Troye Sivan’s music video Rush shows how Sam Smith’s backlash is rooted in fatphobia -TGN

Queer pop music is in a pretty amazing place right now. This year alone, we got the debut album from trans superstar Kim Petras, a genius reunion and now comeback single from Australian twink and synthpop king Troye Sivan.

On Friday (July 14), the 28-year-old “Bloom” star revealed the nihilistic party song “Rush,” the first single from his first album in five years. Alongside it came a music video that wasn’t entirely safe for the job, featuring one glory hole, two photos of someone urinating, and at least nine bare bottoms.

The reactions were generally positive. “That’s so unashamedly strange,” reads one cringing tweet. “That’s exactly what we need right now.” Others praised “Rush” as the “song of the summer”, and the video as “queer excellence”.

The worship is deserved. As some fans have pointed out, it’s refreshing to see a queer artist create music and visuals that are inherently queer; there is no assimilation for the purpose of appealing to a cishet audience, or parading strangeness as something “brave” or “inspiring”.

“Rush” is really about wanting to have messy queer sex, and that should be respected.

Though there’s an element to the reaction to Troye Sivan’s video that’s more than a little disturbing. Among the streams of positive response are those comparing it to the work of Sam Smith, who has been releasing his own series of explicit, steamy images since the beginning of the year.

One person subtly shared that they “much preferred” Sivan’s “Rush” video over anything Smith had released recently. Another praised Sivan for putting out something “the gays actually want”, praising the lack of “token fat people” in the “Rush” footage.

However, there has been increasing criticism of Sivan, with many claiming that the “Rush” video doesn’t exactly depict bodies that aren’t slim or muscular. In response, one person stated, “You have Sam Smith. Let Troye be for the hot gays.

It feels like confirmation of what many have known to be true since Sam Smith entered an era of reclaiming their sexuality last year: Queer people can be sexual as long as they do so while looking or dressing a certain way.

When Smith debuted their “I’m Not Here To Make Friends” video in January was an instant stir. The 31-year-old singer first appeared in a huge, ruffled pink coat with a trailing train. Then, in a black dress, with matching feather coat and headpiece. Finally, in a white corset, dripping jewels and diamond nipple tassels.

Smith’s body was on display and the social media comments labeling them “disgusting” poured in thick and fast. In the UK, breakfast news show Good morning Great Britain ran an entire segment about whether the music video was appropriate since kids might watch it.

Sivan, of course, has had no such criticism – at least not to the horrifying degree that Smith did.

Some grabbed their pearls and watched Smith emulate being urinated on and pretend to ride their backup dancers. Little has been said by those same gems about the “Rush” video, which, while having very similar themes, is arguably even more NSFW.

Also when Sivan announced his new record Something to give each other alongside the “Rush” video, there was immediate, almost unanimous praise for the album’s artwork, which features a topless Sivan laughing into another man’s naked thighs.

But when Smith appeared in a half-naked photoshoot for PERFECT magazine earlier this year, they were widely ridiculed. In one image, they were decked out in a corset with a string that accentuated their body fat; in another, they held their tummies, wearing jeans and matching codpiece.

The comments were mostly the same: in fact, the social media timeline didn’t want to see it. Regularly social residents will pull out photos of Sam Smith from earlier in their careers when they were slimmer and more masculine. “Look, this is what Sam Smith used to look like”, they shout into the abyss. “Where’s that Sam Smith?”

Of course, there’s a whole other discussion about why Smith faces more criticism than other queer musicians, aside from issues of body policing. Smith is one of the few non-binary celebrities, and they are almost certainly the most notable.

They have been mercilessly mocked for this, from the trolls in the social media recesses and from other high-profile celebrities. Both non-confirming gender and having a larger body put a double target on their backs.

Also, none of this is new. The queer community has long had a troubling history with body image, with those who aren’t super slim usually being put down by one corner of the community or the other.

The fact that Sivan was praised for doing what Smith was sentenced to do isn’t much of a surprise. It just goes to show that sexual liberation is still OK only if the person being liberated looks the way they are expected to.

Sam Smith’s critique was never about what they do on stage or in videos – it’s about how they look.

2023 has truly given us some of the rawest, horniest and most brutal queer music visuals to date, and at the time when queer media is most needed. It’s just a shame they aren’t all celebrated as equal triumphs.