I’ll admit, I just became aware of Dove Cameron earlier this year. She’s a 26-year-old mostly Disney actress, who is making the transition over to more adult roles and a singing career. I like the songs of hers I’ve heard and think she has an interesting look. She kind of reminds me of an edgier Miranda Kerr. If her song “Boyfriend” didn’t tip people off, Dove identifies as a queer woman and actually came out in 2020. She says she’s changed up her look since then to include more masculine and androgynous styles, while before she was performing femininity.
Time is of the essence, and Dove Cameron is committed to making every second count.
It’s been an eventful year for the Best New Artist of 2022. In March, the singer released her single “Boyfriend,” a sultry queer anthem that would secure the No.42 spot on Billboard’s Hot 100 (and, not to mention, go viral on TikTok). She was a guest judge on VH1’s Rupaul’s Drag Race and most recently dropped the politically inspired music video for her song “Breakfast.”
Cameron has also fully embraced her identity as a queer woman since coming out in 2020, and that’s something she hopes has translated through her fashion choices, specifically the two looks she wore on the VMA stage and red carpet this year.
“It’s always been a huge part of my true expression to be super masculine meets feminine,” the lyricist says of her aesthetic. “I definitely love androgyny that I didn’t let myself explore before. I was doing a lot of performative femininity when I was younger that was very trapping and very diminishing.”
Cameron admits that, in years past, she made a conscious effort not to take up space on the red carpet.
“If you look at pictures of me from when I was younger when I was on red carpets, there’s like no one home behind the eyes. It’s very pained, very much like I’m just trying to be the smallest, happiest, sweetest, most uneventful person there.”
But not this year.
No, this year, the only performance Cameron put on this year was her VMA pre-show concert. “I’m hoping to have this be sort of a starting point for me expressing myself as the artist that I feel that I am now,” says the artist. In order to do just that, Cameron says she asked herself questions like, “What makes me feel like me? What makes me feel my most expressed? What makes me feel my most excited?” The answer: Challenging traditional gender norms and combining masculine and feminine energies.
It sounds like coming out about about her queerness has inspired Dove to dress and express herself in a way that is more true to how she really feels. When she was younger, she performed femininity to try to fit in and she felt it trapped and diminished her. Which makes perfect sense — not being able to be yourself or even just look how you want is completely suffocating and feels uncomfortable and weird. It’s very freeing to be able to be yourself and lightens a person’s energy overall. I can relate to what Dove says in a lower stakes way. When I was younger, I also dressed to perform a certain look, wearing baby blue and pink because I was a cheerleader and my friends were basically The Plastics. But I don’t really like pink and anyone who actually knows me would say I don’t have a pink or even a rose gold personality. I have a prickly green personality and now I don’t even have a single pink article of clothing! Anyway, there’s no one way to be a woman and Dove’s look is cool.
Photos credit: Avalon.red and via Instagram
I’ve also only become aware of her recently but between her recent Instagram post about what sounds like severe body dysmorphia and her new song/video, I’m rooting for her.
I’m excited to hear she has a song talking about this. I recall watching a video last year about all of the cosmetic surgery she’s had done, and it was pretty clear from the amount of work and the age she had it done at that there was body dysmorphia or other type of mental health issues at play. I’m glad she seems to be working on this and is learning to be more comfortable in her own skin.
Also, everyone should go watch the video for her song for Breakfast- It’s a sort of gender-swapped play on the culture of the 50s and ’60s, and seems to be a reaction to the Supreme courts overturn of Roe.
@SAS this is what came to my mind. Great that she is finding her look, but her face looks radically changed. The nose, cheekbones, hairline…it could just be aging, new hair color and some weight loss, or more serious like you said.
That makes sense. I have kids who adored her on Descendents, and I like her music and style but have noticed the facial changes with some reservations since she has always been gorgeous. I hope she has the right support systems–it’s got to be incredibly stressful to be in the public eye with all focus on your appearance from such a young age.
She actually started getting plastic surgery at age 13, before she even got her role in The Descendants. Disturbing messaging for a child – that she needed surgery to be ‘good enough.’ No wonder she ended up with body dysmorphia.
