Katy Perry: What Being Friends With Someone Who Associates Themselves With An Abuser Entails For A Sexual Assault Trauma Survivor

Katy Perry and Taylor Swift were heavily discussed in my previous post despite the fact that Camila Mendes was the actual subject matter. But I couldn’t help myself. The blog post was about strong women, and Katy Perry and Taylor Swift ARE strong, bada** women. I also forgot to mention Rihanna in there. The three of them have a connection. Swift and Perry were good friends in the 2000’s and 2010’s until a business decision made by Perry ended their friendship. Swift’s 2014 song, ‘Bad Blood’ was inspired by their friction. They made up in 2018 when Perry attended Swift’s concert during her Reputation Tour. Perry then appeared in Swift’s ‘You Need To Calm Down’ music video in 2019.

Perry and Rihanna didn’t have that happy reunion, though. They ended their friendship when Rihanna resumed her relationship with Chris Brown after he physically attacked her in 2009. They posed together at the 2018 Met Gala, but it was appearance that they’d done so for show. Personally speaking, I understand Perry’s side of things. I’ve been there. I was that friend who had to watch someone I cared about be mistreated and abused by their significant other. I had friendships end because they refused to see what I saw in their significant others. It’s a good thing Rihanna never had children with Chris Brown. The abuse never stops when you have children with an abuser, even after you break up with them. In fact that abuse only escalates when you have children with an abuser and then break up with them.

Rihanna has since moved on with A$AP Rocky. They’ve been together since 2020 and welcomed 2 beautiful children. We’re just now impatiently waiting for Rihanna’s musical comeback. And despite Rihanna not being friends with Katy Perry due to her abusive ex-boyfriend, you can’t deny that Rihanna is a girl’s girl. First, there’s the history of how Rihanna and Katy Perry became friends. They met in 2009, and Perry complimented Rihanna on the Valentino bag she was wearing. Valentine’s Day came around, and Perry gets that same Valentino bag in the mail from Rihanna herself that she bought her.

And we can’t forget Natalie Portman praising Rihanna in July of this year for helping her through her divorce from Benjamin Millepied, a choreographer who worked with Portman on 2010’s ‘Black Swan’, which also starred Mila Kunis. Portman opened up of meeting Rihanna during Paris Fashion Week on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon, ‘I think every woman going through divorce should get to have Rihanna say to her that she’s a bad b*tch. It was exactly what I needed.’ Something so simple; a small act of kindness; made such a difference to a woman who needed it the most.

The same couldn’t be said about Katy Perry, especially when it comes to her latest project. I’d been following her career for a while now, and personally, I think some of her choices of words and business decisions have been somewhat questionable. For instance, when she and Swift were still feuding, Perry tweeted, ‘Watch out for the Regina George in sheep’s clothing …’ In 2017, Perry released her hit single, ‘Swish Swish’ featuring Nicki Minaj, who was also beefing with Swift at the time. The song was rumoured to be a direct response to Swift’s ‘Bad Blood’. And let’s not forget Perry’s 2011 single, ‘E.T featuring Kanye West, who’s endlessly been feuding with Swift since the 2009 VMAs. During the time of the release, Perry was still friends with Swift.

This specific business move to work with Kanye West didn’t seem to bother Swift at all, though. In fact, it seems as though her friends working with her enemies doesn’t bother her at all. Sabrina Carpenter, for one, had crossed paths at work with Taylor Swift’s ex-boyfriend, Jake Gyllenhaal, and she collaborated with Kim Kardashian on a SKIMS campaign. Some Swifties, as Swift’s fans call themselves, were concerned of the collaboration, others reminded the public that numerous of Swift’s friends had ties to the Kardashians, including Gigi Hadid, Lana Del Rey, and even Selena Gomez.

