In the wake of Billie Eilish coming out – wait no, making a casual comment about her attraction to women- celebrity queerness came to the forefront of my mind.
In our online culture, there is an obsessive need to know everything about everyone, especially celebrities. Celebrity culture is more rampant than ever, and the invasion of the internet into people’s personal lives is having real-life consequences.
In an interview with Variety magazine, Billie Eilish remarked on her attraction to women. Within two days of this interview, before the Power of Women Gala she was attending, it was all the media would discuss. When looking her name up even now, weeks after the initial article, secondary articles about her gender identity and sexuality fill the page.
I found out this information through an Instagram reel two days after the initial article was posted, discussing how Eilish’s sexuality was an unsurprising reveal. It has to be said that I, too, was a victim of the desire to know if this was true, and took to Google to confirm it for myself.
I ended up reading the full article, and it really stuck with me, how firmly and nonchalantly Eilish shared this. She touched on so many different topics: her work with her mother’s nonprofit Support + Feed, (something she is being honored for in Variety’s Power of Women 2023) womanhood and Barbie, her song “What Was I Made For”, and yes, her sexuality. Eilish revealed this information willingly, and casually, a manner that is so difficult to adopt nowadays that it reminded me of other celebrities that haven’t been so lucky.
Kit O’Connor from the hit Netflix show Heartstopper was publicly forced to come out after social media bullying about the use of ‘straight actors’ in gay roles, and speculation of Connor capitalizing off of queerness, prompting Connor to come out as bisexual in a tweet to end the discussion. Connor later commented that if given the chance, he would have chosen to do it differently, if at all, and even offered advice to those in a similar position. A similar thing happened with the author of the famous queer book Love, Simon, Becky Albertalli, who was criticized so harshly for being a “straight” author writing about queer characters that she took to the internet in an online essay declaring her bisexuality, saying she was “exhausted” with the harassment over a lack of identity she was only beginning to discover for herself.
One thing I’ve always found notable about these arguments, aside from the total lack of respect for privacy that comes with a digital age, is the fixation on “coming out.” I am of the opinion that “coming out” as a concept is fake, created by straight people to force queer people to assimilate into a culture that has developed without them for hundreds of years. Forcing people “out of the closet” by calling them not gay enough or anything remotely similar is a horrific misuse of queerness, and sounds eerily similar to experiences queer people have when coming out to straight people, like family or friends.
Taking away the nuance of the conversation by ignoring rampant media problems such as queerbaiting would be treating this specific topic too lightly: for context, Queerbaiting is most commonly defined as a marketing technique used by media to hint at or strongly imply queer relationships, primarily on screen, without actually portraying them. This tactic is used to garner a queer audience and fanbase, without having to commit to actual representation. Perhaps most famously done by Sherlock BBC and Supernatural, the latter of which managed to both validate their famous gay pairing while also being brutally homophobic, this is a notable misuse of media and its escapism, as well as a step backward for inclusivity and acceptance of queer people in mainstream media.
However, connecting this word to social media and celebrity culture has brought it to new and in my opinion, damaging heights. Forcing people to come out and creating this idea of “real life queerbaiting” comes with an inherent idea or example of what it means to be queer, or what is acceptable from queer celebrities in society. This leads to all sorts of problems, like defining what makes a person “queer enough.”
Real-life queerbaiting is an attempt by queer people to call out non-queer actors and celebrities for taking up space that doesn’t belong to them, such as casting straight actors in gay or queer roles, like many arguments against Harry Styles in the movie My Policeman as well as discourse surrounding his gender presentation and ambiguous sexuality.
The question I pose is this: how are we supposed to find out if celebrities are queer? How are we, as consumers, as audiences, and as a community, supposed to make sure that only fellow queer people are cast, or only queer people are visible as queer? It’s an insurmountable task, and it has the potential to hurt people who may not ever be ready to be “out.” Society still isn’t kind to the queer community, something we know now more than ever, and channeling these feelings into celebrity cancel culture does nothing to promote more inclusive roles in media, or make things easier for us day by day.
Isn’t it better to appreciate it when people, like Eilish, treat their sexuality, gender identity, or queerness as a part of themselves that they see no reason to hide and think a little more deeply, and a little more kindly, about those that are not yet ready? Maybe, if we can accomplish this, the world will be allowed to be gentle, and people will be allowed to be themselves.
