With the release of Troye Sivan’s third album, Something to Give Each Other, he’s in full-blown promotion mode. Which means, rightly, the release of another single to coincide with the album’s unveiling on October 13th. That single happens to be “One of Your Girls”—not to be confused with Kate Winslet as Rose urging Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack to draw her like “one of your French girls.” Though it seems Sivan would be down for that based on his self-confidence in the Gordon von Steiner-directed video for “One of Your Girls.”
Evoking a similar feel to the “provocative” Calvin Klein ads of the 90s (and not just because most of the video is shot in black and white, and set against a stark white backdrop), Sivan offers the same seductive promise of “freedom” (or “permission,” if you prefer) to be oneself, no matter what gender they are. And, just as the 1994 ad for CK One “boldly” suggested that a fragrance could be “for a man or a woman,” Sivan opts to take that gender-bending tagline one step further by sliding into the titular role of “One of Your Girls.” Yes, that’s right, Sivan becomes the girl so that he can prove to the straight man he’s lusting after that he’s just as viable a candidate for a situationship. His lust for the hot straight man in question is evoked in lyrics that include, “Everybody loves you, baby/You should trademark your face/Linin’ down the block to be around you/But, baby, I’m first in place.” While the sentiments come across as “sweet like Marabou” (in case you were unsure that Sivan is Australian) in sonic form, the accompanying visual lends a more melancholic tinge to the song as we see that Sivan is bending over backwards to become desirable to a straight man by choosing to put on the drag of a “quintessentially hot” woman.
Serving Willam from Drag Race realness, Sivan relishes his femme persona, working a chair prop with almost as much gusto as Britney Spears in the “Stronger” video. Almost. The Calvin Klein aesthetic stays consistent throughout, with the camera’s focus on muscular shirtless men (whether filmed in color or B&W) being ever-constant. One such shirtless and muscular man including Ross Lynch, who Chilling Adventures of Sabrina fans will recognize immediately as Harvey. While others will be quick to call out that another Disney star has gone “wild” (with Lynch formerly starring on a Disney Channel show called Austin & Ally).
Although Sivan recently gushed about Janet Jackson being “the blueprint, literally. As far as pop stars go, she’s it to me,” the look he adopts for his drag persona is decidedly Madonna-esque, right down to the white dress (“Like A Virgin” anyone?) that winks naughtily at the idea of “purity.” Then there is the aforementioned chair that could just as easily double as being from the “Open Your Heart” video. Not to mention the lap dance Sivan gives Lynch channeling Madonna’s own same-sex tease during The Girlie Show performance of “Bye Bye Baby,” in which she, too, switches guises into that of a man (or really, Marlene Dietrich) dressed in coattails to grind against three other women. And yes, there are similar “Open Your Heart” “lock and key” lyrics delivered by Sivan as he declares, “You get the key to my heart, and I need it.”
Meanwhile, it seems that what pop music needs is someone who is as much of a sexual chameleon as Sivan. Hence, that moment when he stares into the camera to tell us, “Pop the culture iconography, standin’ right in front of me.” The only problem is, he still can’t quite offer anything truly different apart from mimicking the female pop star “blueprints” that have come before him. And, by the end of the video, he’s transitioned to full-tilt Britney Spears circa “I’m A Slave 4 U,” delivering similar choreography and wearing an ensemble that a Britney wannabe might have once plucked from the racks of Charlotte Russe.
While some will interpret the pouty looks Sivan gives as being an affectation of his “sexy” persona, others might recognize the sadness shining through after being rejected by a straight man who is only “curious” about dabbling in homo encounters. Ergo, Sivan adopting this female persona to appeal to what the straight male ideal is supposed to be. As Sivan put it, “It was really just reflective of how I felt I was bending and changing my values or my self-worth for someone else. It’s like, slay, there’s this performance from a pop star girl version of me. But towards the end of the video, I think you really can see the vulnerability and the cracks that this isn’t going to work.”
Even if it might have been fun to pretend for a while. With Sivan’s realizations about overly catering to straight men who were merely queer-curious, he started thinking about how that might be a reflection of his own enduring homophobia, noting, “A lot of the boys that song is about, I feel like they probably would’ve bullied me in high school, and now here they are paying me attention. So, at the sacrifice of my own self-worth, I’m throwing myself at them, and then you’re really just at their beck and call, and that can sometimes not feel so great.”
But, at the very least, it must have felt great to dress up in Madonna and Britney-coded drag against the same all-white backdrop of a 90s CK One commercial in the name of subverting straight expectations.
