Pop the Culture: A Reading of Troye Sivan’s ‘One of Your Girls’
Final year History of Art student Min Min Ng (with edits by Dr Gregory Salter) explores themes of masculinity, sexuality, and celebration within singer Troye Sivan’s music video ‘One of Your Girls’, relating it to contemporary visual culture and its impact on the current generation.
The ‘Mid-Century Oasis’ home-owning Melbournite sensation, Troye Sivan has finally returned (after five long and barren years) to grace us with his new 10-track studio album, ‘Something to Give Each Other’.¹
The title track, ‘One of Your Girls’, is a remarkable standout production — through which Sivan creatively expresses his queer experience with a groovy song and stunning music video. As an Art History student, coincidentally exploring themes of masculinity in one of my final year modules (Contemporary Art and Masculinity convened by Dr Gregory Salter), we found the singer-songwriter’s storytelling powerful in many ways — as it brilliantly examines the variety and enjoyment of masculine performance and identities while critiquing the pain, pleasure, and freedom that make up its surrounding visual culture.
In this synth-pop song, Troye Sivan reflects upon recurrent experiences with ‘straight’ men who were open to ‘experimenting’ with him intimately; revealing that although he found it alluring, these encounters often left him feeling empty. As expressed through his lyrics, these superficial relations based on physical attraction [ Face Card ], carried no real substance [ No cash, No credit ]. Adding to that, Troye introspectively mulls over the lingering strain of high school internalised homophobia that might be contributing to this fantasy of being desired by ‘straight’ men; figures who he would avoided in the past.² With this important piece of context, the visual elements and narratives that Troye Sivan weaves into the construction of this creative project opens up space for discussions around the commodification of desire, gender identity, and the queer experience.
The video starts with a greyscale, close-up shot of a shirtless male figure as his hands move down and into loose, unbuttoned jeans. In the next shot, the figure is revealed as the Disney Channel teen heartthrob turned musician, Ross Lynch, who features in this production secondarily to Troye Sivan. Lynch is presented as the embodiment of an archetypal male presence and sexuality. Donning the classic ‘male model’ attire of distressed blue jeans, big black leather boots, and a thick silver chain — Ross Lynch, for most of the video strikes a stereotypical ‘I’m a man’ pose. He does this suavely, with his legs sprawled out to occupy as much space as he possibly can (almost in a display of dominance).
In addition to Ross’s presence, moving shots of different men are rhythmically strung together in tune with the song. Through this inclusion of an encompassing mix of skin tones, age groups, and body shapes, the video presents the multiple ways in which masculinities manifest. As R.W. Connell has noted in her book Masculinities (2005), ‘True masculinity is almost always thought to proceed from men’s bodies — to be inherent in a male body or to express something about a male body.’³ Despite their brief time on screen, the snug framing of the video allows us to observe these men in proximity. Their expressions (cool smiles and quick once-overs) and actions (unbuttoning shirts and swinging them over their shoulder) heighten the intimacy; it seems as if we are engaging in a flirtatious exchange with them.
The stripped-back aesthetic of the music video / performance, largely set against a plain white backdrop, vividly calls back to ’90s fashion photography — especially seen in magazine spreads of supermodels.
Herb Ritts was a celebrated commercial and fashion photographer of the 1980s who introduced a homoerotic gaze to the industry and produced iconic images such as Fred with Tires, Hollywood (Body Shop Series), 1984.⁴ The photograph depicts a muscular young man in his work clothes (boiler suit) pulled down to reveal a gleaming torso — much like Lynch and the other men in Sivan’s video. In both cases, the quintessential male representation borders on hegemonic fantasy — they symbolize constructed and curated visions of masculinity, somewhat rooted in reality, yet always out of reach and unattainable.
Desire is explored as a commodity, and models (such as Fred in Herb Ritt’s photograph or Ross in Troye Sivan’s music video) are the physical embodiment of this product. They are both the vehicle of and for it. This theme of commodified pleasure is further mirrored in the lyrics of the song, such as [ You should trademark your face ] and [ You should insure that waist ]. By connecting these visual and literary elements, Troye is throwing light on pop culture’s subscription to and enjoyment of meticulously performed masculinity.
