i was in the car and then Not Gonna Get Us popped up and i remembered that MTV performance and wondered...what if t.A.T.u actually would have been boys? do you think they would have been bigger? love the girls but i think ppl and media would have been more critical and judgmental. 

 

another question, in present time, would another t.A.T.u be possible? like, ik we have made some progress since 2003 idk but i still think it would be kind of an event.

 

 

 

We need a gay male version of all the things she said

Edited October 29, 20241 yr by Josh

it's funny u say this because I listen to their music specifically with the male versions on youtube when I am dressing up as a femboy getting ready for my DL to come plow me tbh. They would have ATE as a boyband tbh BUT at the time I think they would have gotten assasinated as boys doing gay stuff on stage tbh...the world was already not ready for them as two girls doing softcore les stuff so imagine two boys? I think in todays age two boys could work! it would still be controversial af but not in a life threatening way I THINK.

we already have that pride studios softporn classic boyband tho  

 

ot: i don't think the gays would have stanned tbh   

 

 

 

oh wow

3 minutes ago, IBeMe said:

when I am dressing up as a femboy getting ready for my DL to come plow me tbh.

1 minute ago, nostalgic said:

this was NOT a classy event  

Wouldn't work. Will never work. Straight men find two girls kissing hot, while they find two guys kissing "disgusting". Its ****** but its true. 

Edited October 29, 20241 yr by prettyinpink940
spelling

probably not.  at the time t.A.T.u were huge .. I don't think they would of been if they were dudes. They were two cute Russian girls and even the straights like them because they did kiss each other. 

It would've flopped chile. No one would have listened to it. Publicly at least. Gays themed songs are barely accepted nowdays, so 20 years ago? No. 

 

Not to mention that they would've probably be in prison in Russia for years 

Edited October 29, 20241 yr by Johnny Jacobs

1 hour ago, prettyinpink940 said:

Wouldn't work. Will never work. Straight men find two girls kissing hot, while they find two guys kissing "disgusting". Its ****** but its true. 

Yet most straight guys tend to do really gay things. It was never the gay guys swordfighting in the showers or teabagging for fun. 

Homiesexual is a thing. 

God no lol. Straight dudes wouldn't have found it hot. The gays rarely stan other gay musicians like they do pop divas. Yaoi fangirls were barely a thing in 2002, so it's not like they could market to them either. 

Edited October 29, 20241 yr by secretgarden

2 hours ago, IBeMe said:

it's funny u say this because I listen to their music specifically with the male versions on youtube when I am dressing up as a femboy getting ready for my DL to come plow me tbh.

Girl what does this have to do with t.A.T.u. and if they were a boy band? 😭

Maybe if it was 2 edgy, non-masc presenting men (Prince, David Bowie, etc) cause it wouldn't be too clashing but there's no way it'd work if it was 2 Timberlakes for example.

I can give some insight on this and sadly, never would've been signed in the first place by a label that could make things happen (especially back then when you were dead in the water if you weren't on a major), or given a budget or played on MTV or radio. Would've been an unsigned, underground gay act in Moscow and that's that. In the 2000s gay was pretty much not allowed in mainstream music. The only representation of man + man sexuality in the mainstream was Xtina's "Beautiful" video. Literally. Like I am struggling hard to think of anything else. Even Adam Lambert was forced to pretend to be sorta straight/maybe bi/ambiguous at first and he basically derailed his career by kissing a guy on stage and that was in 2009. TATU was 7 years earlier.

 

Executives simply did not take what was perceived as too much of a risk no matter how catchy the music was. The only openly gay stars were people like Elton who had achieved iconic status before coming out. Lance Bass wasn't allowed to come out. Same with Clay Aiken. Very different time culturally. I am so ******* glad it's not the case anymore and we've had Sam Smith, Years & Years, Troye Sivan, Orville Peck, Lil Nas X and more in the 2010s and beyond. And it's opened the door for the legit music industry to actually want to invest in openly gay pop stars (like me! lol but seriously) Like the change is incredible. And I think it really does take a few trailblazers who are open from the start and it shows the people in power that it's viable. Now being a gay pop star it's like "ooh that's an angle we can work with, get an underground gay fanbase first, Gen Z are into it, yeah let's do it, here's thousands of dollars to make your gay themed video and thousands more to market that video" but like LITERALLY that conversation  Which is ******* awesome and about damn time, but no way in hell that would've happened in 2002.

Edited October 29, 20241 yr by MatiRod

8 minutes ago, itshyolee said:

Girl what does this have to do with t.A.T.u. and if they were a boy band? 😭

it's all related 

Somehow it just all is 

21 minutes ago, secretgarden said:

God no lol. Straight dudes wouldn't have found it hot. The gays rarely stan other gay musicians like they do pop divas. Yaoi fangirls were barely a thing in 2002, so it's not like they could market to them either. 

I honestly don't think that's true. I think it's more that there have been so few openly gay pop stars who make the kind of music gays typically like because for the longest time they just wouldn't get the necessary investment to get to that point. But the ones that do like George Michael, Olly Alexander, Tom Aspaul and others have plenty of gay fans.

41 minutes ago, IBeMe said:

it's all related 

Somehow it just all is 

We love bragging rights 

There's not a market for that with the GP

4 hours ago, IBeMe said:

it's funny u say this because I listen to their music specifically with the male versions on youtube when I am dressing up as a femboy getting ready for my DL to come plow me tbh. They would have ATE as a boyband tbh BUT at the time I think they would have gotten assasinated as boys doing gay stuff on stage tbh...the world was already not ready for them as two girls doing softcore les stuff so imagine two boys? I think in todays age two boys could work! it would still be controversial af but not in a life threatening way I THINK.

sorry for the dumb question but wdym by "DL"

my first thought was "download" but that doesn't make sense so I'm clueless 

They'd be dead, sadly. 
 

Just now, Jay07 said:

Downlow

idk what that is but okay 

 

OT: I was a baby when t.a.t.u was formed so idk, tho I agree with some takes here that a lesbian couple was more "digestable" for the GP so a mlm one wouldn't have had as much success

Definitely not. First and foremost t.A.T.u were a product and not a music act. If you look at it that way, they sold a commercialised version of the barely legal lesbianism fetish that still dominates today in a heterosexual-first society. male gayness cannot play in that space commercially even today as there is still a notion of women being posessions / products that doesn't apply to men.  The closest example to obvious male gayness i can think of in the current music climate is Troye Sivan, and he still remains underground to a degree commercially. Looking at Eurovision 2024 this year, a lot of the hate towards Olly Alexander's live performance was it's overtly gay sexualism, and that's 2024 compared to 2002.

 

Not sure if this was the same with everyone else growing up as a teenager but it was widely acceptable for the straight girls to make out with each other at house parties etc, almost encouraged, with no questions on whether they were lesbians - it was just girls being 'silly'. Because men are rarely viewed as products / prizes / posessions where their sexuality is the primary selling point, a male t.A.T.u would've flopped into oblivion and would've had 10x the amount of hate the t.A.T.u girls got.

 

Also, if i'm not mistaken, the main opposition t.A.T.u had were either religious groups and/or the older women demographic. The men remained some what indifferent to their act because essentially watching them meant they could microdose watching porn.  And they were two men, you'd have an army of older men with unfortunately more power in media / society that would also be negatively trashing them

 

Off topic but this reminded me of the t.A.T.u movie starring Mischa Barton about two girls that meet at a t.A.T.u concert. Please watch if you haven't, a camp classic 

It would've never happen if they were boys