katy identified as bisexual at some point, if she does identify that way, but she doesn’t need to and that’s a personal decision. Good for her for discussing this and for being open about how just knowing about conversion therapy before she was even subjected to it made her feel like she was wrong and needed to be “saved.” I do have to say that I don’t think “I Kissed a Girl” was groundbreaking at all. Jill Sobule did it better in 1995.
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Source: celebitchy.com
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