A review by courtneyfalling
The 2000s Made Me Gay: Essays on Pop Culture by Grace Perry

emotional funny hopeful lighthearted fast-paced

4.0

This whole book felt like a comfy hug and gave me nostalgia for my freshman year of college, when I was first really coming into queer friendships, relationships, and community, and doing a lot of it through pop culture! I recognized some of the media discussed, I haven't seen others, and all of the chapters were enjoyable. The tone overall was very "it gets better" on an individual scale and "it's getting better" on a grand, societal scale, which... I agree that millennials have a distinct vantage point and queer representation is becoming quantitatively more common, but liberal rights discourses alone don't make me personally feel like I've had or am having any easier a time coming of age as a currently early-twenties lesbian, and I'm a white, highly femme-presenting person with a comfortable class and education background, this is so much materially worse for folks who experience heightened vulnerability and oppression based on their own multiple marginalizations, especially Black, Latinx, and Indigenous trans women. So.... idk. It was lighthearted, often funny, and cozy as a memoir, and I would recommend it to friends for that comfort, but the analytical frame and place within queer theory and criticism didn't really hold up.
Also, I do want to know if Claire okayed this story... like did she end up coming out years later? Even if not, did she proofread the chapter where she appears to make sure no heavy, unwanted identifying information was present? Did/does she even know this story including her is out there? This comes back to a larger discussion of the ethics of writing nonfiction, in the era of Kidney Girl, but I had to think about this.
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