For my 20th birthday last September, I had a combined party with my girlfriend. The theme was “Pink Pony Club'' versus “Red Wine Supernova,” and the invitation read: “Are you a little cuntry? Or are you out of this world? Pick your theme, but you better werk.” Chappell Roan’s music had surfaced on my explore page a few months earlier and became a go-to for the summer. Roan writes about sex, love, and personal discovery– pretty traditional subjects, but described through a clearly queer lens. Her newest single, “Good Luck, Babe!” sings “It's fine, it's cool / You can say that we are nothing, but you know the truth / And guess I'm the fool / With her arms out like an angel through the car sunroof.” 

With music like Chappell’s, queer experience feels centered– not heard through metaphor or supposed through imagery, but explicitly stated in lyrics, with interviews and visuals to supplement. This same sentiment flows from a multitude of current artists; summer 2024 has already seen a Kehlani album release, a relationship between Renee Rapp and Towa Bird, MUNA announcing the Gayotic live podcast residency, and Faye Webster seemingly dating Deb Never. The sapphic singers took over this summer, with Roan at the forefront.

Chappell Roan is the drag persona and musical project of 26-year-old Kayleigh Amstutz. She performs in thematic, fanciful outfits, wears bold, transformative makeup, and pays constant homage to queer icons. Just as Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, and Mae West, Roan’s look signals a feminine impersonation, and her campiness marks her queerness in an exaggeration of feminine stereotypes. From shouting, “I’m going to serve exactly what you are: CUNT!” in Lady Miss Kier butterfly regalia, to checking a flip phone during her NPR Tiny Desk performance, Roan implements femme-femmeing to disidentify with traditional conceptions of womanhood and lesbianism. Using exaggerated, deconstructed, and culturally rich visuals, Roan intentionally performs her own gender, calling attention to gender performance in itself. 

Roan’s persona honors the queer understanding of hyper-femme lesbianism, while her lyrics comment on the compulsory heterosexuality experienced by many feminine women and non-binary people. The protagonist of “Good Luck, Babe,” refuses to accept an unspoken relationship with an unadmittedly queer woman, stating, “When you wake up next to him in the middle of the night / With your head in your hands, you're nothing more than his wife / And when you think about me, all of those years ago / You're standing face to face with I told you so." The track feels applicable not only to the widely-experienced phenomenon of compulsory heterosexuality, but also to the swath of sapphic people teetering between lesbianism and bisexuality– many of whom once defined their sexualities through adoration for famous boy-bands, and participation in inadvertently queer fan communities.

A broadly spanning group of boy-bands dominated the popular music of the 2000s-2010s– My Chemical Romance, One Direction, BTS, Five Seconds of Summer, and Panic! at the Disco being the most prevalent– and each of these groups played host to at least one fan-conceived gay relationship: MCR’s Frerard, 1D’s Larry, BTS’ TaeKook, 5SOS’s Lashton, and PATD’s Ryden. Each of these pairings derived from thousands of interview clip compilations, performance fan-edits, and fan-written romance fiction, largely consumed and created by queer women. 

In high school, almost all of my women friends read MlM (men-loving-men) fanfiction and those who didn’t still fantasized about relationships within their favorite bands. A good majority of those friends are now lesbians, or otherwise queer people with a tendency towards sapphic relationships, and I see this outcome reflected broadly across the internet. Building from experience, I’ve considered four explanations for this sapphic obsession with MlM partnerships: the boy-band members’ gender performativity, the subversion of contemporary boy-crushing through a queer lens, the lack of lesbian representation in 2000s-2010’s music and media, and the satisfaction of a romance without female objectification.

While Chappell Roan intentionally uses femme-femmeing as a deconstructor of gender and sexuality, boy band members perform their masculinity to the same effect; The Bad Boy, The Funny One, The Charismatic Leader, The Mysterious One– these band members perform as caricatures of masculine archetypes, distancing themselves from their real, tangible manhood and leaving space for the projection of feminine traits. Sapphic fans can imagine characteristics of the performer’s personality, beliefs, and experiences to the extent that an ideal partner is formed. 

This projection functions similarly to the concept of camp– viewing a pre-existing, hetero-centric text (in this case, a celebrity) through a differentiated, queered lens. Sapphic fans queer these boy-band members, and then connect with their perceived/imagined gay romances and life experiences. This activity builds a queer subtext into popular music fandoms, allowing gay fans to connect through a shared interpretation of otherwise heterotypical media. 

Why, then, don't sapphic fans externalize queerness onto WlW (woman-loving-women) pairs? In the 2010s, few woman musicians presented opportunities for queer shipping– the biggest women in pop music performed as solo artists– Katy Perry, Ariana Grande, Beyonce, etc.-- or as women fronting an all-male band– Hayley Williams, Fergie, Gwen Stefani, etc.– and the persona/imagery around these women directly indicated their male attraction/straightness. In 2012, X Factor-winners Fifth Harmony formed, bringing about Camren, the lesbian ship between Camila Cabello and Lauren Jauregui. Fifth Harmony presented one of the first opportunities for WlW shipping in the internet age, building off of the 1990s legacies of The Pussycat Dolls, Spice Girls, and TLC. However, on the boy-band front, dozens of groups existed throughout the 2000s-2010s, representing various music genres and subcultural affiliations. 

In instances of WlW shipping, such as with Fifth Harmony, fan theories and social media discussions quickly devolve into sexual objectification of the underage women, reflecting the dynamics of many heterosexual pairs in popular culture– Briney Spears and Justin Timberlake, etc. In MlM pairings, fans can create romance storylines that correct the objectifying behavior of many celebrity men in straight relationships, and subvert the stereotypical role of dominant men in romance. Queering a man might make him more attractive in that he deviates from the typical, somewhat threatening role of men in straight relationships. 

In these four ways, MlM imaginaries served as a powerful community builder and sexual outlet for young lesbians to explore, externalize, and familiarize themselves with queer dynamics. However, with an assorted group of sapphic popular musicians existing in the mainstream, young people can discover their lesbian identities more easily, and no longer need to subvert boy-band sexual dynamics as markers of queerness.

For this reason, it’s important that Chappell Roan’s music exclaims queerness in multiple ways. Building on the groundwork of Tegan and Sara, Melissa Etheridge, and Brandi Carlile, Roan not only discusses her outright and unobscured lesbian experience, but she presents campy, feminine imagery in both performance and politics.