ABC has been using Katy Perry’s “good-luck kiss” on its American Idol reboot as a marketing hook to promote the season premiere, and while a peck from a global superstar seems pretty innocent, it’s spawned a conversation about consent.
An audition that might have launched the career of Benjamin Glaze, a 19-year-old cashier from Oklahoma, instead turned into some bizarre version of Spin the Bottle.
It started when judge Luke Bryan asks Glaze whether he’s ever kissed a girl and liked it. OK, fine, a reference to Perry’s first popular song. After Glaze says no—because he hasn’t been in a relationship yet—Perry shouts “Really?!” Glaze confidently explains that he can’t kiss someone without being in a relationship, which prompts Perry to shoot out of her chair and demand the boy come hither.
Her male copanelists, also including Lionel Richie, hoot, take photos, and effectively cheer on Glaze into doing as Perry says. Stuttering nervously, the baffled teen tries getting out of it by stalling and quite literally saying no, but Perry isn’t having it. Finally, he reluctantly gives her a fast kiss on her cheek to which Perry replies, “He didn’t even make the smooch sound!” Like a lot of women who’ve been in a similar position, Glaze laughs it off nervously. He then apologizes to Perry for not doing it right and agrees to a do-over—this is his make-or-break moment, after all.
During the do-over, though, Perry turns her cheek at the last second, thus tricking him into a lip lock. The boy falls to the floor, saying, “I can’t believe you did that!”
Bryan then points and laughs at the kid, “He went down!” then double-high-fives Perry. “Did you get him?!” “Yeah. I got him,” she replies. They share a laugh.
Glaze jokingly asks, “How was it?”
Perry exclaims, “How was it?! Oh, don’t even try to get all cocky now.”
After demanding Glaze start singing, she turns to Bryan and jokes, “That might have been a kiss of death.” Glaze appears to be rattled and even has to ask for some water. Richie feels bad, gives Glaze a hug, then scolds Perry and Bryan, “He’s still trying to recover from the kiss!”
After a minute of singing, Perry cuts the Idol hopeful’s performance short, tells him he’s not good enough, then thanks him for making her “heart flutter.” Richie and Bryan fan her like a queen, while she tells Glaze to not rush his songs so much, but admits, “Maybe that’s because I sped up your BPM of the heartbeat.”
Before Glaze leaves the stage, Richie encourages him come back in a couple years after more practice then Perry chimes in “and kiss a couple girls!”
Since the audition, which took place months ago and aired last week, the moment has gotten considerable attention. While it may have only been a kiss, it served as an example of a Hollywood gatekeeper wielding their power. The fact it was done by a female should make no difference to women. With the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements in full swing, feminists can’t afford to lose credibility by downplaying the incident, muddying the definition of consent, or applying a double standard. Rest assured, if a teenaged girl had been coerced into kissing a 30-year-old man on national TV, we’d already be reading his nonapology apology and demanding his resignation.
On his part, Glaze admitted in a New York Times interview this week that the experience indeed made him uncomfortable and that he never would have kissed Perry even if she’d asked. However, toward the end of the piece, he said he doesn’t think he was sexually harassed.
Once the Twitter outrage machine went into high gear, though, insisting this was nonconsensual, Glaze doubled down on Instagram Wednesday, insisting it wasn’t harassment and that he was only grateful to Perry and the judges. He also appeared to take the blame, writing that he should have “calmed himself down,” kiss or no kiss. “I should have been able to perform under pressure.”
While he’s right to be frustrated by the Internet using him as an example, it’s hard to imagine Glaze, a small-town kid with big dreams, not being terrified of upsetting the mighty gatekeepers—ABC and the celebrity judges.
And yes, this incident is by no means as dire as forced intercourse, spectator masturbation, or a button under a desk, it’s an eye-opening reminder that the people holding the keys to the entertainment industry kingdom aren’t all men and that consent is something still misunderstood. Feminism’s goal has never been to protect only women but rather to challenge a system that abuses power, and harms those without it, even when those doing it are women themselves.
