Katy Perry's Idol flirting is treated as a joke, but is it problematic in the #MeToo

[TMC]

...era?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...this-play-out/

Perry ran into some controversy last week for giving contestant Benjamin Glaze his first kiss without permission. But the flirtation didn't stop there. She's been flirtatious with a number of contestants, including an 18-year-old crooner. “Eighteen-year-old girls would eat this up! If a 32-year-old cougar would eat it up," she said. As Emily Yahr notes, Perry may have good intentions, but they seem problematic in this #MeToo era: "Idol producers and the network seem excited to treat Perry’s shtick as a joke. Same with the contestants — but then, do they really have a choice? That gets into the power dynamics issue that the entertainment industry has been forced to confront over the last several months. As a result, it can become more uncomfortable to watch auditions such as the one starring 26-year-old William Casanova: Although he and Perry had an entertaining rapport, he had to retrieve his ticket to Hollywood from between Perry’s toes after she found out that he was a shoe salesman."

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