’Love Island’ star Chris Mouton has come under fire from the LGBTQI+ community on TikTok for co-opting queer aesthetics
“LOVE ISLAND” star Chris Mouton has come under fire from the LGBTQI+ community on TikTok for co-opting queer aesthetics.
In the video which has gained 1.4 million views, Mouton is seen wearing black nail polish with the words “wears chokers and rings“, ”paints nails“, ”does eyebrows“, ”gets mani and pedicures“ ending with ”straight” at the end. While he’s lipsyncing to the “Super Spy“ audio.
Implying that while he does things that are associated with queer men, he is a heterosexual man.
Popular queer TikTokers commented on his video, explaining what the problem is with it.
Comfy Daddy (he/him) said: “So you don’t get that this type of discourse during Pride month is homophobic, or like you just don’t care?”
While Rynn Star (she/they) said: “Do you want like a prize? I think maybe I’ve got some dusty mints in my pocket or summin?”
Other TikTokers stitched the video with @meanthey_k (she/they) commenting in her video that as a trans-feminine person when they were growing up, she was called gay and an f-word for the way they dressed in school.
Furthermore explaining that when she went home with nail polish their parents told them that they looked like “a gay man looking for a good time“, and that she could either wash the nail polish off, or shave her head.
The stitch ended with: “I’m glad that now you who probably did that sh*t to kids growing up…I’ glad now that it’s like a cute outfit you can put on.“
Furthermore, TikTok user @scissorcisters (she/they) explained that this is not the first time the trend of cisgender heterosexual white men co-opting queerness has happened on the app. Naming the maid dress trend and the user that said trans icon Marsha P Johnson was his fashion inspiration.
She goes on to explain that while they are all for gender expression and expressing yourself however you want to, the harsh reality is that “a lot of times cis-het white men use queer aesthetics, by queer aesthetics I just mean femininity, to get with cis white women.
“Especially queer cis white women, because they are so susceptible to men who are feminine, because it makes you feel safer“.
They continued: “But they are always the ones who turn out to be transphobes, racists, misogynists, like when a man says they’re a feminist.“
“It’s all a ploy to get into women’s pants. And how do we know? Because the way they treat us trans women is night and day different than how they treat cis women.”