I just watched Dr. Gary Linkov’s video about her on YouTube. She has had a lot of work done for such a beautiful young woman. 🙁
On a different note, I recently watched the BJ Novak movie, Vengeance, and she and Boyd Holbrook were the best things about it. They were hilarious.
I’ve got a 16 year old daughter, so I’ve basically watched Dove Campbell grow up, starting with “Liv and Maddie” and then “The Descendants.” She was always more compelling than your average teen Disney actress, though I’ll admit, “Boyfriend” caught me off guard because it was a lot more interesting and an all around better song than I expected from her. It will be interesting to see where her career goes – she’s talented and I’m glad she’s living authentically now.
I have several relatives who are extraordinarily attractive in ways that align with societal standards. Observing their journeys through the world, I’ve noticed that things often tend to go one of two ways – either they really get into the goodies and accolades that unearned pretty privilege grants them and shrink themselves (or don’t grow themselves) so as to not threaten the status quo.
Or they recognize that appearance is a fluke (and a fading one at that) and the pretty privilege goodies aren’t worth the demands and expectations that come with them, and they become very experimental with their looks, their identities and the stories that they choose to live in the world.
Dove’s story reminds me of all of that and I hope her reclamation of herself sticks and just gets stronger and deeper. Fame and the hustle make it really easy to lose yourself. Especially when you start as a kid.
She is absolutely wonderful on Schmigadoon! What a talent.
She looks like Sofia Carson at a first glance. Wow. I am glad she’s finding herself
I had to watch “The Descendants” with my friend’s kids, and it is actually not terrible. I thought the idea of the children of the villains and heroes all going to high school together was an interesting concept (that being said, I don’t ever need to watch it again haha). It reminded me of an anecdote I heard in a Foo Fighters interview last year about how the feud between the guys in Guns N Roses and Nirvana finally essentially fizzled out when several of them were having to show up at the same school functions for their children.
I wish her well. It’s still a hard world for openly queer people.
I believe a lot of self proclaimed feminists in Hollywood indulge in performance feminism. They will book a magazine cover to discuss their feminism and then go ahead and work with any critically acclaimed creep that offers them a job.
“When I was younger I performed feminity, now I perform androgyny 😊”. I’m sorry if I sound like a cynic, but whenever I see this full-face-face-of-make-up “androgyny” that basically boils down to sometimes wearing a baggy suit jacket over naked skin, I despair a little. Is the bar really that low? Shouldn’t we strive to just kiss this notion that women have to be beautiful and that that can never happen with a bare face goodbye? I’m glad she feels happier in the slightly more comfortable if exactly as complicated clothes, but I fail to see why dressing in any way other than a barbie doll automatically gets called queer expression. And as mentioned above, I would be so much happier for her, if I didn’t know from personal experience that “androgyny” is a great way to hide even worse body dysmorphia.
Androgyny absolutely can include makeup. It doesn’t have to be some subset of masculinity with only mens clothes and no makeup on a woman’s body. It can cover all genders and be expressed in many different ways.
That may be, but I’m describing what she does, the way she interprets it is the common way to do it, maybe even the only accepted and praised way for women. It keeps her in pretty make-up and clothes that haven’t really been associated only with men since the 1920s. Hence my comment on it being another performance, it’s another accepted and desired form of presentation. Again, I’m glad she feels happier this way, but I once again wonder why the bar is at this level.
Definitely. For men KPop artists and David Bowie come to mind. Grace Jones for women.
Though I do agree with some of your points Gemma. It seems like a lot of former Disney and child actors try to rebrand themselves as ‘edgy’ to escape the label (see also Miley, Demi, Sophia Carson etc).
She is stunning and I like all her looks. But can anybody explain what’s going on in the Instagram? Is that another body draped over hers? Or what?
Can someone please explain the bottom photo to me? Is the white skirt her actual body and the black skirt and metallic bra going off to the side some fake add on? Seems that way based on the placement of her hands, but I’m not 100% sure. I feel like I’m looking at an optical illusion but I can’t see it correctly!
The black skirt is her actual body. The white part is a long shirt or part of the black jacket that is pushed out behind her with her hands. Her body is arched slightly as well.