“The more success I have with my music, the more being transgender becomes a footnote. I’m an artist; I’m not a gender. I’m not anything else but an artist, and I don’t really see people as their sexuality or their gender”.
– Kim Petras
Welcome to another episode of Gaydar! This month we have yet another bright, exquisite diamond personality that’s part of the LGBTQIA+ community and an icon of transgender music: Kim Petras!
Petras was born as a biological male on August 27th 1992. Soon, her parents realized that Petras was more comfortable being a girl at the young age of two. They have been very supportive through the years and Petras has expressed her gratitude towards her parents multiple times for accepting her for who she is.
In 2006, Petras appeared on a German television show when she was 13, discussing the possibility of her undergoing a gender reassignment surgery. At 14, she filmed a documentary and went on a talk show in hopes to get permission for her gender reassignment surgery at age 16, two years before the minimum age of 18 in Germany. This resulted in widespread media coverage on her transition, deeming her “the world’s youngest transgender”.
Kim said “I always felt like a woman, I was just trapped and ended up in the wrong body.”
Petras loved to listen and make her own music. In an interview with BuzzFeed, she said that she wrote her first song in 2nd grade, about her unrequited crush on a guy. After listening to Britney Spears’s “Toxic”, Petras wished she could write a hit song like that.
Music was an escape for her and she could forget about her problems while listening to music. “It’s always been like that for me, I feel like pop music has saved me in so many ways.” By her early twenties, Petras had written hundreds of songs in her notebooks, hoping someone would hear them someday.
At the beginning of her career as a singer in 2008, she released a number of singles: “Fade Away”, “Last Forever”, “Die for You”, and “Boomerang”. In 2009, she was featured on “Taste” by Sobertruth and in 2011 was featured on “Magnetic”.
Her big break came in August 2017. Petras released her single “I Don’t Want It at All”, which was featured on the Spotify Global Viral chart. Since then, she has released full length albums such as Clarity and Turn Off The Light. She was also nominated for awards celebrating queer people – the Queerty Awards in 2020 and the British LGBT Awards in 2021, cementing her status as an influential transgender musical icon.
“I’m proud to be a transgender woman. And I think that’s what Pride is all about. Just celebrating how far the LGBTQ+ community has come as a whole. And then also celebrating your personal journey,” Petras told GLAMOUR UK’s Pride cover issue.
Apart from embracing her transgender identity, she hopes people can focus more on her musical and artistic capabilities too. “And honestly, the more success I have with my music, the more being transgender becomes a footnote. I’m an artist; I’m not a gender. I’m not anything else but an artist, and I don’t really see people as their sexuality or their gender”.
That’s all for this month’s episode of Gaydar featuring the queen of electro-pop, Kim Petras. Do check out her newest EP “Slut Pop”, because we think you’ll love it as much as we do!
