Katy Perry: Yes, I really kissed a girl
Katy Perry opens up about kissing girls and her Christian upbringing in the June issue of Vanity Fair.
In the interview, the quirky singer, who became a household name with her 2008 hit "I Kissed a Girl," admits that she's indeed had same-sex smooches but didn't discuss it until now because she felt her male interviewers were sleazy.
"I said no, I hadn’t experienced it, even though I had, because I didn’t like where the guys were taking the interviews," she explains.
Perry, the daughter of evangelical Christian ministers, also says that she was raised in a very "non-accepting" family and didn't have a childhood. Besides only being allowed to read the Bible, she was banned from saying the words "deviled eggs" and "Dirt Devil."
“Growing up, seeing Planned Parenthood, it was considered like the abortion clinic,” she says. “I was always scared I was going to get bombed when I was there…. I didn’t know it was more than that, that it was for women and their needs. I didn’t have insurance, so I went there and I learned about birth control.”
Now, she says she's more "open to possibility."
“I have always been the kid who’s asked ‘Why?’ In my faith, you’re just supposed to have faith. But I was always like…why?” Perry tells VF. “At this point, I’m just kind of a drifter. …My sponge is so big and wide and I’m soaking everything up and my mind has been radically expanded. Just being around different cultures and people and their opinions and perspectives.”
Including her husband, Brit actor and comedian Russell Brand, who Perry married in October of last year. (The couple opted not to sell photos of their wedding despite the fact that they were offered "millions of dollars" for them, she reveals.)
“Russell is into Hinduism, and I’m not [really] involved in it," she says. "He meditates in the morning and the evening; I’m starting to do it more because it really centers me. [But] I just let him be him, and he lets me be me.” Brand, she adds, has “never lied to me once. I trust him; there’s just a level of trust that we’ve built up.”
Though Perry has left her born-again upbringing behind, she still remains close to her parents.
“I think sometimes when children grow up, their parents grow up,” she tells the magazine. “Mine grew up with me. We coexist. I don’t try to change them anymore, and I don’t think they try to change me. We agree to disagree. They’re excited about [my success]. They’re happy that things are going well for their three children and that they’re not on drugs. Or in prison.”
