Queerness Finally Goes Viral
How the recent explosion of queer media has impacted college students
—By Muskaan Mittal
The MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist goes to… an openly queer artist, for the third year in a row! As Chappell Roan sweeps the 2024 title, hot on the heels of Ice Spice of 2023 and Dove Cameron of 2022, it seems a queer pop revolution is underway. Billie Eilish’s song “Lunch,” with the hook, “I could eat that girl for lunch,” debuted at #5 on The Billboard Hot 100 and was an instant hit on TikTok and Instagram. Queer television shows such as Heartstopper, Sex Education, and The Ultimatum: Queer Love have found a large audience comprising people of all sexualities—and especially younger folks.
How does the rise of queer media in the mainstream affect queer and straight youth alike? What kinds of representation do we want and need? Are we entering a new era of queer acceptance?
Note: In this article, I use “queer” and “LGBTQ+” interchangeably to refer to people whose identities lie under the LGBTQ+ umbrella. This CNN article explores the history of the term “queer” and its various meanings.
The old and the new
Queer media is not a recent concept; queer artists have existed throughout history. Bryan O’Flinn of the Guardian said of the 2010s, “Gaga did for my generation what [David] Bowie did 20 years earlier. She re-queered a mainstream that had fallen back into heteronormative mundanity.”
So what is different this time? Society.
According to a 2024 University of Chicago study, “While 67% of adults believed that sexual relations between adults of the same sex was always wrong in 1985, today 64% do not see it as an issue.”
Gaga and Bowie are undoubtedly queer icons. But the increase in LGBTQ+ acceptance over the last few decades has changed what pop stars can do. Chappell Roan can now take center stage at Coachella and sing, “She did it right there out on the deck, put her canine teeth in the side of my neck!” to a roaring crowd of admirers.
Joshua Nicholson is a junior studying Urban Technology at the University of Michigan who identifies as bisexual. He says, “There were always queer people involved [in the music industry], even if they weren’t public about it. But now, the industry is no longer telling people they can’t be queer…. Nowadays, queer art is seen as profitable, so you’re not compelled to hide. Chappell Roan can go sing lots of songs about being lesbian and they won’t throw a fuss about it.”
How queer media affects queer viewers
For queer people, media representation can often be integral to understanding their identity.
A 2017 study by Swarthmore undergraduate Isabel Baskin interviewed seven queer women enrolled at the college about the impact of television on their queer journeys. Aly, a queer sophomore from Brooklyn, said she had seen examples of queer women “experimenting in high school…or being 40 years old and being a parent and like, living in like Brooklyn with your partner and wearing your Birkenstocks,” but could not picture what existed in between. Watching Grey’s Anatomy (which includes a long-running romance between characters Callie Torres and Arizona Robbins) allowed her to finally understand “this adult version of what being a queer woman meant, and how that could be a real, tangible thing.”
Juliet Bornholdt is a queer, non-binary student studying Film, Television, and Media at U-M. They were watching the latest season of Heartstopper (a Netflix show about an unexpected romance between two high-school boys) with their roommate when their roommate remarked, “If I were a baby gay watching this, I would’ve realized I was queer a lot sooner.”
Besides providing an understanding of queer identities, media portrayals create a sense of belonging. They allow queer viewers to feel it is okay to be who they are.
Nicholson says, “Queer people, especially younger queer people, benefit from the representation of queer people just existing in a normal state of being. If you’re a young queer person in a small town but then you go on Hulu and see Modern Family—and a gay couple with a kid—that’s gonna be helpful to you.”
How queer media affects straight viewers
WPP’s 2022 Beyond the Rainbow survey spanning the US, UK, and Canada revealed that 85% of non-LGBTQ+ people aged 18-24 actively seek out queer media.
How do straight viewers conceptualize the queer media they consume?
Vrinda Thakur, a U-M junior studying mechanical engineering, identifies as straight and enjoys queer musicians Billie Eilish and Chappell Roan. She says, “I don’t think I’m concerned about their sexuality when I’m consuming their media. But yeah, they happen to be queer and I like it [the art].”
The consumption of queer media by the general population can also help to humanize the queer experience. A 2018 Sexuality & Culture journal study on 150 students of a Serbian university found that watching a movie which depicted gay men positively was related to reduced homophobia.
