The Myth of Real-Life Queerbaiting

Stars like Harry Styles and Ariana Grande have been called out for their ambiguous gender expression and sexuality, but an artist’s reluctance or refusal to label their sexuality for the public shouldn’t mean they’re “queerbaiting.”

Written and illustrated by Minnah Zaheer

When Harry Styles’ most recent single “Lights Up” dropped, fans were quick to shower it in praise. The accompanying music video consists of only a few scenes, but the one that took social media by storm is the one in which Styles surrounds himself with a group of half-naked men and women that dance both on and around him. Fans rejoiced at this fairly explicit expression of Styles’s attraction to both the female and male dancers. 

However, many of those same fans accused Ariana Grande of queerbaiting due to a similar expression of her attraction to a woman in the music video for “break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored.”

To understand what’s going on, it’s critical to contextualize the term “queerbaiting,” its history, and its increasing use in media studies. The number of canonically LGBTQ characters in TV shows and movies has been on a steady rise in the past ten or so years, but the similar phenomenon of queerbaiting has also risen. Essentially, queerbaiting is the act of creating a dynamic between two characters that implies a homoerotic relationship (or implies the character is transgender), without ever actually confirming that those characters are LGBTQ. 

The implication of the term is that writers and producers of TV shows and movies identify that a core part of their audience wants to see more LGBTQ representation, but they don’t want to risk losing other audience demographics by actually providing said representation. It boils down to a marketing strategy toying with the sexuality and gender identity of fictional characters. 

But what about queerbaiting in music videos?

Photo courtesy of Harry Styles on YouTube

It’s not fair to implicate that an artist’s choice to be in the spotlight of their own video and imply that they aren’t straight is a marketing strategy in the way it is in fictional media. Music videos exist as an extension of an artist’s personal image to the world. This does play into personal branding and, to an extent, marketing, but the difference is the real-world implications of the brand: when men grind against Harry Styles in a music video, the world doesn’t see a fictional character — we see Harry Styles of “One Direction” fame. When the screen cuts to black a split-second before Ariana Grande kisses a woman, we see Ariana Grande herself about to kiss a woman. She is the same Ariana Grande from Nickelodeon’s “Victorious” and “Sam & Cat.”

Courtesy of Ariana Grande on YouTube

However, many artists are out of the closet and proud of their sexuality — some, like Elton John, have been out for decades. Why, then, do Grande and Styles feel the need to portray their sexuality in a more cryptic manner, under the protection of music videos and lyrics (in Grande’s case, her song “MONOPOLY” features bisexual singer and rapper Victoria Monet and contains the very specific lyric “I like women and men”), instead of explicitly addressing that they aren’t straight? 

It may be because both stars also grew up with the rise of social media and are all too aware of how ruthless people can be online. Styles faced years of media pressuring him on his sexuality and fans fetishizing his relationships with his One Direction bandmates, and has continued to face speculation of his sexuality due to his fashion choices. The bombing of Grande’s show in Manchester in May of 2017 earned her tons of vitriol, and she’s been accused of everything from cultural insensitivity and blackfishing (tanning to the point of making people think she’s not white) to being the reason her former boyfriend and rapper Mac Miller took his own life.   

Media coverage of controversies is bad enough, but when the media goes too far it can have real-life consequences on a person’s life. In an interview with W Magazine, actor Lee Pace was asked a series of questions he called “intrusive” in a Twitter thread posted after the interview was released and he was forcibly outed. Throughout his career, Pace played LGBTQ characters in his films and TV shows, and was resultantly the target of much speculation that ended in someone taking away his agency to come out on his own terms. This is what happens when we refuse to treat celebrities like human beings — we force them to either come out of the closet ceremoniously and publicly, relegate themselves to living in privacy for their entire lives, or have the truth squeezed out of them against their will. If we keep policing how Grande and Styles express their sexuality, we only do more to hurt them and the community as a whole. 

One other facet of using the LGBTQ community for profit that becomes especially prevalent every June, which is Pride Month across the world, is what many so kindly refer to as “rainbow capitalism” — the act of corporations selling pride-themed merchandise to make consumers think they care about the LGBTQ community. While some companies, like American Eagle, Converse, and Under Armor donate all of the proceeds from their pride-themed collections to LGBTQ activist groups, many of them, like Disney and H&M, donate only 10% of the profit and keep the rest of it for themselves. This isn’t activism — it’s exploitation. 

Perhaps this is what people who criticize Grande and Styles mean when they express concerns that they and other celebrities are queerbaiting — they (and their PR firms) are doing it with the same intentions as these corporations, to profit off of our excitement at the potential of representation without actually giving us anything concrete. From a sales perspective, this doesn’t check out either. In all-time Billboard Hot 100 Data, the aforementioned Elton John is one of the only out gay artists who has experienced significant success — and he didn’t come out until over a decade into his career. With a few notable exceptions, members of the LGBTQ community often end up relegated to the sidelines of the music industry regardless of their impact on music.

Treating celebrities like corporations or fictional media is a very disingenuous practice with real-life ramifications. Both Styles and Grande exist with their lives under a very powerful spyglass — the smallest mistake could ruin either of their careers. No wonder they feel reluctant to share the intimate details of their sexual identities to a world that has never given either of them a break. Queerbaiting and rainbow capitalism are a very real phenomena with very real and harmful effects on the LGBTQ community, but we cannot keep feeling a sense of entitlement to the lives of celebrities the same way we demand accountability from fictional media and corporations. It’s time to treat people with kindness.