At first glance, Lorde’s new album title, Virgin, is a bit of a head-scratcher. In modern parlance, “virgin” refers to somebody who’s never had sex. But in a series of screenshots posted to her Instagram story, the indie pop icon hinted at her intentions for the title.
Not long after announcing her long-awaited album’s title, Lorde posted screenshots of a 2021 article by writer and public health expert Kristine Shields, all about how the meaning of “virgin” has shifted over time.
Lorde shared two passages from the article, the first being about “virgin” as referring to an independent woman. “The word ‘virgin,’ some say, was derived from a Greek word that meant ‘not attached to a man,’ a woman who was ‘one-in-herself,’” Shields wrote.
The second passage spoke to “virgin” as referring to androgynous, nonbinary, or intersex people. “There is also evidence that the word ‘virgin’ derived from the combination of the Latin words ‘vir-‘ (for man, as in ‘virile’) and ‘-gyne’ (for woman, as in gynecology) — a man-woman or androgynous person,” per Shields.
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That’s not Lorde’s only recent reference to gender outside the binary. In an interview with Document Journal, she shared the inspiration for her single “What Was That.”
“It was the first music of my rebirth that had come out of me,” Lorde said. “I had come back from London to New York after this period of great turbulence in my personal life. Becoming single, but also really facing my body stuff head-on, and starting to feel my gender broadening a little bit.”
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“When a peer throws the gauntlet down like that, you’re like ‘OK, yeah, we’ve gotta pick it up,’” Lorde said in a recent interview.
“I’m just like, ‘Why are you affected by someone else’s sexual preference?’” Beer wondered in a new interview.
Lorde also spoke to the album’s connection to gender in a release, as shared by Billboard: “I WAS TRYING TO MAKE A DOCUMENT THAT REFLECTED MY FEMININITY: RAW, PRIMAL, INNOCENT, ELEGANT, OPENHEARTED, SPIRITUAL, MASC.”
That reference to Lorde’s “masc” femininity has the queer internet’s head spinning. Of course, if Lorde is anything other than a cis woman, it’s her prerogative to come out on her own terms, and fans should be careful to keep their speculation from crossing out of playful and into invasive. Regardless, it sounds like Virgin will have themes that speak directly to trans folks and anyone else who’s looked at their own gender under a microscope. In other words, we’ll absolutely be streaming.
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