It was rather the fact that Perry ‘stole’ Swift’s backup dancers while she was on tour in 2013 that got her so fed up. Of course, they have since made up. In 2018, Perry sent Swift an olive branch, quite literally, as a way to wish her luck on her Reputation Tour. Most recently, Perry was seen attending Swift’s Eras Tour in February of this year alongside Rita Ora in Australia. She even sang along to ‘Bad Blood’ when the song came on. In 2020, Perry said in an interview that she wouldn’t be inviting Swift to her wedding to Orlando Bloom because they weren’t close since ending their feud. But that’s only because they’re both busy. It sucks, but the fact that they’re in a good place to begin with is already a start!

Both ending their friendship and reuniting years later was a good career move on both sides. Swift is known to be business-oriented when it comes to her career. She knows exactly how to make the big buck. Katy Perry on the other hand…. Let’s just say some of her choices have been questionable at times. And that’s not to say that she’s not a professional; because she is. I still can’t forget that one particular scene from her documentary, ‘Katy Perry: Part Of Me’, where Perry just received a text from Russell Brand, her husband at the time, telling her he’s divorcing her. She was getting ready to perform when this happened. She’s crying and she can barely hold it together. Her team tells her she could back out of the show without consequences. Nevertheless, despite her heartbreak, she decided to put on a brave face and go on with the show. She cried just as she was about to take the stage. After being consoled by her team, she put on a brave face, a smile, and her colourful persona. She put on a show that her fans expected.

In that same documentary, released in 2012, we saw a glimpse of Kesha when a picture of Perry with a group of her friends, including Kesha, was briefly shown. Perry and Kesha have a connection, because they both have worked with disgraced music producer, Dr. Luke. We all know what Kesha’s current relationship status with Dr. Luke is. Even if you’ve been living under a rock, you know what happened. But just as a refresher, Kesha filed a lawsuit against Dr. Luke for sexual assault and battery, sexual harassment, gender violence, emotional abuse and violation of California business practices. In turn, Dr. Luke filed a lawsuit accusing her of defamation.

Throughout the trial, which went on for years, the entire music industry became united in supporting Kesha. And you’d think that Katy Perry would be supportive of Kesha as one. She’s a big part of the music industry and everything it stands for, and 2. She’s friends with Kesha. Her latest career move, however, said otherwise. After serving as a judge on the revived ‘American Idol’ alongside Lionel Richie and Luke Bryan since 2018, Perry left the show the revive her music career. Her new album, ‘143’, is scheduled to be released on September 20th. The first single to go with the album’s promotion, ‘Woman’s Wold’, was released in July. The single was met with mixed reviews, mostly because it was written and produced mostly by men. The music video for the single was also directed by a man. But then we found out that Dr. Luke was one of the producers; not just on the lead single, but the entire album too. This sparked an even further controversy.

The public certainly had opinions about it, and I did too. When Perry made an appearance on Alex Cooper’s ‘Call Her Daddy’ podcast, Cooper asked Perry about the collaboration heads on. She said, ‘I know a lot of people have expressed disappointment and were really upset that you decided to involve Dr. Luke on this album. Why did you choose to work with him?’

To which Perry responded, ‘Look, I understand that it started a lot of conversations, and he was one of many collaborators that I collaborated with, but the reality is it comes from me. The truth is I wrote these songs from my experience of my whole life going through this metamorphosis. And, he was one of the people to help facilitate all that—one of the writers, one of the producers. And, I am speaking from my own experience. Like, when I speak about ‘Woman’s World,’ I speak about feeling so empowered now, as a mother, as a woman, giving birth, creating life, creating another set of organs, a brain, a heart. I created a whole-ass heart! And I did it, and I’m still doing it. And I’m still a matriarch and feeling really grounded in that. That’s where I’m speaking from. And, so, I created all of this with several different collaborators, people I’ve collaborated with from the past, from Teenage Dream era, all of that.’

I actually don’t have much to say to that. Perry’s answer was fairly vague, and she changed the topic of discussion entirely in that answer as to avoid anything escalating further. Becoming a mother has absolutely nothing to do with supporting someone who’s been through sexual trauma at the hands of someone as powerful as Dr. Luke, especially so publicly. Becoming a mother shouldn’t take away from the facts and the importance of supporting another woman throughout her journey of being a sexual assault survivor.

