Padam, passwords and Polari
But whatever form “padam” takes and however it’s used, both experts mention that the word’s signposting of queer identity connects 2023’s padamania to a much longer queer history. In the past, queer people have historically communicated in secret languages in order to recognise one another in public and to signpost their LGBTQIA+ identity without detection. In the UK, this language took the form of Polari: a subcultural dialect which incorporated words from various romance languages, Romani and Yiddish, and was mostly used among gay men. To this day, Polari words like “camp”, “naff” and “bevvy” are all still used and in the Philippines the queer dialect Swardspeak is still used.
But in the UK, legal and social changes which have led to greater acceptance of the LGBTQIA+ community mean that queer people don’t have to use their own distinct, secret dialect anymore. Yet that doesn’t mean that queer people don’t cultivate their own vocabulary away from cis-het norms. “There isn’t as much need for a completely secret code [like Polari] that you have to learn. However, there is absolutely language that is used in order to signal your membership to a kind of broader queer community,” explains Dr Jones. This is what she terms a “queer lexicon,” by which she means an LGBTQIA+ vocabulary or set of frequently used words, rather than a more fleshed-out, in-depth queer dialect or language such as Polari.
LGBTQIA+ pop culture and the queer lexicon
Rather than words which you pick up in education or via a dictionary, our queer lexicon is developed through more informal means – mostly spending time in the community or consuming queer media. “It’s very common for people who spend time within the queer scene, with other queer people or engaging with queer media to pick up on language that is used. You might see people use, for example, a lot of words and phrases from things like RuPaul’s Drag Race whereas, in the past, terms from The L Word or Queer as Folk might have been used,” she explains.
As Kylie fan and pop culture journalist Alim Kheraj explains, queer media is key for developing the language we use in our social circles – though often queer media is lifting from real LGTBQIA+ life. “There is a sense of a uniquely queer language, which is often taken from media. I think [media and language] inform each other although I’m sure that queer media, because it’s made by queer people, takes things from queer people,” he explains. “I do think it’s hard to tell what might make its way into queer lexicon. I think Padam’s addition felt natural just because of who the song is by and how fun it is.”
For Baker, the success of “padam” – both the word and the song it references – is partly due to the way it harks back to an earlier song by Edith Piaf, herself a queer icon, and is inextricable from the ways Kylie has been queer-coded and claimed by LGBTQIA+ folk. “Kylie has had a huge gay following for what feels like several centuries, she still looks the same as she did in the 1990s, and she is almost universally loved, so anything she says, wears or does will instantly be embraced by her fans,” he explains. This is something which Joseph, who runs the Kylie Minogue fan account Minogue Updates, echoes. “Kylie is an LGBTQIA+ icon,” he says over DM. “Her music connects to the community.”
Dr Jodie Taylor, a musicologist and the author of Playing It Queer, explains that the history of queer stans revering pop divas like Kylie has a more illustrious lineage than we might realise. “The diva is a huge part of music culture – she’s a gay icon though she might not serve the same role for lesbians or bisexual people as she might do for gay men,” she explains. “The diva is a symbol which gay men can project themselves onto. Historically, in gay culture of the 19th and 18th centuries, men worshipped opera divas, just as people worship pop divas today. It becomes a symbolic kind of projection of an imagined esteem that gay men didn’t have.”
While the opera divas of old might not have been able to publicly acknowledge and celebrate their queer fanbases, the relationship between diva and fan is now much more reciprocal – the padam flames have no doubt been fanned by Kylie chiming in on the vast quantity of internet talk and memes, telling fans to “keep them coming”. “The relationship between gay fan bases and divas is now totally mutual and something that serves both the performer and the audience,” Taylor explains. While the benefits for pop divas cultivating and recognising a queer fanbase are obvious – concert ticket sales, streams, coordinated social media adoration, I could go on – for queer fans, it can be repaid with acts of allyship or advocacy from pop divas on behalf of the community or prioritising queer-centred performances at events like Pride.