Sabrina Carpenter’s album “Short n’ Sweet,” released on Aug. 23, has been, without a doubt, an attention-grabbing sensation. At the same time, one of the album’s tracks, “Taste,” has stirred up a different kind of conversation, one about queerbaiting that we feel is damaging to artists and the LGBTQIA+ community as a whole. A brief clip from the music video includes a kiss shared between Carpenter and actress Jenna Ortega, which is now circling the internet with claims accusing the pair of queerbaiting, as highlighted by the media news platform Fandomwire.
Upon watching Carpenter’s hit video, “Taste,” we couldn’t be more lost to see how the context implies any queerbaiting at all. Thrown in between amusing sequences of Carpenter and Ortega attempting to murder one another, the kiss is matched with the line “You’ll just have to taste me when he’s kissin’ you. While queerbaiting is a very real issue, and can be harmful within media representation, we fail to see how it applies in this case.
Logically, it seems as though watching the scene in Carpenter’s video would remove any questions about the context and any thoughts that the kiss was really about attraction, revealing it to be a simple visual aid of the lyric itself. Regardless of Carpenter’s sexual orientation or her artistic intentions, people’s reactions to the video allude to a greater issue of quick-to-judge audiences, especially in regards to deciphering sexuality.
Queerbaiting refers to the strategy of implying queer attraction or relationships in a form of media, with hopes of appealing to the LGBTQIA+ community. This practice is harmful to those with queer identities because while representation for the LGBTQIA+ community in media is improving, representation is often still nothing more than hollow. The idea of artists performatively using these identities to promote their work and gain a larger audience can be very alarming.
PinkNews, a popular, UK-based online publication that caters to queer audiences, also hopped on the bandwagon, with possibly the most queerbait-y headline– “No, Sabrina Carpenter is not dating Jenna Ortega.” The article goes on, lightly touching on what happens in the music video, but soon exploring the dating history of the two stars, wrapping it up with the conclusion that “while Ortega and Carpenter are probably, definitely not dating, they seem to be very supportive of each other.”
As a widely recognized source that declares themselves dedicated to LGBTQ+ news, we couldn’t be more disappointed in their misleading coverage of the supposed “queerbaiting,” or the music video overall.
This is not the first instance of celebrities being accused of queerbaiting. According to Goalcast, in 2021, singer-songwriter Billie Eilish faced an onslaught of queerbaiting allegations. These came shortly after she released the “Lost Cause” music video, as well as an Instagram post, with a caption that read “I love girls.” The video was slumber-party themed, featuring clips of Eilish spending a lively night with her female friends, dancing, enjoying candy and laying together in an on-set bed. While the video can be assumed as fun between friends, many viewers thought the tone edged too close to being sapphic to truly be considered platonic, and immediately began putting Eilish’s sexuality up for speculation. Our opinion? Fans could’ve let it be, simply enjoyed the video and let the artist express herself freely.
Two years later, in 2023, Eilish publicly set the record straight in a red-carpet interview with Variety, stating she “didn’t realize people didn’t know” her sexuality. After coming out as queer, she made comments to the interviewer about the general expectations of queer people to address their sexuality.
“I’m just like, why can’t we just exist?” Eilish said. “I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I just didn’t talk about it.”
In one statement, Eilish called attention to a very important question– why do people assume artists are obligated to portray themselves one way or another, or publicly declare a part of their identity that they may not yet be ready to share? We feel that artists should be allowed to come out on their own timeline if they’d like to, without pressure or expectation from excited fans and dissenting audiences alike.
Kit Connor, who plays Nick Nelson in the Netflix show “Heartstopper,” was also the subject of social media audiences dissecting his sexuality, which led to him to feel no choice but to come out as bisexual in November 2022.
“I’m bi,” posted Connor to X, before deactivating his account, which has been written about by Deadline. “congrats for forcing an 18-year-old to out himself. i think some of you missed the point of the show. Bye.”
We’re upset by the mass media speculation that triggered Eilish and Connor to feel resigned to address their sexualities, and feel that the discussion surrounding Carpenter and Ortega is falling into the same trap of hypothesizing. An important part of artistry is self-expression, and we feel that in these instances, particularly in regards to Carpenter’s music video, making queerbaiting assertions ignores the context in which artistry occurs. Speculation that casts a celebrity in a light where they feel forced to address their sexuality upsets us, and discourse regarding Carpenter and Ortega’s kiss feels irrelevant to the greater discussion of queerbaiting.
