Lil Nas X - "That's What I Want"

Lil Nas X is an openly gay black male music artist. Since coming out in 2019, he has worked a plethora of queer imagery into his songs and music videos. I recall becoming aware of Lil Nas X when the music video for his song "Montero" - a video featuring a scene where Lil Nas X rides a stripper pole down to hell and then gives Satan a lap dance - caused an amount of outrage in homophobic circles.

Heteronormativity

A gif showing Lil Nas X as a player on a football team. His team's jerseys are hot pink and the opposing team's jerseys are baby blue. He injurs himself and has to sit on the bench, where a male from the same team makes long and possibly flirty eye contact with him.

Lil Nas X has a history of juxtaposing queer themes across traditionally masculine and/or heteronormative situations in his music videos. The "That's What I Want" music video is an example of this, showcasing multiple aspects of the heteronormative relationship through a queer lens.

The juxtaposition of aesthetics in the music video combines traditionally manly activities, such as football, with styles traditionally associated with femininity, such as the color pink. The theme of this video, taking the template of the heteronormative relationship and applying it to Lil Nas X and his lover, inspires a critique of the tropes we consider to be "normal" in relationships.

Lil Nas X and his partner only appear romantically linked when they're away from other people, and in fact, most of the quality time we see them having is on a camping trip, tucked far away in the woods.

This decision might have been a critique of how many queer couples feel like they are unable to be affectionate with their partners in public, for safety reasons, or it may just be a "Brokeback Mountain" reference... But later in the video, we find out that Lil Nas X's lover has a family from whom he's been keeping their affair a secret.

Lil Nas X goes to surprise his lover with flowers, but a woman and child answer the door, whom he soon realizes are his lover's wife and child.

The final scene of the "That's What I Want" music video features Lil Nas X in a wedding chapel, crying in a wedding dress. The choice of setting being a failed wedding is symbolic on multiple fronts. There is, of course, the image of Lil Nas X in a wedding dress, but also his vulnerability evident through his tears and his cry of "So I want someone to love, that's what I fucking want."

A gif with a closeup of Lil Nas X wearing a wedding veil with tears streaming down his face, belting the words "That's what I fucking want"

As Chrys Ingraham states in Heterosexuality: It's Just Not Natural!

...Weddings work as a form of ideological control to signal membership in relations of 
ruling as well as to signify that the couple is normal, moral, productive, 
family-centered, upstanding citizens and, most importantly, appropriately gendered.

"That's What I Want" clearly flips gender norms, but the characters still exist in a heteronormative world, and Lil Nas X's cries for love at the end seem to wish for the arms of that idealized hunky hetero husband to come sweep him off his feet.

Gender Identity

So why do we value these gendered systems so much? Why do we consider "normal" to be "good" in any case? Even if we consider the gender binary to be "normal," that doesn't mean it's good. Alok Vaid-Menon makes an argument that the gender system is inherently flawed, impacting not only gender non-conforming people, but straight and cisgendered people as well:

The coalition that needs to 
happen to end misogyny is the 
coalition of all genders...All 
of us are harmed by this gender 
system, that harm looks different,
and we can speak about those 
differences. But at the end of 
the day, overhauling this gender 
binary system isn't just gonna 
help me, it's gonna help everyone.

Of course, we can all just imagine that Lil Nas X wants a lover who cares for him, not just somebody who will fit the heteronormative ideal of a perfect husband.