So This Is What Selena Gomez’s ‘Fetish’ Music Video Is Actually About

Selena Gomez’s video for her hit single “Fetish” isn’t exactly what the name implies. Rather than the whole whips-and-chains—or hey, even kinkier—imagery you might expect to go with the title, Gomez is chowing down on lipstick and glass and throwing a sack of groceries at the wall. We have to admit: When it dropped last week, we, um, had a few questions about it. But now we have answers!

As Dazed Digital pointed out in an article published Friday, “It’s obvious that it’s not a man behind the camera.” In the rest of the article, Gomez and “Fetish” director Petra Collins go on to explain what exactly the music video is about—and why having two women team up on the video made it powerful.

Collins is one of Gomez’s closest friends and contemporaries, and her artistic work both before and in “Fetish” explores the hidden parts of being a woman, according to Dazed—including “the strange reality of bad summer days and private breakdowns.” Where “Fetish” started, though, involved a teddy bear and Chucky.

“Literally we were lying on a teddy bear watching Chucky,” Collins said in Dazed Digital. “At that point, it was clear we are on the same wavelength. It’s still so crazy to me how, when I first heard ‘Fetish,’ I pictured it to the backdrop of horror. It’s one of my favorite genres to make a female look strong.”

Gomez was thrilled about the concept. “I made it very clear to you that I didn’t see ‘Fetish’ how most people know the word at face value,” she said in the piece. “When most people hear the word fetish, they think of S&M and all that sexual shit, but you didn’t. You knew why I loved it. You told me, ‘I think this song is about love, something crazy and complicated.’ I wanted the video to be contextualized.”

Collins wanted to show the “very dirty, gross, and weird love you can have towards someone,” she said.

And as far as that kitchen scene…

“I love the kitchen scene in ‘Fetish’ so much,” Collins said in the Dazed Digital piece. “It’s so rare to see a woman lose control and also gain it back. Women are always told, ‘Oh, be in control of your feelings,’ and a woman is never allowed to express her anger without being demonized as being PMS-y. I love seeing a woman, or a girl, be so physical, (to) let go of all control of her body. It’s not going crazy, it’s going with it, it’s getting final!”

Gomez had fun with it too: “The kitchen scene was so liberating, to lose control of my body and lose sight of myself…. It felt so good. I remember being a little nervous, and when shit hit the wall—I just lost it and left myself in that scene.”

And Gomez is pretty clear about why it made sense for Collins to shoot the video:

“If a guy shot ‘Fetish,’ I bet it would look way more sexual. That’s what I love about how [she] captured my breakdown moments—it’s shown to the viewer as creepy and I honestly think that there are some guys out there who would make those moments more sexy than it was or should be.”

Read more from the insightful conversation over at Dazed Digital. And/or just watch the video on loop a million times because it’s that captivating.

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