“Do You Listen to Girl in Red?”: How a Queer Pop Artist Became TikTok Code

Haley Margo, a 19-year-old musician who lives in Michigan, “came out” to her parents last summer — but not in a way that they could recognize.

She had been coming to terms with her sexuality for years when she sat down to write a song she describes as “the first real push into accepting myself,” she tells them. On the track, entitled “Do You Listen to Girl in Red,” she sings about having sweet, flirtatious phone conversations with another girl long into the night. At the end of their exchange, Margo has one question about her crush: “Does she listen to girl in red?,” she sighs to the light strum of her ukulele.

In her own lyrics, this was not a “straightforward question,” but instead a veritable “pop quiz.” On its surface, the inquiry seems to be about the musician girl in red, a Norwegian indie-pop artist also known as Marie Ulven who is known for her hazy, wistful songs about falling in love with girls. But in her own song, Margo wasn’t only talking about being a fan of Ulven’s music. Instead, she was using slang she had adopted from LGBTQ+ TikTokers to write about her sexuality in earnest, for the first time.

Margo first started using TikTok in 2016, long before it had become the online wellspring of youth culture it is today. But when lockdown hit the United States in March, she began posting at a higher frequency, making comedy and dance videos with her brother while they were stuck at home.

She wasn’t the only one. In the early months of the pandemic’s spread, TikTok welcomed an influx of new users who wanted to assuage boredom and find community during lockdown; between January and March, the web traffic data company Comscore reported a whopping 48 percent increase in TikTok’s unique visitor count in the U.S. — a figure that only climbed throughout the year. All the while, the question “do you listen to girl in red?” increasingly popped up in Margo’s comments, as well as other queer users who might identify under the WLW (women loving women) or sapphic umbrella.

Kaylyn Rhoad, a 21-year-old queer college student who goes by @fatbussywetwet, tells them. that they got the question incessantly after they started posting more videos of their face last year. “I was like, ‘No, I don’t,’ and they would be so disappointed,” they explain, “so I looked up who girl in red was and saw that she was queer.” Eventually, it clicked for Rhoad that these people were trying to find out if they also identify as queer and might be interested in dating women or femme-identifying people. “I was like, ‘Oh, now do you think I’m straight?’”

That spring, the question first emerged as a sort of “open secret” on sapphic TikTok. According to a TikTok spokesperson, the #doyoulistentogirlinred hashtag was first created in April 2020, the same month that the phrase popped up on sites like Urban Dictionary and Quora. Users started making TikToks responding to the question in delight, like when @alicarr0ll starts lip syncing to audio of Michael Scott from The Office screaming “Everybody stay calm!” to indicate their excitement that someone would think that they’re queer. Others used the phrase to express their thirst for women and femmes, like in a video from @gokeegango in which she frantically runs out of shrubbery to yell in the camera: “Ma’am, please, I need to know… Do you listen to girl in red?!”

As the phrase became a full-blown meme, it evolved as an in-joke, with some users “answering” the question by flashing other coded signifiers for sapphics on the platform, like baking, making outrageous earrings, showing off their eyebrow slits, and wearing Doc Marten boots. Eventually, the #doyoulistentogirlinred hashtag peaked in mid-September with a daily total of 300K video views. And thousands of TikToks tagged either #girlinred or #doyoulistentogirlinred — some of which contain no reference to Ulven herself, but instead are solely about lesbianism or bisexuality — have collectively amassed over 700 million views on the platform since.

When Margo posted an early version of her song in July, dozens of excited commenters cropped up immediately, begging her to upload a version to Spotify. Some professed that they had sent the Tiktok, which now has over 83,000 likes, to their crushes. She later showed the track to her parents, too, adding, “I don’t think they really understood it much, but they support me anyway.” For the young artist, the fact she could maintain a sense of discretion while still connecting with a global queer community drove the song’s creation. It was only through coded language that she felt the courage and self-assuredness to step out into the world as a queer artist.

