Do You Listen to Girl In Red? Queer Symbols in LGBT+ Youth

The use of coded language to express one’s identity plays a major role throughout gay history. Some codes, dubbed ‘Lavender Languages’ have surfaced for the sake of secrecy and safety, incorporating both visual and oral symbols. Take for example the vernacular Polari, used to discreetly express queerness during the criminalization of homosexuality in Britain circa 1960 (11). These days, a similar (though less elaborate) phenomenon has come up in queer youth of today. And where better to foster the development of culture than within Generation Z’s social stomping grounds; TikTok.

It begins with queer Norweigan indie-pop artist Marie Ulven, better known by the stage name girl in red. The Spotify-verified artist has over nine million monthly listeners (7) and is recognized both in and out of the queer community for her lo-fi poetic lyrics, often about loving other women. In 2020, the singer’s alia was adopted by a 19-year-old Michigan musician in a song in which ‘does she listen to girl in red?’ is used as a kind of lyrical code; a means of asking if another woman is also queer. Since then, “do you listen to girl in red?” has appeared numerously in comment sections across TikTok, even getting its own definition in the Urban Dictionary (4).

Queer publishers Them. write that “As the phrase became a full-blown meme, some users “answer[ed]” the question by flashing other coded signifiers for sapphics on the platform, like baking, making outrageous earrings, showing off their eyebrow slits, and wearing Doc Marten boots... While there have been other cultural rallying points for lesbians of generations past, “do you listen to girl in red?” has helped Gen-Z sapphics discuss and express their sexuality in a way that is both discrete and further-reaching than ever before” (10).

Coded signifiers like these only touch on a portion of the coded signifiers used by LGBT+ youth. TikTok even points to cuffed jeans and clear iPhone cases as symbols of queerness. The Washington Post has even gone as far as to name TikTok “the soul of the LGBTQ internet” (12). The use of style as coded signifiers is not in any way new to the queer community. As is written in the book Queer Style, “...fashion has coded same-sex desire, from eighteenth-century macaronis and gentlemen fops to modern leather- men and muscle queens... this condition finds its visual signifiers in queer style...” (6).

These coded symbols are examples of the ways in which historical Lavender Languages have adapted to modern times, finding space as -if only ephemeral- cultural markers of the queer identity. Through the use of technology, a shared visual world is more accessible to queer youth than ever. The cultural connecting of a network of queer youth together through trends and popular symbols is just one way queer folks identify one another, share their stories, and find a chosen family.

Read more about chosen family in this zine’s conclusion.

Start Your Engines: The Acceleration of Queer Pop-Culture into Mainstream Media

On March 22nd, 2018, the first episode of the tenth season of the drag competition reality series RuPaul’s Drag Race aired globally. Following the episode’s elimination of contestant Vanessa Vanjie Mateo, the queen made an impressionable exit: stating her own name in a sing-song tone three times. “Miss Vanjie, Miss Vanjie, Miss Vanjie...” (18). The clip went viral, spreading throughout the internet, eventually becoming recognizable by viewers all over the web.

Vanjie became the subject of thousands of memes, as the catchphrase “Miss Vanjie'' exploded into the mainstream. Even Broadway star Andrew Garfield was a part of the Vanjie phenomenon, speaking on Show People about how “disappointed [he] was to see Vanjie go... it's hypnotising, the culture...” (3). Drag Race is still just one example of queer subculture surfacing in dominant pop culture through the mainstream media.

Mainstream fascination with queer culture is growing. As it does, I begin to worry about representation becoming a commodity. Becoming associated with passing iconographies rather than a long-established, permanently rooted culture. If queer culture exists in a kind of opposition to the mainstream, What happens to queer subculture when it grows in popularity within the dominant straight hegemony? WIthin dominant pop culture? There is no singular answer, but that is not to mean there is no solution.

As Suzanna Walters writes in “Queer Popular Culture: Literature, Media, Film and Television,” “The complexity and diversity of the gay and lesbian community needs to be represented, not promoted as simply heterosexuality with a twist. Whether or not this representation has actually been accomplished remains an open question” (13). Perhaps one way to steer away from commodification is an acknowledgement of queer peoples' historic and ongoing cultural presence.