The 2000s Made Me Gay
Essays on Pop Culture
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4.5 • 11 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
From The Onion and Reductress contributor, this collection of essays is a hilarious nostalgic trip through beloved 2000s media, interweaving cultural criticism and personal narrative to examine how a very straight decade forged a very queer woman
A Lambda Literary Award Finalist
"Honest, funny, smart, and illuminating.” —Anna Drezen, co-head writer of SNL
"If you came of age at the intersection of Mean Girls and The L Word: Read this book.” —Sarah Pappalardo, editor in chief and co-founder of Reductress
Today’s gay youth have dozens of queer peer heroes, both fictional and real, but former gay teenager Grace Perry did not have that luxury. Instead, she had to search for queerness in the (largely straight) teen cultural phenomena the aughts had to offer: in Lindsay Lohan’s fall from grace, Gossip Girl, Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl,” country-era Taylor Swift, and Seth Cohen jumping on a coffee cart. And, for better or worse, these touch points shaped her adult identity. She came out on the other side like many millennials did: in her words, gay as hell.
Throw on your Von Dutch hats and join Grace on a journey back through the pop culture moments of the aughts, before the cataclysmic shift in LGBTQ representation and acceptance—a time not so long ago, which many seem to forget.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this laugh-out-loud debut, Reductress contributor Perry blends memoir with cultural criticism to dissect the influence that 2000s-era media had on millions of queer millennials, including herself. "I've had some latent queer beast within me since childhood," she writes, sharing her innocuous thesis that popular media "can shape our responses... to such preexisting gayness." To support this, Perry dives with relish into such films and TV shows as The Real World, Harry Potter, and Mean Girls, combing each for relevance to her own muddled path toward coming out as a lesbian. While a few essays feel a bit rushed, the collection as a whole is greater than its parts; Perry wrings deep pathos from her attachment to tomboyism—as presented by such stars as Hilary Duff (aka Cadet Kelly), in the eponymous Disney Channel Original Movies film—snarks at her teen self's crush on Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge, and observes the jealousy of younger queer people that gay millennials—who "straddle the pre-Glee and post-Glee worlds"—feel in a time "where it's never been easier to be same-sex parents." Perry's casual, off-the-cuff charm and astute analyses mark her as a talented new voice.