While there have been other cultural rallying points for lesbians of generations past, “do you listen to girl in red?” has helped Gen-Z sapphics discuss and express their sexuality in a way that is both discrete and further-reaching than ever before, thanks in part to the scope and speed of today’s online trends. And given that sapphic culture is still largely marginalized within global mainstream media, it’s no small feat that the phrase nearly dominated a corner of TikTok for almost the entirety of 2020. But how did the name of a queer musician become synonymous with sapphic identity? And what does it say about the way that Gen-Z sapphics are playing with language and their sexuality on TikTok?

Coded language has long been used by LGBTQ+ English speakers to “locate each other and find a community,” especially during times and places where people are not allowed to express their queerness, says Lucy Jones, an Associate Professor in Sociolinguistics at the University of Nottingham. When it comes to inquiring about someone else’s sexuality, euphemisms can be safer and less embarrassing for all parties involved, because you don’t necessarily have to out yourself in the process, she explains.

These examples stretch back to 19th century England, when gay men and some lesbian women used a “secret language” called Polari to communicate in the face of England’s anti-homosexuality mandates, Jones says. This kind of “discretionary” language also emerged in U.S. in the early 20th century among LGBTQ+ military members, who needed a way to skirt its gay exclusion law, says William Leap, a leading scholar in the field of LGBTQ+ linguistics and author of 2020’s Language Before Stonewall.

More phrases and identifiers for queer folks emerged in the ‘50s and ‘60s, as the homophile movement rose in the U.S. Back then, you could refer to someone as “family,” “a friend of Dorothy,” “friend of Mrs. King,” or even the nascent term “gay” (which actually used to be slang among female sex workers before it was co-opted by homosexual men). A number of other lesbian-specific examples of these euphemisms have been documented since. There’s “Does she sing in the choir?” or “Does she play softball?,” which stems from the rich queer legacy of the sport. Even having a “Marie Antoinette obsession” was used to nod to one’s lesbian identity, as literary critic Terry Castle wrote in her 1993 book The Apparitional Lesbian.

Many of these code phrases are clearly rooted in common stereotypes and interests that were associated with sapphics of the time. Leap tells them. that queer folks have often looked toward pop culture to find ways to “describe ourselves and each other.”

One of the first ways that us queers are “socialized,” or align ourselves with the LGBTQ+ community, is to reinvent its modern lingo for ourselves, he explains. “Each of us, we rewrite the narrative of opera, video, or TV to try to find something in it that speaks to who we are. We’re constantly experimenting with terminology.”

The origins of “do you listen to girl in red?” aren’t any different. Ulven first gained a massive TikTok fanbase in 2019, when WLW and nonbinary couples began using her explicitly queer songs to soundtrack TikToks that showcased their queer love. According to a TikTok spokesperson, her most popular track on the app, “we fell in love in october,” has been used in over 454,000 videos. Eventually, girl in red’s music became so intertwined with sapphic TikTok that saying you’re a fan became a signal to others that you might also be queer.

Sora, a 20-year-old queer creator from Illinois who goes by @bodaciouschan, points out that sharing cultural interests is a crucial part of community building on a social media platform like TikTok, where the algorithm is feeding you quick snapshots of someone’s personality. “With TikTok, you’re stumbling across people that you’re very similar to, on accident, and you see how much you relate to things like music and style,” she tells them. When you do find that you like the same artist, it can initiate an instant connection between you and another user.

Jones also notes that when Gen-Z sapphics use more current references, it’s one way that they are able to form an identity that’s distinct from that of their parents or even prior queer generations. Markers of lesbianism for millennial women — like being a fan of Tegan & Sara, a follower of the Riot Grrrl scene, or watching the original L Word — likely wouldn’t resonate with Gen Z sapphics.

“When you're young, most people are trying to fit in. The way you style your hair, the makeup that you wear, the clothes that you wear are all important. Language is the same kind of thing,” she explains, describing each as ways that queer folks can signal they are “members of a shared community.”

And when others express confusion at such insular turns of phrase, it can actually rally the group together as they poke fun at the naive outsider. Take, for instance, this popular TikTok in which the young sapphic @tanjaxrose asks her mom if she listens to girl in red. After her mom responds in frustration, “No, I don’t know who that is!,” Tanja looks at the camera with a knowing smirk on her face and says, “Well, I listen to girl in red.”

