I think by this point, everyone has heard t.A.T.u.’s song “All The Things She Said”, thanks to its feature in the popular show, “Heated Rivalry.” This song's inclusion in the show is quite notable because the song is about hidden and secret love between two homosexual women, much like the men in the show.
t.A.T.u. presented itself as two women, Lena Katina and Julia Volkova, who made music while they were genuinely in love. However, their onstage kissing performances were just that--- a performance. The girls were marketed that way to appeal to a growing LGBT audience in Russia following relaxed laws after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russian LGBT fans were upset by t.A.T.u.’s fakeness, seeing themselves represented by the duo. t.A.T.u. would later counter this by saying they were never faking their love and that they believed in love without boundaries. They went on to attend the Moscow Pride march in 2007.
Attending the Moscow Pride demonstration was not just a publicity stunt for Katina and Volkova. The police did not do anything to protect the members of the gay community from various homophobic groups in Russia, resulting in violent confrontations where many members of the LGBT community were seriously injured.
Katina and Volkova would later separate in 2011 following personal disputes and desire to pursue personal projects. The two went their separate ways not only musically, but culturally, as well.
Katina did small solo projects and remained relatively uncontroversial while still being straight. In 2012, she performed at Queerfest in St. Petersburg saying, “We all are very different people and we should celebrate our differences. We should not be silent when we see this intolerant aggression towards [the] LGBT-community”. This was important because it marked one of the first times a Russian artist would openly support this community on such a large stage. Volkova would later say controversial things about the community and Katina responded with, “Love is love and it is a wonderful feeling! I think everybody should be free to love who they love and be with whom they want to spend their life with!”. She remains supportive of the community to this day.
Volkova, on the other hand, is much more controversial. Volkova has come out as bisexual and has openly dated women in the past, though she is now married to a man. The controversy would emerge when she participated in a Ukrainian TV show in 2014 and was asked if she would disown her son for being gay. She said, “Yes, I would condemn him because I believe that a real man must be a real man...a man has no right to be [gay]”. This sparked controversy for obvious reasons. She responded by saying, “two girls together—not the same thing as two men together. It seems to me that lesbians look aesthetically much nicer”. In an attempt to salvage her reputation, she said that being gay was better than being a murderer or a thief.
Other Volkova facts: She converted to Islam in 2010 and later switched back to Eastern Orthodoxy in 2017. In 2021, she unsuccessfully ran for political office, trying to represent Putin's United Russia party. Her run for political office was odd because she has never been politically outspoken, but running under Putin’s party as a way to get into the Duma said a lot about her political views.
Volkova and Katina are now touring again in parts of Latin America and various Russophile countries.
Big fan of things