Trans rights are under attack. Kim Petras fights back with more pop bangers about sex
LOS ANGELES — Kim Petras was already an old friend and collaborator of Paris Hilton's when the pop singer put in a surprise appearance at Hilton's first-ever concert this month at the Fonda Theatre in Hollywood.
In 2017, Hilton made a cameo in the music video for Petras' breakout single, "I Don't Want It at All," in which Petras sings about happily auditioning for a sugar daddy; four years later, Petras sang at Hilton's wedding to investor Carter Reum in a performance captured for posterity as part of Hilton's reality TV show "Paris in Love."
But as she sat backstage at the Fonda before joining the world's most famous heiress for a romp through Hilton's "Stars Are Blind" — a glittery early-2000s camp classic that had the two twirling for an audience of gay men celebrating Pride month — Petras, 30, still couldn't quite believe that she'd gotten close with the woman she idolized as a transgender girl growing up in Germany. (The "I Don't Want It at All" video opens with Petras kneeling at a makeshift shrine to Hilton.)
"I've shown Paris pictures of me standing in front of Paris Hilton posters in my bedroom as a kid," Petras said. "'Stars Are Blind' means so much to me. It reminds me of when I was finding myself."
That Hilton would call on Petras to help close her live" reached No. 1 on Billboard's Hot 100, making her the first openly trans person (and Smith the first openly nonbinary person) to top the music industry's preeminent singles chart. In February, no less an icon than Madonna introduced a fiery, red-leather-bedecked rendition of "Unholy" at the Grammy Awards, where Petras and Smith went on to win the award for pop duo/group performance. And last month Petras appeared in a gold bikini on the cover of , a gig that involved a trip on a private plane with the magazine's other models, including 81-year-old Martha Stewart.
