Earlier this week, my delightful friend John deBary (hi John if you’re reading this, I hope I got the capitalization right on your last name) sent me a link to this Verily Ritchie video about ‘00s Bisexual Chic, which… talks a lot more about emo culture than I expected.
Watch the video if you want (or don’t, I’m not your mom), because I’m not actually about to unpack about any of what it says about emo or queerbaiting or bisexual chic. What I am about to unpack is this one line about why bisexual chic carries such power in society — why there’s enough allure to the celebrity bisexual that many straight (or mostly straight) celebrities feel called to cultivate an aura of bisexuality. The specific wording escapes me, but the general gist is this: if a celebrity is perceived to be bisexual, that means everyone can imagine that they have a chance with said celebrity. Everyone can eroticize the celeb.
I… have some thoughts about that.
Firstly: I’m trying to figure out if I actually think it’s true. Who is this “everyone” who can imagine themselves with a bi celebrity? I have a hard time believing that straight men were excited by Bowie’s bisexuality because it meant that they might be able to boff him, or that straight women were excited by the possibility of kissing Katy Perry because she copped to kissing a girl (and if they were, it probably means they weren’t straight).
When straight people are enticed by a celeb’s purported or real bisexuality, it’s generally straight men getting excited by bi women and straight women getting excited by bi men… and, on the face of it, the imagined sexual availability of a bi man or woman isn’t that much different than the imagined sexual availability of a straight man or woman. And straight people have a lot of straight celebrities they can fantasize about one day being able to date.
What I think makes a bi celebrity exciting to the heterosexual masses is not the broad perception of availability. It’s much more — to put it bluntly — the promise of a queer person who will also fuck you. I don’t think that, for instance, lady emo fans were excited about the boys in bands they liked kissing each other solely because their male friends could also imagine themselves with said boys; I think it was because they liked that they could watch boys kissing each other and maybe also kiss those boys as well. It’s very literally bisexuality as a performance, both in the sense that the existence of the bisexuality in question is often exaggerated, and that its purpose is to titillate and entertain straight people who see queerness as edgy and rule breaking and exciting — but also want that queerness to encompass their own sexual desires.
So that’s part of it, I think. The intrigue, the appeal, of celebrity bisexuality feels inextricable from the stereotype of bisexuals as natural provocateurs and erotic eye candy; far more than it’s about some fantasy of broad accessibility. The appeal is not that bisexuals are “potentially available to everyone” — it’s that if you are hot for a celebrity, and they are also potentially bisexual, then there’s a whole host of stereotypes about their sexual pliability that you can use to heighten your fantasy. (Which, it probably goes without saying, I do not love.)
But also: let’s say the whole bisexual chic thing was about this idea of bi people being universally accessible to everyone regardless of gender.
WHAT!
I think I might have trouble understanding this one in part because I have a very different relationship to celebrity than a lot of people do. Like, sure, of course, I have celebrity crushes, but I am also very cognizant of celebrities as people with their own wishes and desires and whatnot. I’m very cognizant of the fact that celebrities do not know me from a hole in the ground and very likely have no interest in banging it out with me. So the very basic starting point of “knowing this celebrity is attracted to my gender means I can fantasize about having a chance with them” is already odd to me.
But also, as a bi person, I’m pretty put off by this notion that one’s bisexuality renders them broadly accessible in a way that straight or gay people are not. Bi people are allowed to have standards, you know. The fact that I’m bisexual doesn’t override the fact that I’m an elitist, and this cultural assumption that to be bi is to be attainable — it just does not sit right with me, not at all. It negates the entirety of our agency, our ability to decide who we are and are not attracted to. And again, I think some of that is also just bundled up in the whole weird idea of celebrity fantasy to begin with — certainly, straight celebrities have their agency and autonomy violated by fans all the time — but to fuse it with bisexuality just… just feels very icky.
Which, I suppose, is all part and parcel of why — as Ritchie concludes in her video — bisexual chic is not a pathway to bisexual liberation. Whether or not it’s literally about “everyone” being able to fantasize about a celebrity, it is definitely about bisexuality as a way of objectifying a celebrity. And while I have no problem with objectification per se — in some circumstances, in some settings, it can be fun and even hot — what I know for sure is that objectification is not a path to liberation. It just simply is not.