Being someone who “listened to Girl in Red” became its own sort of identity. Throughout the year, the meaning strayed further and further from the musician it was originally about, and by September, Ulven herself seemed to acknowledge this. She rolled out her own merchandise and posters with the question emblazoned in a stark font, with all proceeds going towards the LGBTQ+ non-profits Trevor Project and Marsha P. Johnson Institute. The posters began cropping in cities across Europe, including in Moscow, where many Russian TikTokers excitedly uploaded footage of them — perhaps reveling in the fact that an implicitly queer statement was able to be displayed in a country with a “gay propaganda law.”

But as the phrase exploded, many queer creators began to question the implication that all sapphics can and should be represented by one white musician. More and more TikToks emerged in which users would reject the trend by answering in a explicit way or offering examples of different queer artists that they felt more accurately represented them. In one TikTok from September, creator @krisxlle says, “Ladies and nonbinary people, you need to stop asking if I listen to Girl in Red… I listen to Young M.A., I’m gay. I’m single.”

Rhoad also dismissed the trend by responding to the question in August with a TikTok that featured songs by other queer musicians of color, like Kehlani, Young M.A., and ppcocaine. “I thought that other people of color who are queer and make music could also be a part of that,” they explain to them. “I feel like TikTok and everything else in the lesbian community is run by white lesbians, and I got kind of tired of seeing that.”

Madison Mendes, a 21-year-old college student in South Carolina who goes by @medusamendess, made a TikTok in October in which she explicitly offers different labels for Gen-Z sapphics to identify with. “So we’ve already established that we’ve got the Girl in Red lesbians, who are the indie bitches who like to skate and stuff, and the Young M.A. lesbians,” she asks in the video. “But where’s that happy medium, because I’m not either of those?” After pondering for a second, she then offers a solution: “Where are my Kehlani lesbians?”

The video garnered over 10,000 likes overnight. Users flooded the comments in agreement, offering examples of more queer musicians who could act as an alternative for sapphics who wanted to align themselves with other styles of R&B and pop, like Janelle Monáe, Syd, Willow, and Rina Sawayama.

Madison, who refers to Kehlani has a longtime role model, says that it’s helpful to have inspirational queer role models to take “bits and pieces of your personality” from — especially when crafting an online brand. “There are parts of ourselves that are made up and parts of ourselves that are realistic,” she offers. “You have your online persona and your real life persona. Often, those mesh together and you don't really know [how]. It’s easier to have a person to represent what you’re trying to put out.”

Jones explains that it’s natural for these TikTokers to offer different sapphic archetypes in the form of musicians, because queer people usually want the find the most precise language possible to describe themselves with. She points out that this already happened in the ‘90s, when more specific identifiers like “soft butch,” “diesel dyke,” or “lipstick lesbian” began emerging in the lesbian community. Proposing new labels like “Kehlani lesbians” in opposition to “girl in red lesbians” is just the latest way that Gen-Z TikTokers have created new categories to most accurately describe themselves.

“When you're a marginalized group, who you can be defined as and label yourself as is really important,” Jones explains, “and that means using the language that already exists or creating new language for yourself.”

But once LGBTQ+ language becomes mainstream, Jones warns, queer people usually tend to move on from a trendy saying, because it no longer functions as a shared signifier.

Her predictions are right: After 2020’s explosion of the “do you listen to girl in red?” trend, it slowly petered out toward the end of the year, making way for new euphemisms within the LGBTQ+ community and beyond. Last summer and fall saw the emergence of creators using “Sweater Weather” by the Neighbourhood as a bi anthem, and an audio clip of someone asking “Do you like Frank Ocean?” briefly trended among bi male creators as a way for them to signal to their sexuality. Straight couples have picked up on the tendency on employing certain songs to signal to their hetero identity, by using “Do you listen to Migos?” as a pick-up line.

Jones predicts that these sort of TikTok memes and phrases will “travel quicker than they would have,” in comparison to sapphic euphemisms like “a friend of Dorothy” that have been used for decades.

“Then there’ll be a new one that comes in,” she posits. “That’s the power of the internet.”

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