The camera is tight on a close-up of a brown eye looking from left to right. The dance music starts; the camera pans over to the other eye; and then a close-up of the famous red lips is in front of the camera—parted before they purse into an mmhmmm. The camera zooms out to reveal more of Whitney Houston’s face as she sets with mood with atmospheric yeahs. Soon we see Whitney rocking a short shag, brown leather jacket, ripped jeans, and a single dangling cross earring. She smiles and sings, stepping into the mirror throughout in order to emerge as someone else—a Marlene Dietrich white-pants–suited type, a Supremes type replete with sequin minidress and frosted lipstick, and a gamine Audrey Hepburn type in a slim black turtleneck, black ankle-length pants, and white socks. In each of these scenes, Whitney dances and smiles. At the end of the video, she takes off on a motorcycle.

Featuring an array of Black people of a range of skin tones and gender orientations, Janelle Monáe’s “Lipstick Lover” video registers as a celebration of black queerness; it asserts that freedom comes with orienting toward pleasure. In this article, Musser argues that what distinguishes “Lipstick Lover” is the way that it is haunted by the lesbian. Lesbian appears not necessarily as identity, but as a specific orientation toward pleasure and being in the world that emphasizes the tactile and collective. And notably, in contrast to Monáe’s previous explorations of the future, here the lesbian is grounded in the past—1970s Jamaica, to be precise.