ABSTRACT
In 1999, Britney Spears became an overnight sensation, appearing in the video for her first single, “Hit Me Baby (One More Time),” as a playful schoolgirl, complete with miniskirt, pigtails, and sexualized dancing. In 2003, it seemed Russian girl band Tatu went one better. Dressed in matching school uniforms, the band kissed and fondled their way through the video for their debut English-language single, “All the Things She Said.” Whereas Spears’s presentation passed relatively unnoted, Tatu attracted intense media attention for the visualization of their ode to teenage lesbian infatuation. Daytime TV hosts Richard Madeley and Judy Finnegan denounced them as “sick, paedophilic entertainment” and called for the song to be banned. Upon the lead-up to the 2003 Eurovision Song Contest television show, rumors that the girls would kiss while performing Russia’s entry, “Ne Ver, Ne Bojsia,” led to a huge media frenzy.1 Due to the vast amount of pop acts presenting highly sexualized representations of women, it seems that what set Tatu apart for intense scrutiny was their presentation of a lesbian relationship, portrayed not only within their music video-where various otherwise taboo subject positions are culturally accepted as artifice-but constructed as part of their lived existence.
