Janelle Monáe’s new single just dropped—and it seems she’s dropped all her reservations too. “PYNK” is not just your average girl power anthem, it’s a girls loving girls anthem. Monáe has long been open about her LGBTQ identity, and she certainly celebrates it in this song and video.
The video features amazing visuals, fierce looks, a cast solely composed of black people (including Tessa Thompson!), feminist slogans, and yes, the vulva pants.
Monáe sings,
“Pink like the inside of your, baby
Pink behind all of the doors, crazy
Pink like the tongue that goes down, maybe
Pink like the paradise found”
Despite these lyrics, straight people are somehow missing this concept so let me make it very clear: this is one hell of a gay song.
Though “PYNK” is clearly a euphemism for vulvas, the point is still going over plenty of people’s heads. Monáe is not just simply celebrating her own genitalia (which is usually degraded by society due to its association with cis womanhood) as a feminist power move, she is singing about loving other women’s vaginas (and going down on them).
Seriously, she wasn’t even being subtle!
This song is not for your female empowerment playlist—and that’s what makes it so important. Society shames women who openly express their sexualities, and it especially stigmatizes women who aren’t straight. “PYNK” is all about reclaiming the sexualities that have been stripped from us and taking pride in loving women—even when heteronormative pressures tell us we shouldn’t.
And one of the best parts is that you don’t have to worry about cissexism when jamming to this song in your car, since both Monáe and Thompson acknowledged the fact that not all women have vaginas—and that they deserve love and a place in feminism and LGBTQ+ communities, too!
Not only did “PYNK” make me 100% gayer, it also made me even more excited for Janelle Monáe’s new album, Dirty Computer, which drops April 27th!
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