#QueerLitLoft

Nostalgia has a lot to answer for…

…so does intrigue; the sole reasons for delving into this book.

As a 1990s baby, the 2000s were literally the background to my transition from tween to young adult. And, as it so happens the period of time whereby I finally, and rather abruptly, discovered that I wasn’t so straight after all!

Thus, my interest was piqued; I wanted to see what another, clearly more self aware queer person had to say on the topics of my youth. And what a trip down memory lane it turned out to be.

It’s interesting as someone who didn’t come out until the late 2000s and without access to cable TV, to read the thoughts of someone who not only suspected who they were from a young age, but also had unfettered access to even the most vaguely queer pop culture of the decade. To put this in perspective, I didn’t know of The L Words existence until the end of the entire series!

Whilst The 2000s Made Me Gay is part self-reflection, part pop culture dissection, Perry does acknowledge the pitfalls of the decade; was The L Word as diverse as it could be? No. Did it do real life trans folk any good? Also, no. Did it embrace the multitude of expressions of gender, sexuality, and labels? Surprise, still no. BUT, as Perry points out, it was what the queer community had at the time. Remember this is the decade when Section 28 was still to be repelled, to have any form of somewhat positive representation and queer characters in pop culture even if they were ultimately flawed, was an oasis in a desert for many a queer millennial.

Told across an eclectic mix of essay style chapters covering 2000s pop culture, featuring keystones such as Mean Girls, Harry Potter, Glee, ,Dawson’s Creek and Katie Perry’s ‘I Kissed a Girl’ to name but a few. Throughout, it’s important to bear in mind that the crux of this book is part memoir of a white, young, female lesbian, part coming to terms with your identity as a millennial, and partly a chronicle of how lacking (and oft how dire) any form of lgbtqia+ representation in the media was during this decade.

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