When we asked Reneé Rapp to rate what’s queerest based solely on vibes, we didn’t expect her to queer our own game.
Here at Them, we like to play a little game called “Queer In My Mind” with the LGBTQ+ celebrities we meet at red carpets and photo shoots. As we’re all aware, some objects, artworks, and abstract concepts seem to possess an inherent queerness — but ask any five GaysTM which ones are specifically the gayest, and you’ll get six different, increasingly heated answers. Hence, the game: we give a celeb two options, and they pick which is more thoroughly queer-coded.
And then Reneé Rapp showed up and saw through our whole damn façade. When we filmed Rapp’s “Queer In My Mind” video for Them’s TikTok and Instagram accounts, we threw in a quirky softball (or so we thought): “Big pants and little shirt or big shirt and little pants?” Rapp got as far as answering “big shirt” before catching herself. “I fucking hate little pants. Actually, I don’t even own little pants. What am I talking about?” she said, before deciding: “No. Big shirt, big pants.”
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We had created a false binary, and Rapp pierced the veil of our deception to create a third option of her own. There was no choice but to honor her answer. Thus are we undone by pop culture’s ascendent little lesbian intern.
Naturally, Rapp had plenty more wisdom to offer where that came from — and we appreciate her appreciation for our hard-hitting questions like “yapping or strapping.” Rapp is a piercings girlie, natch; she’s also got a lot of opinions about how to properly appreciate Beyoncé’s Renaissance and self-titled eras. And of course, no video interview with Rapp is complete without a suitably out-of-left-field revelation — this time, the fact that she has to manually cover her ears before going underwater, “like a child.”
Now, our TikTok comments are going wild with validation for Big Shirt Big Pants. Our shame at not realizing the power of that unspoken third option is outweighed only by our satisfaction at having given the people exactly what they want: the unvarnished truth, straight from a pop star who’ll tell it like it is. And of course sapphic Twitter is having a field day with the entire video.
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Rapp is one of Them’s 10 honorees for our 2024 Now Awards, an annual package honoring LGBTQ+ people at the vanguard of culture. Her fellow awardees include Oklahoma state legislator Mauree Turner, Backspot star Devery Jacobs, Jinkx Monsoon, the late Cecilia Gentili, and others. For more Rapp, including her own account of her lesbian self-actualization, check out our cover story here.
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