Two Girls Kissing at Putin’s Olympics

If I’d known this was on the program, I might have reconsidered my principled protest boycott of the Sochi Olympics entirely. According to Dazed, t.A.T.u.—Lena Katina and Julia Volkova, the Russian duo who in 2002 sent the entire planet into a collective frenzy with All the Things She Said—were booked to perform exclusively at the Sochi opening ceremony. The so-called fake lesbians, making out in rain-soaked schoolgirl uniforms for MTV, opening Vladimir Putin’s Winter Games.

I was, and remain, an enormous t.A.T.u. fan. Once you’re in, you’re in. That’s just how it works. But even setting aside my personal investment, the sheer perversity of the booking would have been enough on its own. Two women whose entire image was built on queer iconography, performing at an international event hosted by a government actively trying to erase homosexuality through organized violence—either the booking committee genuinely didn’t register the irony, or someone in there had a spectacularly wicked sense of humor. I choose to believe the latter. Ach, Putin. Good for something after all.