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A review by criticalgayze
The 2000s Made Me Gay: Essays on Pop Culture by Grace Perry
funny
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
While the writing in this book was a little more mid-tier pop culture blog than is my personal taste, as a fellow Queer millennial, I found the subject matter Perry dove into to be VERY relatable. Finding someone spotlighting and validating so many of my own cultural touchstones, like "Glee!" and the "Dumbledore is gay" scandal of the aughts, was akin to the way cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib elevates "scene" music in his collection They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us. Even when Perry is talking about a property that I didn't engage with as a kid ("Gossip Girl" and "The L Word"), I was almost always able to substitute in my feelings for a similar property ("Degrassi: TNG," "90210," and "Queer as Folk").
I think this one is a must read for the rest of my Queer millennials with shit to unpack.
Quotes:
Pop culture might be an escape from real life, but I haven't been able to escape pop culture itself. It's glommed onto my psyche, it's shaped my view of myself, my reality, my body, my sexuality, as it has for most people: when we ride the subway in quiet hope for a meet cute, or we huff, frustrated at our hair for not flowing like Harry Styles's, or shame ourselves for not having a large group of hot friends with standing plans at the same bar every Friday night. (11 - 12)
But I think singling out my Catholic ethics class, or those all-school masses, or my CCD classes as the place where I inherited negative ideas about queerness lets the secular world of the 2000s off way too easy. (65)
There are moments when I feel so gay that I've been stripped of any nuance, my defining cracks smoothed such that I am a plastic Easter egg indistinguishable from any other pastel orb in the garden. (82)
That's the thing about being a queer millennial: it's not about things getting better in any linear fashion but holding a painful past and an optimistic future together, one in each hand, at the same time. (227)
I think this one is a must read for the rest of my Queer millennials with shit to unpack.
Quotes:
Pop culture might be an escape from real life, but I haven't been able to escape pop culture itself. It's glommed onto my psyche, it's shaped my view of myself, my reality, my body, my sexuality, as it has for most people: when we ride the subway in quiet hope for a meet cute, or we huff, frustrated at our hair for not flowing like Harry Styles's, or shame ourselves for not having a large group of hot friends with standing plans at the same bar every Friday night. (11 - 12)
But I think singling out my Catholic ethics class, or those all-school masses, or my CCD classes as the place where I inherited negative ideas about queerness lets the secular world of the 2000s off way too easy. (65)
There are moments when I feel so gay that I've been stripped of any nuance, my defining cracks smoothed such that I am a plastic Easter egg indistinguishable from any other pastel orb in the garden. (82)
That's the thing about being a queer millennial: it's not about things getting better in any linear fashion but holding a painful past and an optimistic future together, one in each hand, at the same time. (227)
Content Warnings
Moderate: Homophobia, Cancer, and Lesbophobia