I’ll admit, I just became aware of Dove Cameron earlier this year. She’s a 26-year-old mostly Disney actress, who is making the transition over to more adult roles and a singing career. I like the songs of hers I’ve heard and think she has an interesting look. She kind of reminds me of an edgier Miranda Kerr. If her song “Boyfriend” didn’t tip people off, Dove identifies as a queer woman and actually came out in 2020. She says she’s changed up her look since then to include more masculine and androgynous styles, while before she was performing femininity.
Time is of the essence, and Dove Cameron is committed to making every second count.
It’s been an eventful year for the Best New Artist of 2022. In March, the singer released her single “Boyfriend,” a sultry queer anthem that would secure the No.42 spot on Billboard’s Hot 100 (and, not to mention, go viral on TikTok). She was a guest judge on VH1’s Rupaul’s Drag Race and most recently dropped the politically inspired music video for her song “Breakfast.”
Cameron has also fully embraced her identity as a queer woman since coming out in 2020, and that’s something she hopes has translated through her fashion choices, specifically the two looks she wore on the VMA stage and red carpet this year.
“It’s always been a huge part of my true expression to be super masculine meets feminine,” the lyricist says of her aesthetic. “I definitely love androgyny that I didn’t let myself explore before. I was doing a lot of performative femininity when I was younger that was very trapping and very diminishing.”
Cameron admits that, in years past, she made a conscious effort not to take up space on the red carpet.
“If you look at pictures of me from when I was younger when I was on red carpets, there’s like no one home behind the eyes. It’s very pained, very much like I’m just trying to be the smallest, happiest, sweetest, most uneventful person there.”
But not this year.
No, this year, the only performance Cameron put on this year was her VMA pre-show concert. “I’m hoping to have this be sort of a starting point for me expressing myself as the artist that I feel that I am now,” says the artist. In order to do just that, Cameron says she asked herself questions like, “What makes me feel like me? What makes me feel my most expressed? What makes me feel my most excited?” The answer: Challenging traditional gender norms and combining masculine and feminine energies.
It sounds like coming out about about her queerness has inspired Dove to dress and express herself in a way that is more true to how she really feels. When she was younger, she performed femininity to try to fit in and she felt it trapped and diminished her. Which makes perfect sense — not being able to be yourself or even just look how you want is completely suffocating and feels uncomfortable and weird. It’s very freeing to be able to be yourself and lightens a person’s energy overall. I can relate to what Dove says in a lower stakes way. When I was younger, I also dressed to perform a certain look, wearing baby blue and pink because I was a cheerleader and my friends were basically The Plastics. But I don’t really like pink and anyone who actually knows me would say I don’t have a pink or even a rose gold personality. I have a prickly green personality and now I don’t even have a single pink article of clothing! Anyway, there’s no one way to be a woman and Dove’s look is cool.
Photos credit: Avalon.red and via Instagram
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