Pop singer Fletcher built her career on bold, sapphic storytelling. But with her new single Boy using a very different marketing approach, fans are questioning how queerness is treated when it’s no longer the main selling point.
In 2015, queer pop star Fletcher captivated audiences with her debut track War Paint. What followed was a discography defined by its explicitly sapphic nature, narrating the obsession and sometimes chaotic tension that comes with romantic affection between two women. Singles like Becky’s So Hot, and girls girls girls began to build a picture of Fletcher’s point of view. Her marketing followed suit: moody visuals, carefree sexuality, femme-on-femme intensity, and a rare commitment to naming queer desire without euphemism. While she has never labelled herself as a lesbian, these songs connected her to a community of sapphic fans that became the central pillar of her fanbase, myself included.
But in 2025, it’s safe to say that Fletcher’s tone has changed.
Her latest single, Boy, marks a notable departure from her past music. On the surface, the song reflects the fluidity of her queer identity, a perfectly valid and often overlooked experience, as Cari Elise Fletcher explores the pressure she felt to hide her newest relationship with a man from her fanbase. There have been countless think pieces, TikToks, and Reddit threads dissecting the controversy surrounding this release, with people both criticising and defending her new single.
For me, it’s been a real cause for pause. Not because I take issue with Fletcher writing a song about a man. Nor do I question her right to explore every facet of her attraction. My concern lies with how this new era is being marketed, and the signals it sends to both her sapphic fans and to a wider cultural narrative about queerness.
Let me explain…
The messaging behind the music
“If I were you, I’d probably keep her, makes me wanna hit her when I see her” – Becky’s So Hot
“Amen, oh, her body is Bible, the only Heaven that I’ll go” – Her Body Is Bible
“His lips were soft, I had no choice, I kissed a boy” – Boy
These lyrics track the tonal switch. Cari was once praised for her emotionally exposing lyrics about women and hyper-sensual visuals in albums like Girl of My Dreams. Then came Boy, and the run of marketing alongside it.
Instead of bright lights and heavily stylised productions, there are laid-back visuals of Fletcher dressed in a plain white tank top and jeans. Her Would You Still Love Me If You Really Knew Me?album trailer follows a similar aesthetic
The theory of fandom and sapphic spectacle
By re-centring men in her narrative, Fletcher’s marketing seems to lean toward visuals that could even be described as traditionally conservative. The carefree chaos of her sapphic songs filled with emotional volatility and sexual intensity have been left behind in favour of something quieter.
Whether intentional or not, I can’t help but feel like the juxtaposition sends a message. Relationships with women are dramatic and unstable, while love for men is pure, gentle, and worth toning yourself down for. Even the decision to use the word boy rather than man signals this infantilisation of heterosexual desire. It’s a subtle but powerful framing choice that aims to soften Fletcher’s experiences, while past songs have always had an air of lyrical strength.
This isn’t just a Fletcher issue. In fact, it reflects a broader industry problem. As feminist theorist Susan Bordo writes in Unbearable Weight, women’s bodies have long been sites of discipline and spectacle. Queer women, when they centre other women in their music, often become hyper-visible subjects of political scrutiny, sexual curiosity, or both.
“The industry tolerates bisexuality as long as it’s accompanied by disclaimers,” says one anonymous media studies PhD student at NYU. “A nod to a male love interest, a softened image, or a return to ambiguity helps reassert control over a woman’s narrative. We’re still deeply uncomfortable with queer women naming their desire directly, especially when it’s not for the male gaze.”
So, the formula repeats: sapphic intimacy must be edgy, provocative, and aestheticised. Heterosexuality gets to be mundane, safe, and universally digestible.
That’s why this feels like more than a simple rebrand. For many of us, it feels like a breach of trust.
Fletcher’s shift in marketing also fractures what academic Lauren Berlant called the “intimate public sphere” she created, which (in part) explains the volume of backlash she’s receiving. This concept, originally used to describe how marginalised groups find solidarity through shared cultural products, can also describe the bond between sapphic listeners and artists like Fletcher. As Berlant writes, the intimate public sphere relies on “an expectation that the consumers of its particular stuff already share a worldview and emotional knowledge that they have derived from a broadly common historical experience.” By pandering to conservative images, Fletcher is catering to those outside her well-cultivated public sphere.
That’s why this feels like more than a simple rebrand. For many of us, it feels like a breach of trust. The shift from chaotic queer storytelling to this soft-focus, hetero-centred rollout risks reinforcing old tropes about queerness being a temporary phase, a spectacle, or something that must be packaged with warning labels if it’s going to be named at all.
To be clear…
This is not a critique of bisexuality. It’s not about gatekeeping identity. It’s not even a wholesale rejection of Fletcher’s right to grow and change as an artist. I’m not upset that she’s singing about a man. I’m upset that sapphic desire only seemed marketable when it was messy, sexy, and politicised. Now, with a male partner in the narrative, Fletcher’s team has turned down the volume and sanitised the image.
There are plenty of queer artists – Dodie, girl in red, Clairo – who show us that sapphic love can be soft, vulnerable, even gentle without being erased. The issue here isn’t what gender Fletcher loves. It’s what happens to the music, the visuals, and the messaging when that gender shifts.
Because ultimately, my fear is that the industry still thinks queerness only sells when it’s spectacle or struggle, and that the minute we step outside that box, we have to become someone quieter. Softer. Straighter.
TikToker Livigoldi has verbalised this feeling best:
“The messaging is disrespectful and just reinforces everything that us femme lesbians… get told all of the time, which is that we just haven’t found the right man yet.”
That’s the part that hurts. Not Fletcher’s identity. Not the song itself. But the quiet pandering towards a trope that has affected sapphic women for generations. I write this article not out of bitterness, but out of hope. Hope that Fletcher and other artists like her recognise the weight of these shifts. That they see the intimacy and trust built with their queer fans as something worth preserving, not something to soften for marketability.
