I heard if you pick one of the peacock feathers off Miley Cyrus’ ass, you get to make a wish.

So a Twitter friend linked to the new Miley Cyrus music video “Can’t Be Tamed” and I’m at work, so I watched it. In the video, Cyrus tries to pull a Britney Spears in “Slave 4 U” and reinvent herself as a sexual being despite her young age and Disney background. Yawn, yawn, yawn - everybody’s got deja vu, where’s Carson Daly when you need him?, etc, etc.

The only interesting thing about the video, to me, is a split-second frame with Cyrus and a female dancer in the shadows about to lock lips before Cyrus whips her head back to the camera with an “Oh my! Did you just catch us about to hoedown throwdown?” look in her eyes. The rest of her grinding scenes are with weirdly-dressed dudes.

Meanwhile, Christina Aguilera’s new video, “Not Myself Tonight”, has her feeling up on a blind-folded girl in bondage gear. The visual is appropriately ‘dirrty’ since the song contains the lyric, “I’m kissin’ on the boys and the girls,” which she later does. Aguilera, like her Lady Marmalade co-star P!nk, has pretty much always outright identified as bisexual (unlike their counterpart Spears, who’s consistently dodged rumors of being into chicks).

Lady Gaga, who also said she identifies as bisexual, recently tongued a prison maiden in her video for “Telephone.” (Sideline mini-rant: A recent Vanity Fair cover article interviewing friends from pre-fame said none could remember Gaga ever being in a relationship with a woman to try and cast doubt on her claim to love both sexes. Newsflash, you dumb fucks, you don’t ever have to have even kissed a woman to identify as ‘bisexual’ — the term refers to who you’re attracted to. Even Aguilera’s marriage to a man does not discredit her statement that she is also bisexual. End mini-rant.)

Dear JC, Dude. Chace Crawford is a dime piece. Why would you EVER deny hitting that? I’d be printing up fliers if I were you, dawg. Love, Gaby

Anyway! The trend of lady pop stars feeling up on women in music videos isn’t new and I’m not saying Miley’s headed for a Rolling Stone cover proclaiming her love for Selena Gomez (which, oh my god, it’s still illegal to hope for that, right?) It’s interesting how many female pop stars openly identify as bisexual though and how many male pop stars don’t. In fact, I can’t think of any that do using the term “bisexual” (aside from Patrick Wolf) despite long-standing whispers about guys like JC Chasez, John Mayer, Robbie Williams, Every McMalePopStarEver, etc, etc.

No wait, Jason Mraz admitted to Genre magazine in 2005 that he has “bisexually open-mind” even though he’s never had sex with a guy (which as I stated above still makes you guess what? Bisexual!) Green Day’s Billie Joe has also been identified by his wife as being into men in the past. The oft-gay-labeled Mika has said he doesn’t “limit” himself on who he dates and some of his songs deal explicitly with coming out of the closet but again no dice on the actual use of “bisexual.” None of the three has ever flirted with the concept in their music videos though.

So you pretty much never see male pop stars feeling up on dudes in their music videos. The only one that comes to mind is Pete Doherty’s video for “The Last of The English Roses”, which features two dudes kissing at the end, neither of whom are Doherty though. Aguilera had two guys kissing in her music video for “Beautiful” (and a cross-dresser! Remember when she was saying something along with all those boobie shots?!) Those are the only two explicitly “gay” mainstream music videos I can think of — even by out gay (because god forbid a man actually identify as bisexual) artists.

If ladies — and lady/baby hybrids like Miley Cyrus — are allowed equal opportunity gender groping in their music videos with little to no scandal, why aren’t dudes given the same freedom? And why aren’t they as free to label themselves “bisexual” as female pop stars are?

PS: Most unintentionally(?) gay music video ever made? David Bowie and Mick Jagger doing “Dancing in the Street.” Feast your eyes on that 70’s ambiguity and then tell me we’re better off now that it’s 2010. (You can’t.)*

Correction: My good friend Bryan O’Toole points out that this stunning video was actually made in the 80’s. HOW COULD I HAVE BEEN SO BLIND? We regret the error.

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