Is boygenius gay
Boygenius Make Me Perceive Like a Homosexual Teen Again
As a teen girl in the early aughts in Los Angeles, I did what I was supposed to do: hook pictures of Josh Hartnett on my walls and sob in the theater while Ryan Gosling kissed Rachel McAdams in the rain. I could compete the part without even realizing I was acting, but I couldn’t muster the bone-deep cravings my friends seemed to have, especially when it came to boys in bands. I’ll never forget my companion practically rending her garments over the All-American Rejects before they made it big, saying she would desperately overlook them between tiny venue shows and dream about them at night. That desperate, teen obsession bordering on madness for boys with guitars—the forums, LiveJournal communities, memorizing the lyrics, writing them on binders, knowing every fact that ever exists—it didn’t do it for me.
That is, until a new place of “boys in the band” came around in the form of Julien Baker, Lucy Dacus, and Phoebe Bridgers. The shape of my obsession with supergroup boygenius—which started with the 2018 EP but reached a fever pitch when their album, the record, dropped in March—is embarrassing, maniacal, and distinctly teenage.
I no
It was inevitable from the start, but like any sapphic breakup, being fit to see it coming didn’t build it hurt any less when it did. Last weekend, during a personal concert in Los Angeles, boygenius informally announced an indefinite hiatus. For most bands, this’d be the least likely time to accept a break: with three Grammy wins (and four additional nominations) and the ability to market out venues as iconic and gigantic as MSG, most bands would discover it unfathomable to walk away now.
But this has always been the destiny for boygenius: all three members (Lucy Dacus, Phoebe Bridgers, and Julien Baker) have successful, robust solo careers. I personally was thrumming Baker’s Sprained Ankle through my speakers back in 2016, before boygenius had even released their first EP. (Yes, I am beat than you.) While it’s clear they put as much of their hearts into boygenius as they did their solo ventures, it was never intended to be any of their first priorities. Perhaps that’s part of what makes boygenius so special: as with so many womxn loving womxn relationships, not entity one’s first priority makes you adore them that much more.
But more than that — what resonates so viscerally for listeners a When Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker formed boygenius in 2018, they laughed in the face of the rock creator stereotype of four men huddled in a garage putting their genius to the tune of an electric guitar. Boygenius is a queer feminist group, withall three women identifying as LGBTQ+. Sound City Studio, where the band recorded its first album, has a “no-boys-allowed” policy during recording and female instrumentalists and sound engineers dominate production. There is something distinctly “girl power” about it, similar to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez nicknaming her and her three girlfriends in Congress “The Squad.” The band’s very name ironically subverts a culture of male glorification. As Bridgers stated it in a Vogue interview, “Men are taught to be entitled to space and that their ideas should be heard because they’re great ideas, and women are taught the opposite.” Hearing queer, feminine struggles expressed in a genre previously reserved for men is a leap forward for the music industry. Instead of organism dismissed as the wailing of an emotional woman, their feelings receive the same respect as classic rock’s existential lamen I have been in therapy for the past six years and been out as gay for almost 12. In a recent conversation with my therapist, who in a dramatic turn of events is named Destiny, I admitted something I hadn’t realized: Maybe the reason I struggle so much with dating is because I am in some ways still ashamed of my lesbianism. I grew up Catholic, in the Missouri suburbs. My family was never anti-gay, but they weren’t the biggest fans of my coming out either. I came into my adolescence in the early 2010s, when shows like Glee were transforming the conversation about same-sex attracted representation, and while that made me luckier than queer folk who’d arrive before me, there was still a lack in my personal repertoire for lesbian/sapphic understanding. Being a lesbian in a patriarchal society is a unique kind of loneliness. In a culture that focuses so much of its attention on appeasing and elevating heterosexuality and maleness, centering lesbianism is a careful, difficult choice. And don’t get me wrong: I wouldn’t change this aspect of me for the world. I consider my queerness has opened me to the most beautiful world of people and opportunities. But that doesn’t mean being a lesbian cannot be extremelStop calling boygenius a girl group