This month, my kid set off to fifth grade with a back-to-school wardrobe composed of 90's staples that I went to great lengths to avoid wearing as a teenager during that decade. A queer punk adolescent, I was way too busy dyeing every piece of clothing I owned black, pegging my jeans, and sewing patches onto everything with dental floss.
I've lightened up a lot since then.
I'm committed to letting my kid's experiments in sartorial expression move forward unhindered. However, I still find it difficult not to wince during moments I'm swiping my credit card to pay for clothing that resembles, at best, the trappings of compulsory femininity that pressed in from every direction during my adolescence. Or, at worst, the uniforms of my early homophobic tormentors.
But where my kid is concerned, there is one place where our tastes converge: Chappell Roan.
Our morning started with a breakfast-time dance party to "Pink Pony Club." I cannot get enough of the sweet solidarity in this track: a song about drag queens making it possible to experience the world differently. It's perfectly sung and styled for the drag stage as the ultimate 'thank you' gift. My kid is a huge fan of drag and also delights in the virtuous cycle of this song.
And so, as I walked her to school afterward in her slip dress and jelly sandals, I found myself suddenly at peace with her aesthetic tribute to a decade that coincided with some of the worst moments of my young queer life. This peace was brought about by the simple fact that we are once again experiencing some of the best the 1990s had to offer—the mass musical enjoyment of lesbian feeling.
My friends and I spent early adolescence having conversations composed entirely of Ani DiFranco lyrics. We've often marveled at how impossible it seems the culture would ever again appreciate the level of sincerity found in an album like Not a Pretty Girl. So imagine our surprise and delight at watching the world rediscover "Fast Car" last year and re-counter Tracy Chapman's entire archive.
When Chappell Roan released "Good Luck, Babe" this Spring, I was stunned by its chilling poignancy. Lyrics that ring like a poppy, sapphic version of the haunting lines issued from Stevie Nicks in "Silver Springs"—the consummate refrain of a jilted lover.
But Roan's "GLB" does more than foretell regrets and deal out, "I told you so's." It evokes much from the decades-deep archive of lesbian popular music. There's something of the lyrical lament in Sophie B. Hawkins' "Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover."
There's the confidence and swagger, the urgent warning of a reckoning for those failing to face up to desire, all tempered by an enduring invitation to intimacy, like in Melissa Ethridge's "I'm the Only One" and k.d. lang's 1992 "Constant Craving." Lang's song was released at a time when the AIDS crisis propelled public awareness of queer life and death onto the national stage for both better and worse. "Craving" asks us to consider queer longing as the occasion to reconnect to the creative power of desire, as something that will call forth from us both old and new forms of courage and becoming.
Amidst "Don't Say Gay" bills threatening queer students and teachers in school districts across the country, mounting attacks on trans existence, pride boycotts, and enforcement of mandatory pregnancy in at least 22 states, Roan has released "Good Luck Babe." Another anthem to queer desire, GLB aptly reminds us, even those who might like to attack queer life, that they'll have an entire world to stop before we give up on our feelings.
The haters can try to put this proverbial cat back in its bag, but they should expect some compelling music to be made in response—convincing enough to help drown out their efforts.
In the meantime, I'll be dancing in my kitchen with my ten-year-old, working together to dream up new futures and better storylines for her and boot-cut jeans.
Courtesy Adele Failes-Carpenter
Adele Failes-Carpenter (she/her) is a queer parent, public educator, and labor organizer residing on Ohlone land where she teaches Women's and Gender Studies at City College of San Francisco. Adele is a Lambda Literary Summer 2024 fellow in Creative Nonfiction who writes about queer parenting and intergenerational queer belonging.
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