If you have the same enduring love for trashy Top 40 music that I do, you probably can't hear the words "cherry chapstick" without thinking of the 2008 Katy Perry song about a bisexual dalliance. "I Kissed a Girl" was a catchy pop tune that, at first listen, sounded progressive. After the second listening, it began to rub people the wrong way, and after the 50th? Well, the problems with the song's message, and the way this message would affect women who experience attraction to other women, became quite clear. I won't waste time delving into them, as a Feministing article from seven years ago spells out the issues with the song quite well.

Enter, Little Big Town's hit song "Girl Crush". I heard the song for the very first time when I tuned into the Grammy's. Like everyone else, I was watching the Grammy's to catch the performance by the cast of Hamilton, and didn't expect to see such a provocatively titled song performed. When they announced the performance of a song titled "Girl Crush", I'll admit that I got a little excited. Could it be? Could country music be experiencing a new wave of progressive thinking? Of course not. It's an even more frustrating reincarnation of "I Kissed a Girl".

"Girl Crush" is a fairly irritating term for women in the LGBT community already, but to see it warped even further to serve this (very heterosexual) song is downright exhausting. The song uses seemingly gay subtext to provoke the listener's attention before explaining it away with a lyrical "just kidding, actually straight". Choice lyrics include the promising: "I wanna taste her lips" which is then immediately spoiled by "yeah cause they taste like you". It is the very personification of queerbaiting, which involved the invocation of homoerotic tension, in order to attract attention without ever intending to provide actual delivery on said tension. Honestly, having deliberately queer-coded language used to spice up the song's overdone jealousy narrative is more than a little insulting.

I love Dolly Parton as much as the next slightly bruised Georgia Peach, but I won't pretend that country isn't a genre where homophobia is allowed to flourish. Country music stations are banning the song "Girl Crush" due to its homosexual subtext. If you just heard a popping sound, it was me rolling my eyes so hard that I strained a muscle. If an insultingly faux-gay song can't even make it onto a country station, then there is very little hope for a song about an actual same-sex relationship. I can only hope that, someday, non-straight women will be able to listen to poorly-written pop songs and see themselves represented, instead of being continually fed Diet Gay and asked to accept it.