Why Halsey Doesn’t Like Fans Saying She Made Them Gay
Halsey has been openly bisexual for years, however, she doesn’t always appreciate the way people react to her portrayal of same-sex relationships. Sometimes, fans tell her that she made them gay. Here’s why she takes issue with that.
Halsey cast this music video in order to upset her record label
Halsey’s track “Ghost” is an unusual song because there are two music videos for it. One portrays Halsey getting intimate with a man in a hotel room before he gets arrested. The other video is more polished. It features Halsey and another woman getting intimate while wearing neon-colored wigs. In an interview with Popjustice, Halsey revealed she depicted a lesbian relationship in the latter video for social reasons.
“I put up the ‘Ghost’ video and it’s [about] this lesbian relationship,” she said. “I’m bisexual so it’s my opportunity to take heteronormativity out of this world of media and culture and blah blah blah.” In addition, the singer said she decided she should have a female love interest in the second video because people at Capitol Records wanted her to have a male love interest and she wanted to upset them for assuming her love interest should be male. She described herself as a devil’s advocate.
How the world reacted to ‘Ghost’
So did the music video for “Ghost” propel it to the top of the charts? The track failed to chart on the Billboard Hot 100 at all. While the music video didn’t cause the song to become a radio hit, it caused a number of women to comment that Halsey made them gay.
What upset Halsey about the reaction to the lesbian ‘Ghost’ music video
Halsey is not a fan of this response. “Then the comments underneath the video are ‘Halsey made me gay’, ‘Halsey’s so hot, she made me gay’ and they don’t understand that through this hyper-sexualised culture, what they think they’re doing is being accepting of homosexuality and really what they’re doing is insinuating that gay is something that you can be made, and that is counter-productive to my MO,” she said. “My MO is to normalise it, to make it understood. Comments like that come from this hyper-sexualised nature of the internet, this hyper-sensitive political correctness, and this crazy, crazy world of awareness. I think it’s positive, but there are products of it that are not positive, like kids saying, ‘Halsey made me gay’. I get what you’re trying to do, but it’s counter-productive because you don’t understand.”
Halsey portrayed LGBT characters in a candid and casual way many times after releasing “Ghost.” She discusses same-sex relationships in the lyrics of other singles like “New Americana,” “Bad at Love,” and “Strangers,” a duet with former Fifth Harmony member Lauren Jauregui. Halsey wants to see LGBT people represented in the media — she’s just not comfortable with some of the ways fans respond to this representation.
