Christine and the Queens is working on a "different version of femininity" with her look.
The ‘Tilted’ hitmaker – who identifies as pansexual – chose to have her signature cropped hair style because it allows the singer to "play" with her identity whether she is onstage or in her day-to-day life, and the fact she feels "empowered" as a woman inspired her to take a riskier stance on her second studio album, ‘Chris’.
Speaking to The I Paper, the French musician said: "I’m just working on a different version of femininity. With short hair I can play even more. If I dress really masculine, I can totally be mistaken for a man, but also if I want to be a badass woman in a dress with short hair, I can. So it’s kind of empowering."
Opening about her latest album – the follow-up to her hit 2015 self-titled English language LP – she added: "I had two options: I could comfortably sit, or I could risk it all. If I’m a bit scared, it means that I’m challenging things a bit more. And also I had to be true to who I became, and thanks to everything that happened, I was in a slightly different place; I was more Chris than Christine."
The ‘No Harm Is Done’ songstress – real name Heloise Letissier – has been in relationships with both men and women and she admits she learnt a lot about gender stereotypes from the most masculine guys she dated.
She said: "I learnt about intricacy [from those men]. All my life I had to deconstruct my femininity because of how I felt, and who I loved … but people all deal with that complexity. I deal with it out in the open, because in a way I was forced to, but some people deal with it more secretly, and sometimes it creates wounds that never stop bleeding."
"They were confiding in me about those things they couldn’t deal with. And also I was taking a bit from their masculinity to [put] on my femininity. I feel like a weird composite. It’s one of my kinks to explore that. And the more I explore it, the freer I feel. But even in relationships that were supposed to be ‘woke’, with people who were as queer as I was, there were systems of oppression that were lingering. I’m just learning that actually, nothing is simple."
Christine and the Queens feels ’empowered’ as a woman
