Hey pal! Welcome back! I hope you’re making progress in figuring out your identity, in whatever way is helpful and convenient for you. I want to use this week’s post to talk about representation, especially in honor of this month being LGBT History Month!
What do I mean by representation in this context? I mean when other people like you and me are shown in the media, whether that’s through entertainment on screen, works of literature, academics, or the news. How often are we taught about the past accomplishments of straight cisgender white men in academics? How often do we consume entertainment through this cishet white male gaze? The answer to both of these questions is far too often!
When I’m learning about Oscar Wilde, James Baldwin, Alexander Hamilton, Rachel Carson, or Sally Ride (just as a few examples), I want to be made aware of their identities so that I have people to relate to and look up to. Many young people often struggle to see themselves represented in the fields they are considering pursuing, which often ends up becoming a source of discouragement. As a note, this applies for many factors of identity including race, sexuality, and gender. We need to be able to hear more about news and accomplishments related to a wide range of people in the LGBTQIA+ community, without getting backlash from those who claim we are pushing a certain agenda on society.
Representation is so so so important! I can’t stress that enough. Especially when it comes to school, workplaces, or various other settings, it can make you feel welcomed, included, and accepted. In relation to entertainment, it can help you finally feel seen and understood. And that feels unexpectedly great.
So, where can you go to find representation? If you’re looking to learn more about historical icons who weren’t actually straight, I recommend checking out the new series on BuzzFeedVideo’s YouTube channel. There aren’t too many episodes out yet, but they’ve been great so far!
TV shows and movies are getting better with LGBTQIA+ representation, but they’re far from exceptional. Most of the time, queer characters are portrayed in stereotypical ways that don’t do any good for the LGBTQIA+ community. They often exist in shows or movies with the focus on their struggles of being gay, figuring out their identity, and coming out. While it can be good to have SOME representation of this sort (Love, Simon and Love, Victor for example), we don’t need all of our representation to be in the form of lessons about being queer or having loved ones come out to us as queer.
All that I want (and all that MANY queer people want) is to have LGBTQIA+ representation on screen with characters just existing as queer in normal situations. The focus should not be their queerness, which makes it seem out of place. Their coming out story doesn’t need to be highlighted. They just need to exist on screen where we can see them presented as regular people who are widely accepted by other characters as being normal. If there is a queer couple, their queerness doesn’t need to be specifically discussed or pointed out. They just need to be there for us to see, and to feel seen. Many authors are great at showing this kind of representation in their novels, but shows and movies still have a pretty long way to go to reach that level.
Three of my favorite shows with ACTUALLY GOOD representation are Genera+ion, Lucifer, and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. In all of these shows, the queer representation is as I just described. The queer characters are just there, complex not only because of their sexuality, and not viewed by other characters as anything outside of normal. I think I might focus on at least one of these in a future post if you’d like to read more about why they’re so amazing and why I love them so much. Genera+ion in particular has a special place in my heart. You should definitely check it out!
To wrap things up, I encourage you to look for some shows or movies with LGBTQIA+ representation and add them to your watchlist. Just seeing other characters to which you can relate can help so much as you continue to figure out your identity, especially in helping you become more comfortable and confident in yourself. Also don’t forget to celebrate LGBT History Month by learning about some important queer people, whether they help you see other like you in your perspective field of study, or if they helped create the major changes in society that led to the more widespread acceptance that exists today, or something totally different!
Explore, learn something new, and have fun! I love you and I’m proud of you! Hopefully, I’ll see you back here next week.
With love,
PJ <3
(any pronouns)
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