More than 12 million people watched Sunday night as Sam Smith and Kim Petras performed their award-winning song “Unholy” on the Grammys stage. Smith, a male soul and pop singer who now identifies as nonbinary, fashioned himself as a bulbous Satan, prancing around in latex pants and heeled boots, a bedazzled cane, and a top hat with devil horns.
Plenty has been said about Smith’s cosplay — and the deterioration of his (their?) appearance since “coming out” — but many glossed over his sidekick, Kim Petras.
Petras, thirty, sings the second verse of “Unholy” and spent the Grammys performance locked in a cage. She is signed with Republic Records and has released two albums and an EP called “Slut Pop”.
The German singer’s tracks are rife with sexual imagery. One song, called “Coconuts”, goes “My coconuts, you can put them in your mouth”. Other songs include “Throat Goat” which comes complete with gargling noises and lyrics about not gagging, “They Wanna Fuck”, and “Treat Me Like A Slut”, in which Petras declares she’s a “little dirty bitch, I love to fuck”.
On Sunday night, Petras became the first transgender woman to win a Grammy for best pop duo/group performance and received a standing ovation from the crowd. The first transgender person to win a Grammy was Wendy Carlos, a prolific music composer who won three awards in 1969.
“omg i’m a tranny with a grammy…” Petras tweeted Sunday night.
Petras holds another record; she is the youngest person to ever receive a sex change surgery. Petras starting receiving hormone therapy at the age of twelve and went under the knife at just sixteen years old.
“I had surgery at sixteen — it allowed me, for the end of my teens, to be a normal girl. If you believe kids, that they are transgender, they can have a happy life earlier. And not be suicidal. Because I was suicidal, until I got surgery,” Petras said in an interview. “I feel so blessed that I got to do it as young as I did.”
Google searches for Petras soared after the singer’s Grammy win and many viewers — including Cockburn, who was distracted by Petras’s red bodysuit — were stunned to learn that Petras is trans. This quickly led to even more searches for images of Petras prior to the gender transition surgery.
But anyone who now searches for Petras pre-transition will be chastised for their curiosity. The top search result in Google is an article by Grazia, an international women’s magazine, declaring it “harmful” to search for old pictures of Petras.
“It’s Incredibly Harmful To Search For Pictures Of Kim Petras Pre-Transition,” the headline says.
“According to the data platform, ‘Kim Petras as a boy’ was a breakout search term immediately after her win, alongside phrases like ‘Kim Petras man’ and ‘Kim Petras before’,” Grazia explained. “We know it’s harmful to share images of trans people pre-transition, that they’re often used to delegitimize and demonize trans people and usually shared with the intention to upset or traumatise someone, so to seek out such pictures indicates an intention to cause harm to the trans community.”
Apparently “deadpicturing” is the new “deadnaming”.
Petras may be a queer icon now, but the singer survived an attempted cancellation in 2018. Petras was set to go on tour with Troye Sivan, a gay pop singer, when angry fans accused Petras of being a sexual assault apologist. Petras said that she was a “big fan” of Dr. Luke, a music producer who was accused of raping fellow pop star Kesha.
“I would like my fans to know that I wouldn’t work with somebody I believe to be an abuser of women, definitely not,” Petras said, which critics said was proof that Petras didn’t believe Kesha’s allegations.
Petras apologized for her comments and Sivan kept her on the tour. However, Petras has continued to work with Dr. Luke; he produced her newest EP “Slut Pop” in its entirety. In response to recent criticism about the partnership, Petras tweeted — then deleted — that she had “nothing to say or be ashamed of at all”.
In another mini-scandal, Petras was called out for talking loudly during a concert. She dismissed the complaints, saying that other concertgoers could have stood somewhere else if they were bothered by her conversation.
So, how long until Hollywood’s newest superstar becomes persona non grata?
