The music video for Lucy Dacus’ newest single, “Best Guess,” broke the internet this week for both good and not-so-good reasons. Let’s talk about it.
Dacus, a queer icon and one third of the supergroup boygenius, released the highly anticipated music video for “Best Guess,” the third single off her upcoming solo record, “Forever Is A Feeling,” on Monday. Centered around “hot mascs,” the music video featured a plethora of more masculine-presenting queer people, from transmascs to lesbians to nonbinary people.
While excitement was high in the online LGBTQ+ community for this music video, it has drawn some criticism since its release, sparking a deeply nuanced and critically important conversation on white queerness and queer representation in the mainstream music industry.
The valid criticism lies in the casting. On January 7, Dacus posted an open casting call on her TikTok account, calling for “hot mascs” to post audition videos under the “Best Guess” sound. She said her team would review the videos and reach out to the winners.
For someone who is chronically online and pretty deeply entrenched in gay TikTok, this hot masc trend immediately took over my entire feed. Every other video I was served involved queer people with different gender identities, sizes, disabilities, and cultural and racial backgrounds showing off their gravitas and attractiveness.
When the winners were announced, I, along with many others in the community, noticed a lack of different skin tones and body sizes, as well as other “types” of mascs, like studs and butches. But I decided to wait until the music video came out to make my final critique. Now that it’s out, I have a lot of thoughts, and so does the internet.
Let me put my disclaimer here and make it loud and clear: I enjoyed this music video. And that doesn’t mean I can’t critique its representation of the queer community; those two things do not negate or contradict each other.
This conversation on white queerness and queer representation in the mainstream music industry is vitally important, and it can be navigated without discrediting, erasing, or ignoring all the beautiful people involved in the music video. We, especially as members of an underprivileged community, should constantly strive to be better; we should continue to hold artists with platforms, especially when their audience is primarily queer, accountable.
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s start with white queerness. The divide between the white queer community and queer people of color is still glaringly large, especially the black queer community. Black queer people continue to be excluded from, ignored in, and even endangered in spaces that aren’t specifically labeled as “black queer spaces.” Specifically LGBTQ+ spaces still tend to be primarily dominated by white cisgender people and men.
White queerness is akin to white feminism; it tends to focus on the problems of white queers, ignoring or even diminishing the unique struggles of non-white queer people.
That being said, let me take a moment to express my frustration with some of the takes I’ve seen online regarding this music video. The issue is far deeper and more nuanced than “A white lesbian only chose thin, light-skinned lesbians for her music video.”
The real problem lies in the illusion of equal opportunity. The open casting call appeared to provide a chance for normal, underrepresented queer people, not actors or people with pre existing platforms, with the chance to shine. And that’s the opposite of what happened. The people chosen were all mostly semi-famous internet personalities (I still love Mattie and Elio, don’t get me wrong,) and Dacus’s already famous friends (they could never make me hate you, Naomi McPherson.)
The out-of-touch handling of this casting is similar to the mainstream music industry’s treatment of queer artists. 2024 was a fantastic year for queer visibility in music, especially women, aptly dubbed “the year of sapphic pop” or “the lesbian renaissance.” LGBTQ+ artists like Billie Eilish, Reneé Rapp, Doechii, and Chappell Roan enjoyed career-high success and mainstream attention for their art and years of hard work.
While queer representation in the mainstream music industry appears to be improving, it should be noted that most of the queer artists who have major platforms and followings still fit into a semi-palatable box; they’re mostly white, femme-presenting, and conventionally attractive people.
Social progress is in no way linear. It’s incredibly naive and borderline foolish to think that if queer representation in the mainstream music industry has improved this past year, it will continue to improve naturally. In fact, I think it’s only a matter of time before the pendulum swings the other way and the industry slams the door in the LGBTQ+ community’s face. We’re only in with “the popular kids” as long as they allow it.
Work needs to be done by people with platforms, followings, and power in the music industry, like Dacus, to include and lift up people who are still underrepresented in the industry but also in the mainstream media, like trans and nonbinary people, disabled people, et cetera.
This is exactly what made the “Best Guess” music video disappointing. Dacus, a queer woman herself, seemingly provided an opportunity for underrepresented queer people to have the spotlight, and chose to select people who already have internet platforms. While the video celebrated many different queer people of different identities and with different backgrounds, there were glaring absences.
The almost overwhelming volume of dark-skinned, disabled, and fat mascs who auditioned on social media and the lack of this representation in the music video brought light to the ever-present biases ingrained in the white queer community. It shouldn’t have to be said that even a historically underrepresented and underprivileged community still tends to favor conventionally attractive, thin, able-bodied, light-skinned people.
Though this piece may focus on critique, I think it’s important that we do not entirely dismiss Dacus’s most recent music video, and especially her as an artist, purely because she could and should have been more intentional in representing the full extent of the beauty and diversity of the masc and lesbian community.
Once again, this conversation does not discredit the representation present in the music video; it’s simply intended to spur more thoughtful and nuanced discourse on white queerness and the reality of the biases within the white LGBTQ+ community. Diversity is not about checking off boxes or fulfilling a quota, it’s about striving to represent more marginalized groups in a more accurate way.
So thanks for the hot masc music video, Lucy Dacus, but we know you can do better.
WORDS ALLYSON PARK
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