Perry previously said that she felt pressured to support Kesha during her trial. But why, exactly? And how? These are the questions that keep running through my head about this very topic. Perry has obviously never gone through such trauma in her life. I can’t say she’s a good friend. I can’t say she’s a bad friend either. That’s between Perry and Kesha herself. All I know is that if I were Kesha, I’d think twice about being friends with someone like Katy Perry. I’d previously been friends with someone like Perry; someone who has no problem supporting and defending a rapist. I know the hardships that being friends with as such entails.

The fact that Katy Perry didn’t have the experience that Kesha did at the hands of Dr. Luke, or an experience that even resembles anything that Kesha went through at the hands of Dr. Luke, doesn’t take away from the fact that the man used his power to hurt her one way or another. When I was friends with the person who I thought would easily support my rapist, I certainly had a lot of feelings. At times, I regret opening up about my trauma, but then I remember that if I hadn’t, I would’ve never known the real person behind the mask. This person I was friends with for 5 years was always a toxic. But because I was vulnerable and going to the notions, I just didn’t see the signs. There were a lot of signs, and they mostly had to do with how she was unsupportive of my sexual trauma.…

There’s no right or wrong way to support someone who’s in the midst of sexual trauma. But there IS a wrong way to support the person who’d done the deed, and that is to show them support to begin with. In Perry’s case, it really doesn’t matter that the song came from her perspective and mantra. You just don’t support an abuser in any way. Not even in the slightest of ways. Perry says that Dr. Luke is just one of the many producers for the single and the album, and that the work itself is her art. But it just doesn’t matter. It makes no difference. She still has him on the payroll. He still gets a payout for every time the song and the album itself is purchased. Whether it’s just a dollar or $100,000 or more that he’s getting, he’s still getting something. He’s still being supported. And if Perry insists that the album, along with its lead single, is HER mantra, then why did she have so many male co-writers on the single alone, and why did she have a male director for the music video?

If we were to compare the situations, then we could compare it to Blake Lively using the music of Alexa Nikolas’s ex-husband, the one who groomed and abused her, in her movie where her character gets abused by her husband, ‘It Ends With Us, a movie which she also produced and represented. And what both Katy Perry and Blake Lively need to do from this moment on is learn. They need to learn from those who are going through the motions of sexual trauma. They both have ways to do that. They both have people close to them around for them to learn from.

It’s not even the fact that they’re helping them abusers with their livelihood that’s the problem. But instead, it’s that they’re working with them in the first place. By supporting someone who’s been an abuser you’re practically saying to the world, ‘I’m okay with abuse of any kind.’ And that’s exactly what Katy Perry made clear by working with Dr. Luke. She and Blake Lively have one thing in common, and it’s that they just take sexual trauma lightly. They hadn’t been through such trauma themselves. Therefore, they don’t even think how their association with an abuser will affect those around them.

Being friends with someone that associates themselves can be tricky. On one hand, they can seem like very nice, good people. On the other hand, you’re always wondering what the deal is. It’s almost like you’re friends with a two-face fake. You never know what the other person that’s beside you is thinking. You never know what’s on their mind. You never know if they could be trusted. With that said, I’d be thinking twice, if not three times, about being friends with someone like Katy Perry if I were Kesha. Now don’t get me wrong, not everyone is as toxic and pernicious as my former friend. And not everyone has malicious intentions. And maybe Katy Perry and Blake Lively never had malicious intentions either. Instead, it’s that being friends with people such as Katy Perry and Blake Lively can derail your entire journey to healing from your sexual trauma. I know it derailed my own journey. I just wouldn’t want it to happen to you. It took me years to finally feel like I understand my own trauma. Sometimes I still don’t feel like I have the capacity to fully grasp it. All any of us can ever do is hope we have good people around us; people that are good for us.

If you know someone who’s associating themselves with an abuser, and you’re a sexual trauma survivor, just know that the person in question might not be a bad person; just a clueless, and maybe even an oblivious person. This person won’t understand that depth of your trauma unless it happens to them. With that said, it’s completely up to you whether you want to have them around. You just gotta know exactly when to let go. If that someone starts being in the way of your healing journey…