“I spent a lot of time wishing I wasn’t gay,” the Years & Years frontman, Olly Alexander, told fans at 2019’s Glastonbury festival. “So now, it’s like I’m making up for lost time, you know?” Standing in front of a crowd full of colourful flags, wearing a sparkly string vest, with the stage behind him emblazoned with the words “queer is beautiful”, Alexander gave a rousing speech and thanked the generations who fought for his rights. It was a queer and joyous image. It’s not difficult to see why members of a community that has been erased and shamed would embrace an aesthetic of defiant happiness. To some, it’s a form of resistance.
The existence of a so-called “queer aesthetic” has been debated for decades. While there is little consensus about what exactly this aesthetic is, there is more agreement that queerness is constantly evolving. Right now, we’re seeing the dominance of a joyful form of peacocking. Pop music’s gay sexual revolution was spearheaded by Lil Nas X lapdancing the devil in an assortment of wigs, but the stylistic choices of LGBTQ+ musicians such as Janelle Monáe, Troye Sivan and Rina Sawayama are similarly attention-grabbing.
