There Is No Ethical Consumption Under Katy Perry's New Single 'Bon Appétit'

Okay, so it’s been established that Katy Perry is that white lady we all know who simply didn’t understand the world could be even a slightly terrible place until Hillary Clinton lost the election and we ended up with a rusty hemorrhoid as president. It took Donald Trump for her to really start rethinking the state of America and remove the veil from her eyes.

Well, Perry just dropped “Bon Appétit,” a collaboration with none other than Migos.

See if you can locate the revolution in these lyrics:

‘Cause I’m all that you want, boy
All that you can have, boy
Got me spread like a buffet
Bon appétit, baby

Appetite for seduction
Fresh out the oven
Melt in your mouth kind of lovin’
Bon appétit, baby

Wait, it might still be woke because it looks like Offset addresses global warming (and the environmental impact of diamond mining?) in his verse:

I grab her legs and now divide, aight
Make her do a donut when she ride, aight
Looking at the eyes of a dime, make you blind
In her spine and my diamonds change the climate

I can’t say the song is great (Katy Perry songs always feel incomplete to me, like they’re giving 70%), but it’s something of a relief—much less awkward than “conscious” Katy. This is the Katy Perry we know and love, the pop queen who teams up with the big names in rap and hip hop as she did with Juicy J. for “Dark Horse,” Snoop Dogg for “California Gurls,” and Kanye West for “E.T.” The pop queen who has literally made a career out of serving herself up for consumption, whether as a peppermint, a Hershey kiss, sushi, or with whipped cream-shooting breasts. I mean, look at the single art for “Bon Appétit”:

As far as the semiotics of this goes, it’s…weird! The underlying racial implications of, as our editor in chief Dodai Stewart put it, “these disembodied black man hands reaching for the forbidden fruit white woman” are very clear, but it’s not like this is Perry’s first rodeo when it comes to queasy racial decisions—particularly when it comes to black culture.

Also, the fact that Perry’s second musical endeavor after her conscious rebirth her receipt of an award for her LGBTQ advocacy is with a group that JUST had to apologize for their homophobic comments about Makonnen is probably not a great sign.

But that’s none of my business. Bone apple tea, everyone.