“Fuck anyone who’s ever made you feel small, and fuck everyone who’s ever made you feel stupid.” So explodes the rallying cry of musician and performance artist Bebe Huxley, whose exclamation goes out to all of her fem fans who have ever been ridiculed or manipulated into giving up control of their femininity. Huxley, a member of Los Angeles’ queer music scene and the Slather Factory, an up-and-coming queer arts collective, has just released her debut EP, Scorpio, and accompanying music video of the same name. Both the video and song embody her own journey toward the reclamation of her queerness and agency over her own body.
Scorpio’s video is an epic in miniature, breaking binaries of gender, moving through inward and outward expressions of trauma, and chronicling Huxley’s autobiographical destruction of an abusive relationship. Such a visceral exploration of explicitly queer themes is at once a delightfully affirming and intense experience, especially accompanied by Huxley’s haunting soprano layered over creative partner Vincent Parker’s hypnotic synth.
Scorpio is not Huxley’s first venture into music videos (you can find her other videos Venom and Darkside on YouTube), but it makes a mark as a deeply, almost intrusively, personal piece, evading the camp and experimental video art style of her other music videos. While Scorpio is unflinching in its portrayal of abuse (Huxley is adamant about the inclusion of a trigger warning prior to the video), its combination of visual epiphanies and aggressively empowering lyrics are at once individual to Huxley’s personal triumph, and a widespread encouragement of new revelations of gender expression.
Huxley gave a full length interview that will be published in OutWrite’s Winter Print Issue, along with a more in-depth article on the Slather Factory. For now, you can head to her personal website to stream her music and immerse yourself in the world of the Dark Pop Scorpion.
Featured Image taken by Stephanie Munguia at “The Future is Fluid” event for HARDY zine, organized by UCLA alum, Joey Gray.