Relationships

This Is The Hook-Up Culture Anthem Lesbians Have Been Waiting For

by Zara Barrie
YouTube

Babes, it's been a super rough week, I know (it's almost over, THANK GOD).

Everyone I know has had at least three to six identity crises in the last 24 hours. It's also three million degrees in Manhattan and New Yorkers are just emotionally unraveling at an alarming rate. Excessive heat stimulates a collective madness in this part of the country.

Just when I thought I'd had enough and was ready to throw up my chipped manicured hands and relocate to Bumblefuck, USA to give up on all of my stupid, ambitious dreams because it all just feels too hard and too harrowing in this town -- the gay gods swooped down, picked me off the scalding hot pavement and whisked me away to queer girl heaven.

And as you all know, I really hate reality and just want to live in queer girl heaven forever and ever and ever.

As I was doing my morning subway ride Facebook scroll (OK FINE, I took a taxi, who am I kidding? We all know I'm a reckless spender who likes to burn money), when I came across a post from my friend and sexy lesbian actress extraordinaire, Jax Richter, telling us she was just in a music video with the fierce Lane Moore's band It Was Romance deliciously called "Hooking Up With Girls."

Lez backtrack: I love me some Lane Moore. I read her sex and relationship articles in Cosmo all the time and just think she's hilarious, smart, super badass, fearless, sexy as hell and an empowering role model to all us vulnerable girls wandering around the city streets. I also think we should be friends, don't you?

I immediately went to check out this video my girl Jax and Lane Moore made. Well, babes, let me tell you, I lost my already withered mind when I realized the video was a remake of my favorite video ever -- Fiona Apple's "Criminal."

In fact, I hold the "Criminal" video partially responsible for my inevitable gayness. Pale-skinned Fiona -- writhing around in a tub of angst and sexual tension back in 1996 -- made 10-year-old closeted me feel things. Visceral things. Emotional things. Sexual things.

And then I saw the song was called, "Hooking Up With Girls." Hooking up with girls and Fiona Apple and wildly empowered feminist writers/musicians are just a few of my favorite things, so you better believe my dark mood disappeared fast.

As I watched the video from the back of my air-conditioned Uber, I really began to feel feelings (which was sort of a relief because I've been oddly numb this week, which is weird considering I'm totally off the happy pills).

The truth is, baby, I could relate to the song. When Moore wails "let me know if all we are is just girls hooking up with girls," I felt a pit in the depths of my stomach, because that's exactly how I recently felt when I was dating a girl who meant the world to me, but I couldn't tell if, to her, we were just "girls hooking up."

Moore told Nylon,

I wrote "Hooking Up With Girls" because I was in a relationship with someone I couldn't ever really get a read on. What we were seemed to change constantly and I honestly didn't care what we were or weren't. I just wanted to know whatever the hell it was.

Isn't that the struggle with this Millennial hookup culture in general? We get into these sort-of-relationships and are stewing with all of these unacknowledged, repressed feelings and when we do catch the scary feelings and start to care about our "hookup," we don't want to care because caring is creepy so we stay quiet and never bring it up. Only to crumble inside.

YouTube

Let me tell you why I think this video is also so important to the queer community. We don't have many anthems about hookup culture. So much of queer media is politically driven and sometimes I feel like, as a queer media person, I have to use my voice to fight for justice all the time.

But my throat hurts sometimes. And I just want to hear music and read articles about the trials and tribulations of my love/sex life. I want to hear songs about how confusing dating is and I'm sick of having to change the "him" to a "her" inside my head just so I can semi-relate.

I think this is the anthem I've been looking for. It's so real. And I don't have to change the gender pronouns inside the loneliness of my head.

Also, I find this video an accurate presentation of what queer girl culture really looks like, which is RARE. These are what the babes actually look like when I go to lesbian bars, like the Cubbyhole or Hot Rabbit or Stonewall. As reported in this article, Lane says:

I really wanted to feature hot butch women in this video because usually when we see "hot queer women" in media they're femme women and that's fine, but butch women need to be given more attention, so I was very happy to do that.

Oh, girl is sooo spot on. There is definitely not enough media attention given to the hot butch women who entice so much of our community, so thank you, Lane Moore, for giving me not only a song that I can relate to (gorgeous Fiona Apple 90s grunge aesthetics), but some hot butch women to gaze at on this otherwise dismal day.

Oh and in case you are wondering, because I know my pervy readers, in the words of the great Lane herself,

Did I mention I'm single? I'm single.

OK, CALM DOWN ladies, try your best not to stalk her too much. Proceed with class, but go for it.

Citations: Shot-For-Shot Remake Of Fiona Apple's "Criminal" Video Brings Back The '90s (Refinery 29), It Was Romance's New Video Is A Remake Of Fiona Apple's “Criminal” (Nylon)