Say Goodbye to the Many Alter Egos of Kim Petras
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Kim Petras has a PhD in pop star. And like most advanced degrees, it came with work, years of ideating and innovating her sound, her performances, and her persona.
Well, personas—plural—because there have been eight (8!) since the 31-year-old started all this at age 19. And now, after a year that included a Grammy win and 24.5 million monthly Spotify listeners, the dance-pop phenom—famous for her up-tempo tracks and tongue-in-cheek lyrics—seems to be evolving again.
I’m currently looking at who I’ll call Downtime Kim, curled up on a brown couch in her Los Angeles home. Sweats casual and eyebrows immaculate, she’s talking with her hands, complimenting my mascara, and reminiscing on how she got here, how she earned this next role.
“I’m always looking to free myself of things,” she says. “I think that’s where the alter egos came from. You can tell a lot about me by looking at the characters I made up.”
The first, L.A. Kim, was maybe the hardest to fully realize. She was like a pop-ified version of Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz if Dorothy were a German immigrant who was weaned on ’90s Britney, moved to the U.S. as a teenager, and began spitting out EDM music. (The rumor mill even claims Kim learned English by watching Britney Spears’ music videos, but that’s only half true. “I knew how to record on VHS, and I’d rewind her back to watch again and study what she would say. I’d write her words down until I got to English in school, and that helped me understand her.”) Kim’s version of Kansas—Uckerath, Germany, a rural village awash in greenery—was nothing like she wished it were, so she would spend hours imagining otherwise.
“I would fantasize. I’d watch The Simple Life and shows about L.A. like 90210 and The O.C. and say, ‘If only my life were that exciting,’” she remembers. “I was re-creating this person I think I would’ve been had I just been born in the U.S. and lived in L.A. and everything got handed to me.” (Years later, The Simple Life star Paris Hilton—“one of my first believers”—starred in Kim’s first-ever music video. “She said, ‘You? You’re going to do things,’” recalls Kim.) L.A. Kim was an irritable California brat, perfect for performing songs like the bubblegum sugar-baby anthem “I Don’t Want It at All.”
From there, the Kim Petras Character Universe expanded like Marvel. There was Failed Artist Kim on her mixtape Clarity, where she imagined crashing and burning as a way to cope with the inherent risks of her profession. Sociopathic Killer Kim came with Turn Off the Light, and French Language Kim emerged on the album Problématique, a quarantine project inspired by a 23andMe test showing beaucoup de French ancestry. Slut Pop Kim, an alter ego who channeled so much sex positivity that the artist began to feel it offstage too, was a true personal breakthrough.
“She is the Kim who’s not afraid of anything sexual and really not ashamed of her body and really not limiting herself,” says Kim. “That’s something I aspire to be. For me, growing up trans, all of that has been a big deal. Am I supposed to feel hot? Does anyone think I’m hot? ‘No, you’re the weird school freak’ is buried into you if you’re a trans kid.” Her childhood also featured a lot of adults talking about her body (when she was 16, the Daily Mail declared her “the world’s youngest transsexual”). Slut Pop Kim was a chance for Kim to be in the limelight on her own terms. “It felt freeing for me to talk about sex as if I never struggled with it,” she says.
That process led to Strip Club Hottie Kim and the artist’s most iconic song, “Unholy” with Sam Smith. And finally, in 2023, Feed the Beast, Kim’s first mainstream record with a major label, the title borne of her desire to chase bigger dreams, bigger shows, bigger everything. “I was struggling with myself,” she says. “Is my ambition a beast? Is my ambition what’s wrong with me? That’s the character for Feed the Beast, the little lady who gets fed to King Kong.”
This ambitious version of Kim won big, in music-world terms, at least. She went on a world tour; netted dream collabs with Nicki Minaj, David Guetta, and City Girls; hit more than 1 billion listeners on Spotify; and secured that Grammy (for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance for “Unholy”), becoming the first out transgender artist to win a major category.
All of which is how we’ve arrived at Downtime Kim, someone who’s thinking very critically about her path forward and whether that will involve an alter ego at all. “I want to let you in to the darker moments of my life,” she says. “My childhood felt very hopeless. I felt so outside of society and so made into an object because my identity was constantly talked about. It felt like I had to deal with a lot of things that kids don’t have to deal with until they’re much older. Now, I see the beauty in the darkness. And so for my future project, I’m going to try to talk about that.”
The specifics of said project are still thoughtfully guarded. Kim is indeed back in the studio but won’t reveal much beyond that she’s in “an experimenting phase.” Whether that experimenting results in more club-ready, soundtrack-to-your-nights-out pop or something totally different remains to be seen. “I have a lot of depth that I’ve never expressed,” says Kim Petras, PhD. “And now it’s time to do it.”
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On the cover: LaQuan Smith trench coat and jumpsuit. Shay earrings. David Yurman ring (middle). Mattia Cielo ring (index).
Lead image: Atelier Biser jacket. Shay earrings.
Stylist: Cassie Anderson. Hair: Iggy Rosales at Forward Artists. Makeup: Gilbert Soliz at Forward Artists using MAC Cosmetics. Manicure: Elizabeth Garcia using Gucci Beauty in Crystal Black and Annabel Rose. Set design: Bette Adams at MHS Artists. Production: Crawford & Co Productions.
Executive producer: Abbey Adkison. Director of photography: Darren Kho. Camera assistant: Eric Wann. Sound: Michael Rich. Editing: Sarah Ng.
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