Brit's Wildly Out Of Touch Gay Comment

You know when celebrities sometimes try to say something supportive but end up sounding like your trying-so-hard-not-to-be-homophobic-that-they're-totally-homophobic elderly aunt? That is Britney Spears right now. Because Britney Spears called her gay following "somewhat girls." Oh, Britney. Oooohhh, Britney.

Spears, who like many pop stars, has had a following of loyal fans in the gay community since the very beginning, was asked about the influence of that segment of her fanbase in an interview with Pride Source. It kind of all goes downhill from there.

I get inspiration from them on almost all of my songs. They're somewhat girls, so it's so inspiring to do stuff that they like to hear, like the cool 'in' stuff. Whatever I do for each record is definitely inspired by them.

Imagine if Miley Cyrus said that. Imagine the think pieces. There would be dozens.

Spears has received a (predictable) backlash from that little soundbite, as well as to one in which she referred to her beauty team and her gay fans as "adorable" and "hilarious." Which by itself isn't that bad, but it also sounds like she was seconds away from throwing the word "sassy" in there — which is pretty much like referring to a black woman as sassy, in that it seems benign but is really packed with decades (centuries, even) of history related to the treatment of those communities.

This is how Spears responded to the backlash against her "adorable" comments:

Wait, what? Who felt the other way? I would never say anything to be mean to them. I love my gay fans. Gay people are always usually my best friends in the whole world. I completely adore them.

Like we said, she is our clueless analogical aunt — the cousin of vaguely racist uncle, they both lounge around your parents' house come holidays and cause widened eyes and live-tweeting every time they let us know their opinions on current events.

In other words: Spears seems to be a little out of date when it comes to her relationship to the LGBT community. Because yeah, plenty of girls are gay, but it's implied here that she's referring to the gay male audience she has. And the gay men she's referring to in that quote up there are... well, they're just that, they're men, no matter the stereotypes attached to them.

That is, unless she's going way over all of our heads and trying to reference the transgender community, in which case... well, she's still got a lot of work to do, because they're still not usually "somewhat girls," they are whatever they identify as.

Spears might have meant well, but girl's still got a lot to learn.