It's all over the internet, but if you haven't seen it here is the video of Katy Perry tricking a 19 year old boy by kissing him. Just in case you have not seen the video, I have posted it above (please note the video is not my video, and I have no rights to it). I know this may be one of my most controversial posts and I am okay with that because ever since I've seen this video it hasn't settled well with me. I read different articles about this incident and even though Benjamin Glaze was uncomfortable with the Katy Perry kiss, it seems like he is trying to blow it off.
I'm glad Benjamin did not feel worse than just uncomfortable about the situation. However, uncomfortable is not okay. Benjamin had never kissed a girl before because he came from a conservative background. At 19, he had never even dated a girl before. In the United States that is a big deal and quite unusual. He stated in an interview that if Katy would have asked to kiss him, he would have said no because he wanted his first kiss to be special. Here is a link for the story: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/katy-perry-american-idol-witness-kiss-contestant-upset-a8257726.html
The "Me Too" movement is going on as we speak. Names of powerful men in Hollywood are being turned over left and right for sexual misconduct. We forget that women can be guilty of misconduct too. I know plenty of people who would think he was lucky that Katy Perry kissed him, and he should like it. In reality that is what women are told all the time. A few years back, I experienced sexual harassment and I was told, "you should like it, you should take it as a compliment." We have to stop that mentality.
Katy Perry is 33 and Benjamin is now 20, so that means at the time Katy was probably 32. If we turned this around, and it was a 19 year old female saying she had never dated or kissed a guy, and a 32 year old male kissed her, would people look at it differently? We cannot have a double standard to sexual misconduct. Women should not be treated any different when they do something sexually inappropriate.
I think we should all be cautious of what we do, whether we are male or female. I know our world is overly sexualized through music and media, but we cannot let that influence us to make someone else uncomfortable, or worse, victimized. Benjamin could have easily felt victimized. Even though he did not report that he felt like that, it would have been okay if he did. He had something taken away from him that he shouldn't have, and that was his first kiss.
Despite a first kiss being really special, no one should force a kiss on anyone even if it is someone who has kissed hundreds of people. It is so easy to get caught up in the moment of what we want, or think is cool, and sometimes we just need to slow down and think about right and wrong. We have to say no to even the smaller issues like a peck on the lips because we need to draw a clear line with sexual misconduct. To me, it is obvious that society needs to put strong boundaries up on what is sexual misconduct since somehow and somewhere society has blurred those lines with media and unacceptable tolerance.