If you know me, then you probably know that I'm not very soft–spoken about my queerness. Neither is Hayley Kiyoko. Her fans refer to her as "Lesbian Jesus," and her music videos always feature a female romantic interest. The artwork of her debut album Expectations, released March 30, features Kiyoko sitting in a chair while gazing at a naked woman whose back is to the camera. Kiyoko's position suggests lust; her head tilts to the side, jacket falling off her shoulder with no effort by Kiyoko to pull it back up, transfixed by the woman in front of her. The art is a good metaphor for the album itself. In an interview with Jill Gutowitz for them., Kiyoko says, "That would normally be a guy sitting in that chair...I'm putting myself in these positions, but it's always going to be different because I am a woman."
And she's right. Though lesbians and straight men are both interested in women, the politics of love, sex, and relationships are completely different for both categories of people. In Kiyoko's album, as in its artwork, the male gaze becomes the lesbian gaze, as she assumes a role traditionally reserved for a man. She goes about this on its most basic level in "Wanna Be Missed," singing "I wanna be missed like every night/I wanna be kissed like it's the last time/Say you can't eat, can't sleep, can't breathe without me." The next–straightest song on the album comes in its final track, "Let it Be," where Kiyoko laments the ending of a relationship. That's about where the comparison with straight male musicians ends, though.
Every other song on the album contains so much more depth than simply flipping the script of straight man versus lesbian—to say that she's simply queering what straight men have been singing about for decades is doing Kiyoko a severe disservice. Many songs on the album concern themselves with nuanced feelings that any queer woman is all too familiar with; girls playing with your head and leading you on while also chasing men ("Curious"); wanting a girl to be sure that she wants to be with her so she can come out and they can be a public item ("What I Need"); excruciating yet thrilling nights spent with a best friend, getting so close to her but not being able to touch her or vocalize anything you're thinking or feeling because what if she's not queer and it's all in your head and oh God, why am I even thinking this ("Sleepover")?
Yes, she's commandeering the male gaze, but more importantly, she's commandeering male confidence. Never before has a woman in pop music been so vocal about loving other women on such a wide scale; Demi Lovato's most recent album only hints at queerness, and Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl" is the definition of queerbaiting. Kiyoko's album comes at a time when queer female representation desperately needs it, and not just in music.
Isabella Simonetti wrote in Street's anticipatory piece for Kiyoko's album that "while I've tried to latch on to recent LGBT sensations like Call Me by Your Name and Love Simon, I'm often left wondering where the female equivalents are." These movies have their merits, but they only represent white gay men, such a small and disproportionately–represented section of the LGBT community. Many of my own gay male friends couldn't get CMBYN off their lips for weeks, while Carol, the 2015 film based on the 1950s lesbian pulp novel The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith, was watched once and then somewhat forgotten by them. If I say that I prefer Carol, I may get a scathing speech about the art of CMBYN (as if Carol wasn't an artfully–made movie; it was nominated for six Academy Awards, as opposed to CMBYN's three), or I may get a joking reply along the lines of "yeah, of course you do." Why shouldn't I prefer a piece of popular culture that actually reflects my experience? I'm happy whenever the LGBT community is represented, but I don't think it's too much to ask for something once in a while that actually represents my life. At a certain point, it's just exhausting. When are queer women finally going to be taken seriously?
Not only is Hayley Kiyoko finally bringing queer women the representation we deserve, but she's bringing it in such a lovely way. Kiyoko's voice is soft, yet powerful, and the production is simultaneously tight and dreamy. The songs flow smoothly between each other, breathing, restricting and then loosening up for a cohesive sound across all forty–eight minutes. The one feature on the album goes to Kehlani on "What I Need." This is all too fitting, given Kehlani's sexual fluidity, and her willingness to sing about her female love interests without abandon. Listening to the album is like a fresh breath of air; it gave me something that I didn't even know I needed. And for those saying that it's unrelatable because they can't imagine being a woman singing about other women, I say, too bad, welcome to my life. Perhaps Kiyoko says it best, albeit in reference to her music videos: "People think it's a concept. People are like, 'oh, we've already seen a music video about two girls,' and it's like, cool, I've seen a video about a girl and a guy literally my entire life, 4 bajillion times. So why is mine a concept and yours a reality?"
