Shawn Adeli | High Heels / 2021 [music video]

questioning gender

by Douglas Messerli

 

John Duff (singer and composer), Shawn Adeli (director) High Heels / 2021 [3.35 minutes] [music video]

 

US singer John Duff has long featured in his music the concept of flexible sexuality, having been targeted for being targeted as a young man as being gay and bullied through high school.

     Actually, Duff reports that today that sexual "I'm on a journey...I've been really curious about my sexuality lately. Really confused, but not any sort of crisis. I'm at peace with it...So, I'm not gay. I'm not bi. I'm not straight. I'm not asexual. I don't even know anymore. I'm just living. Boxes are stupid."

    And clearly in a work such as “High Heels,” Duff is quite ready to explore his feminine side:

 

If I flexed my arms

Then I could hold you like a man

 

But do you think a man

Could ever hold you like a mother can?

 

Call me mom

I take the love

I’ll take it on my lips

My tongue

I’ll breathe it

keep it in my lungs

Hey - I cant get enough

I’ll call you dad

You call me mom

We’ll call it love

If I looked the way that I feel

I’d be wearing high heels

Cause you’ve got me feeling like a lady

If I looked the way that I feel

I’d be wearing high heels

Cause you’ve got me feeling elevated

I’m lifted, baby

 

    Throughout this rather campy video, Duff is featured in an intense montage of shifting images, many of them upside down since the song is obviously about gender reversal. He’s seen wearing sequined bodies, a fluffy pink half-sweater and appears in numerous other female items of apparel despite barring his hairy chest, beard, moustache, and buff masculine body. Some scenes might even remind a queer audience of James Bidgood’s Pink Narcissus.

    Director Shawn Adeli perfectly captures the lyrics and feeling of the song written by John Duff, Anil Sebastian, Max Bergå, Scott McFarnon, and featuring the lyric vocalizations of Lillias White.

Duff also was responsible for the creative direction and styling.

Los Angeles, March 9, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2025).