Kissing Katy Perry

The big joke right now is that some guy is saying “I kissed [Katy Perry] and I [didn’t] like it.” Nineteen-year-old Benjamin Glaze of Enid, Oklahoma auditioned in October, 2017 for the reboot of American Idol in front of Katy Perry, Luke Bryan, and Lionel Richie. His audition episode premiered on Monday, March 12th starting a kissing controversy among fans and critics everywhere.

Before his audition, Glaze admitted to never before kissing a girl. When his confession was met with surprise and disbelief, he elaborated, saying he’d never been in a relationship and didn’t want to kiss someone that wasn’t his girlfriend. Katy Perry responded by calling Glaze to the judges’ panel, stretching her neck across the desk, and angling her face towards him. Glaze agreed to kiss her on the cheek, but when she commented that “he didn’t even make the smush sound” things got weird. He leaned in for a re-do and she turned her head at the last second, catching his lips. The quick, unexpected peck sent Glaze stumbling back, literally falling to the floor, and Perry high-fived Bryan in celebration.

Photo Credit to Mark Levine via CBS News

Since the episode aired, Glaze has publically affirmed on Twitter that he isn’t angry or upset about the kiss. This assertion, however, came after he told the New York Times he “would have refused if she had asked.” While some audience members crooned and others shrugged the event off, many outraged observers called Katy's actions sexual assault and brought up the hypocrisy of what would have occurred had a thirty-three-year-old man pulled the same trick on a nineteen-year-old girl.

Now, sexual assault carries a pretty broad definition: any unwanted sexual contact, so even if it sounds harsh for a tight lipped smooch, it is what it is. Katy Perry was out of line and her actions, although seemingly innocent, cannot be condoned. She was unprofessional and insensitive and the fact that her ratings on the show have since dropped is only fair. She was in a position of power over Glaze during the audition and decided to overrule his personal values for subjective reasons. Was she just trying to have fun? Was she trying to promote the show? Did she think she was doing Glaze a favor? It’s like the 1980s Tootsie Roll Pop commercial says: the world may never know.

What we do know is she slipped up. Katy’s canoodling can be classified as misconduct, which Wikipedia defines as actions “of a sexual nature that [are]… perpetrated against an individual without… consent. According to the great cyber book of knowledge, misconduct “can [also] be of various degree… [like] inattentiveness to nonverbal cues of discomfort” (Shout out to you, Ansari). The fact is it doesn’t really matter what Glaze says or even how he feels regarding the incident. Even if he has made peace with the unwanted kiss or decided it didn’t really count because it wasn’t with someone special, Perry should be no less at fault for a bad decision.

Photo via Celebrity Dirty Laundry

That being said, the incident does foment an interesting dialogue and it’s one that I think people are just beginning to really have. Are there different levels of sexual assault? I think the answer is obvious. The question is how do we categorize them? I personally feel sexual assault should be classified relative to the intimate space infringed and the corresponding physical, psychological and emotional impact. For example, what Perry did might qualify as a category three, kind of like a small burn that stings, but subsides quickly and doesn’t leave much lasting damage. Ansari’s case then might call for a two which leaves us with perpetrators like Brock Turner or Harvey Weinstein whose cases would then be classified under category one, the most heinous and consequential.

Furthermore, in addition to stirring up conversation about the degrees by which society recognizes sexual assault, Katy’s kiss also shines some light on the perspectives with which we tend to view men and women. I think people are right that if it were a man kissing a young girl it would be a bigger deal. We, as a culture, are taught to protect our daughters; they are precious and delicate and should remain innocent, whereas we expect men to be less sentimental, harsher, stronger, and more aggressive.

Right now Katy Perry seems to have almost this sweet, mom-like appeal due to her current age and pixie style haircut while a male counterpart of the same age may not be afforded such gentle adjectives and would be more likely to be seen as a predator.

Photo Credit to Jody Rogac of the New York Times

As we as a community continue to explore the dark and shadowy corners of sexual assault, it will be increasingly important to analyze each case thoughtfully and with much attention to nuance and detail. We must be careful not to demonize fallible people who have made mistakes and have the potential to grow – the Katy Perrys and Aziz Ansaris – and we must make certain to differentiate between lapses in judgment and premeditated vile behavior – like the actions committed by Turner and Weinstein. We also cannot continue to cut women slack where we come down hard on men. Sexual assault should look the same for both genders. As Sarah Schuster writes in her article "Why Katy Perry's 'Innocent'... Kiss Isn't OK," “treating people with respect, and seeking consent before engaging in a sexual act, should always be the standard.”