Apparently, the #MeToo spaz-out that we’ve all been witness to over the past 6 months only applies to men. Then again, I guess you people probably already knew that. Take a look at this New York Times hit about Katy Perry and the sexual assault she carried out on television this past weekend.

When Benjamin Glaze, at the time a 19-year-old cashier from Enid, Okla., auditioned for “American Idol,” he had hoped his big moment would come as he belted out “Stadium,” a song he wrote himself. That or Nick Jonas’s 2015 single “Levels.”

Instead, it came when the popstar Katy Perry, a judge on the show, surprised him by kissing him smack on the lips, moments before his audition. He had never been kissed before.

”I was a tad bit uncomfortable,” Mr. Glaze said by phone this week, after the incident aired on the season premiere. His first kiss was a rite of passage he had been putting off with consideration. “I wanted to save it for my first relationship,” he said. “I wanted it to be special.”…

“Have you kissed a girl and liked it?” asked [Luke] Bryan, making a coy reference to Ms. Perry’s first hit single, “I Kissed A Girl.” Mr. Glaze said that he had not. “I have never been in a relationship and I can’t kiss a girl without being in a relationship.”

At that, Ms. Perry stood up. “Come here,” she said to Mr. Glaze. “Come here right now.”

Ms. Perry motioned for him to come over to the judges’ table and stuck her face toward him. “One on the cheek?” he said and she smiled. He quickly touched his face to her cheek. She asked for another kiss, complaining that he hadn’t even made the “smush sound.” As he moved toward her cheek again, Ms. Perry swung her face toward him and kissed him quickly on the lips. “Katy!” he yelled, as he stumbled backward. “You didn’t!” Ms. Perry raised her arms in victory.

The article goes on to note that Mr. Glaze, who was raised in a “conservative family,”  bombed his audition right after this harassment. That didn’t stop ABC from using this image in promos and online hype in anticipation of the premier.

I wonder what the response would have been if a male judge had decided to kiss a nubile young woman ahead of her audition? I think you all know that the guy would be fired and his whole career would probably be ruined. The media would start pouring over his life and examining past lyrics for signs of a budding sexual deviant. But when Katy Perry does it, it’s cute! Of course, she just got through with stressing out an old nun so bad that she collapsed and died in a California courtroom, so perhaps that has soaked up all the oxygen from this story.

Still, I certainly hope some will pay attention to the blatant double standard on display.

 

MORE: After I got done writing this up, I noticed that Cosmopolitan had actually run a piece both the assault and the fact that she sent the kid home right after taking advantage of him in front of the nation.

https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/a19403977/katy-perry-kiss-american-idol/ 

After he calmed down, he asked for some water before he actually started singing Nick Jonas’s “Levels.” Shortly after he began, the judges stopped him and said he wasn’t ready to move on to the next stage. “I think you were a bit rushed and I think that’s because I sped up your BPM of the heartbeat,” Perry said. Yep, she sent him home even though she admitted his lackluster performance was probably her fault! Savage.

Well, at least he kissed Perry and definitely liked it.