Unlessyou’reextremely straight and living off the grid, you’ve probably heard about Kelly Clarkson breaking the queer internet a couple of weeks ago after she covered The Outfield’s “Your Love” on “The Kelly Clarkson Show” — and delivered the song’s classic refrain with a playful wink. Sapphic queers have since been scream-singing “I like my girls a little bit older” ever since, clutching our chests like Victorian maidens.
Sure, maybe we’re taking it a bit far, but for lesbians of a certain age, this wasn’t just a fleeting moment — it was the unexpected, life-affirming acknowledgment of a fantasy we’ve been privately having since 1986.
The original track was the kind of blazing party anthem that kids who grew up in the ’80s have carried with us our whole lives (even if its subject matter, which seemingly narrated the story of a man interested in a woman who’s not his girlfriend, was questionable). We sang it into hairbrushes as children, remade it into dirty drum and bass remixes in the ’90s, and — for some of us — shouted it from the passenger seat during every queer road trip in the 2000s. I’ve spent actual decades singing along to this song, subbing myself into the role of seducing an older femme. Now that I am that older femme, the wink hits especially hard.
By retaining the original lyrics and adding a wink, it’s as though Clarkson cracked open a decades-old queer daydream and gave it back to us, fully realized. Finally, after all these years, the girl is winking back. (Clarkson is straight, but that’s not stopping us from rolling out the rainbow carpet.)
In a cultural era obsessed with queer-coded moments — from Cate Blanchett’s “Tár” press tour to Kristen Stewart’s smirk economy — Clarkson’s wink is only the latest entry in the ongoing project of casual lesbian devastation. It’s the kind of moment that reminds us how starved some of us are for mainstream women to play along (even just for a second), whether they’re queer or not. Sometimes, all we need is a throwaway glance into the camera to keep us going. (And by us, I mean me.)
But it’s not just elder queers who are freaking out about the wink. Gen Z queers have admired Clarkson since their own youths. For many, she was the soundtrack of their own teenage heartbreaks: the voice they blasted alone in their rooms while wondering why they were so fixated on their best friend.
Since said wink, lesbian TikTok has declared a state of emergency.
“Kelly, if you wanna come to our side, we will gladly take you,” one person quipped as they synced with Clarkson’s cover.
On X, formerly called Twitter, another person spoke favorably of Clarkson’s performance, writing, “Kelly clarkson’s cover of your love and the way she sings ‘you know I like my girls a little bit older’ has sent me into a spirallllll.”
And this is how Clarkson’s cover bridged generational gaps and united lesbians of all ages in a shared moment of recognition, joy and unquenchable thirst. With a single wink, Clarkson’s gesture, intentional or not, served as an act of intergenerational care and encapsulated decades of unspoken fantasies and desires within the lesbian community.
For some, it’s the fantasy of being the wooed older woman; for others, it’s finally being wooed. For all of us, it’s a sweet, silly and sexy pick-me-up in a year that’s already been way too long.