Following the dual display of masculinities and hypermasculinity, coloured clips of a distinctly feminine figure in the process of ‘getting ready’ (putting on pink lipstick and pulling up green stockings) are periodically inserted into the (so far) monochromatic video. Signaling a break and building up to a reveal that comes after a cheeky wink from the singer-songwriter: Troye Sivan is in drag, becoming quite literally one of the [your] girls. For his feminine presentation, Troye has visibly taken inspiration from the early 2000s’ popstars, epitomized by icons such as Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and noticeably later, Beyoncé. These women were products of fantasy for their time — functioning as objects of desire for men, an ‘ideal’ that women had to aspire to, and as objects of affection, fascination, and fandom for the queer community (particularly amongst gay men). Troye boldly embodies the performance as he poses in a reclining posture and suggestively traces the contours of his body with his hands.
This sequence effectively showcases the efforts required in the presentation of gender — a notion Judith Butler has explored in her 1993 article, Imitation and Gender Insubordination, that drag is not proof of a failed heterosexuality but rather a tool that exposes gender itself as drag. ‘Gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original; in fact, it is a kind of imitation that produces the very notion of the original as an effect and consequence of the imitation itself.’⁵ In this transformation, Troye Sivan has seemingly adopted a newfound sense of self, as he presents himself as the archetypal hyperfeminine figure — the conventional and heterosexual counterpart to the hypermasculine that Ross Lynch represents. Troye Sivan being female, not only demonstrates the fluidity of gender via an emulation of the quintessential feminine — but it also serves as a means of expressing another facet of self, which is enabled through a transgression of the binary gender construct.
This newfound / performative display of confidence reaches its climax with Troye Sivan powerfully executing choreography with a ballet barre, in a black mini dress and heels, accompanied by two other girls who serve to spotlight his position as the center of this girl group. A composition that is strikingly similar to Beyoncé’s Single Ladies, one of the most recognizable and iconic visual representations of a pop music video by a female artist which celebrates female empowerment.
At the end of ‘One of Your Girls’, however, the persona is dropped — and Troye Sivan looks right at the camera. With a confrontational close-up, red-teary eyes, and loose / disheveled blond hair, he displays his vulnerability for the first (and last) time as he delivers the final lyrics [ I’ll be like one of your girls ]. The poignant change from [ Give me a call if you ever get lonely — I’ll be like one of your girls or your homies ] to [ Give me a call if you ever get desperate — I’ll be like one of your girls ] closes the song on a bittersweet note — and with it, Troye offers himself as the last resort, reflecting a lost sense of self-worth. This is an unfortunate, yet all too common experience shared by individuals in the queer community. When one is in the process of becoming self-assured in their identity, they often must face some sort of self-annihilation before.
More than a stunning performance of drag, it could be surmised that Troye Sivan is playing with the notion of duality. Throughout the song, Troye is overtly admiring (even fantasizing about) this fictive / imaginary figure of an attractive, heterosexual man; while at the same time being the main character whose captivating presence dominates the entire music video / performance. He commands our attention, there is no way to keep your eyes off him — he is the icon. Additionally, it is just as refreshing as it is empowering, to see a quintessentially gay experience materialise through music and visual media [ Pop the culture, Iconography ].
Through his creative expression, Troye Sivan has compellingly and empathetically put forward an empowering message; acknowledging the vulnerabilities involved in allowing one to fully experience and express a multiplicity of self.
All of these culminate into the final full album, which cohesively highlights the innate and universal need for connection through celebration. Succinctly captured in the cover art, which features Troye Sivan smiling widely with his head between a friend’s legs. This vibrant photograph distinctly breaks away from his previous productions (“Blue Neighbourhood” from 2016 and “Bloom” from 2018), which were both more visually melancholic and ambiguous. As Troye Sivan endearingly concludes in his promotional post on Instagram, “There’s so many people in the world, so many experiences, so much pleasure in you, and all around you. Let yourself enjoy”.⁶
¹Architectural Digest, Open Door: Inside Troye Sivan’s Mid-Century Melbourne Oasis, YouTube, 15 April, 2021, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EobMnSpjfTU>
²Troye Sivan on The Zach Sang Show, Troye Sivan on Hooking Up w/ Straight Men (One of Your Girls, YouTube, 17 October 2023, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1TOow5Hr54>
³R.W. Connell, Masculinities, 2nd Edition, (University of California Press, 2005)
⁴Alona Pardo, Masculinities: Photography and Film from the 1960s to Now: Liberation through Photography, (Barbican Art Centre, 2020)
⁵Judith Butler, Imitation and Gender Insubordination, in The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader. Henry Abelove, ed., (Routledge, 1993), pp, 306-320
⁶@troyesivan on Instagram, 15 October 2023, <https://www.instagram.com/p/CyZrwUUL9VZ/?img_index=1>
