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Katy Perry feeling victorious at the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards, August, 2017.
The #MeToo Movement has made tremendous gains over the last few months. The show American Idol, and specifically judge Katy Perry, seems intent on undermining it.
Perry’s behavior, and that of her fellow judges Lionel Richie and Luke Bryan, is classic “locker room” talk. If this were a satire, Perry would get kudos for aping loutish behavior. But Perry proves that powerful women can debase and marginalize star-crossed amateurs, too.
Several young male contestants have had to endure Perry’s “flirting” this season. Singer Jonny Brenns, eighteen, was told by Perry he had a “little sexy thing” that girls will eat up and that even she, as a “thirty-two-year-old cougar would eat it up.” Perry called Trevor Holmes “hot” and joked about “his tools,” referring to his job in construction.
But perhaps most troubling was the experience of nineteen-year-old, Benjamin Glaze.
Before Glaze even sang, Bryan commented on his backstory, noting Glaze had not kissed a girl, a nod to one of Perry’s most popular pop songs. “Come here. Right now,” Perry demanded of Glaze, summoning him to her as Bryan laughed, commenting, “I gotta get a picture of this!”
The ensuing kiss was met with shock by Glaze, and high fives by Richie and Bryan as Perry held her arms up in victory. A visibly shaken Glaze meandered back to his mark muttering, “That’s a first.” Richie tried to reassure him this was a good thing. “Your first kiss was Katy Perry! You understand me?”
No surprise, Glaze bombed. He then had to endure Perry being fanned by her co-judges with the golden ticket he would not receive, as she explained, “I think you’re really sweet. Truthfully, there are some people that are just outsinging you right now. . . . I think you were a bit rushed.” Practice, improve, and “kiss a couple of girls” they told him.
The indignation, however, did not end there. As Glaze told his family about the kiss, the judges laughed as they crowded around the camera that captured Perry’s conquest.
Glaze said he was uncomfortable with the kiss, but did not feel that he was sexually assaulted. Viewers, however, are rightly questioning Perry’s behavior. Such actions from a person in a position of power is the very definition of sexual harassment.
But unlike most victims of sexual harassment, Glaze was made to endure his experience in public, again and again. Hosts on Good Morning America replayed the encounter to laughter. ABC tweeted: “This journey has just begun, Benjamin. A kiss for good luck from @katyperry and you’re on your way.”
Grin and bear it. This is the price of fame, or least a brush with it.
Their message was clear: Grin and bear it. This is the price of fame, or least a brush with it.
Glaze, Brenns, and Holmes will receive some media attention as a result of Perry’s behavior, but I doubt it will launch any of them on to stardom. Surely, none will likely match the $25 million that Perry is paid for her part on the show.
Last year, during the launch of her latest album, Witness, Perry told The New York Times that she was rethinking her music in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election. Throughout the interview, she expressed frustration with sexual misconduct. Referring to Donald Trump, she stated, “I was triggered . . . by a big male that didn’t see women as equal.”
How ironic, then, that she is acting in the same way as the men she purports to disdain. Perhaps she is merely playing a role for ratings, which is likely just fine with the network. (ABC execs have not publicly chastised Perry’s behavior. In fact, they seem to support it, using her antics to promote the show.)
Perry deserves to be chastised. By demanding sexual compliance of those young male contestants, she subverts the very movement she claims “triggered” her to contemplate her status and personhood. Perry reminds us that sometimes women in positions of power are just as capable of abuse as powerful men.
Lisa Beringer is an assistant professor of sociology at Ivy Tech Community College - Northeast, an adjunct lecturer of Women’s Studies at Indiana University-Purdue University, Fort Wayne, and a regular contributor to The Progressive.