This seems reasonable. Queer art vividly describes queer experiences; Thakur believes the increased availability of queer art helps people to understand queer experiences better. Where understanding grows, hatred seems to wither. As Nicholson puts it, “People will see queer media, and people will see queerness as normal and not strange.”
Besides providing entertainment and influencing public perceptions, queer media may be changing how straight folks go about their personal lives. Bornholdt says of queer film, “What is it like to think in a queer way, to operate in a queer way? Queer people’s ways of going through relationships are inherently queer and often different—non-monogamy, polyamory. These are bleeding, in a lot of ways, into how a straight relationship might work.”
Is it superficial?
As queer and straight worlds mesh through shared content, does careless consumption slip through the cracks?
Bornholdt expresses concern regarding shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race being viewed “just for entertainment, and without recognizing the histories and the purpose of performance art, what it means for these people and their livelihoods, and how it ties into transness.”
Is it wrong for people to consume media without carefully considering its origins and meaning? Or can entertainment just be entertainment?
A specific phenomenon that has informally been discussed online is that of straight Instagram users posting pictures with their significant other to the audio of a lesbian girl in red song, “girls.”
Thakur, who identifies as straight, doesn’t believe this is an issue. She feels that people often interpret songs in their own ways and relate to them uniquely. Additionally, one may like a song purely for how it sounds and without paying much attention to the lyrics.
Nicholson says, “I don’t think media belongs to a certain set of people. There’s nothing wrong with it being loved and listened to by people who are straight.” He believes that once media is put “out there,” it is free to be consumed by all—including those who do not care for its subtext or the artist’s identity.
Besides, he notes, “people have to listen to a song to make it profitable.” In turn, the profitability of queer media allows for more of it to be produced.
Still, it is understandable why queer folks are protective of the media they hold dear, given that, historically, there was not much of it. Perhaps all released media, queer or otherwise, signs up for the possibility of being “misinterpreted”—or reinterpreted.
In this case, girl in red herself took to X (formerly known as Twitter) to defend her straight listeners, “CAUSE feelings are universal. music doesn’t have a sexuality…. MY BOPS ARE FOR EVERYONE.”
Good representation, bad representation
It’s important to consider not only the presence of queer characters in media but also the nature of these characterizations. Do queer characters get an equal chance to be the hero and the villain? Or are they always relegated to the role of the outcast, or the punchline? Even as we advance our mission of inclusion, who is being left out?
Bornholdt and Nicholson agree that the white gay male experience was the first to be represented in film—often in the form of a sassy, comedic relief character who is best friends with the female lead. An Advocate article spotlights the “Gay Best Friend” trope in film and television, with examples such as Clueless, My Best Friend’s Wedding, and Will and Grace.
After this came the “stereotypical femme-butch [couple] representations,” says Bornholdt. I will abstain from classifying lesbians in media as femme and butch based on hair length alone; however, portrayals of lesbian couples in media include Stud Life, But I’m a Cheerleader, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Arrow.
But queer people hardly consist of these groups alone.
More recently, there’s been a greater variety of queer experiences portrayed on television. Bornholdt highlights the show Sex Education, whose character list includes “[queer] people of color, disabled people, asexual people…which is really cool to see.”
Nicholson commends Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s depiction of gay Captain Raymond Holt as a stoic police captain, breaking the stereotype of the flamboyant gay man. The show’s secretive, clever, bisexual Detective Rosa Diaz also enamored many, especially given the historical lack of bisexual representation in media.
A 2023 thesis paper by Makenna Lambert of Eastern Kentucky University analyzes queer representation in the horror genre. Lambert explains how Bride of Frankenstein (1935) villainized feminine men and played into the classic “bury your gays” trope, while Dracula’s Daughter (1936) depicted “Marya as a predatory lesbian.” In contrast, in the 21st century, “queer characters have become more prevalent throughout film and TV across all genres and that representation has become increasingly more well-rounded.”
What exactly is “good representation”?
Nicholson says, “It means queer people are represented in a diverse, non-singular kind of way.” Bornholdt believes the best kind of representation is “plain, simple experiences [of queer people], which don’t make queerness the center of the storyline.”
In the same vein, Lambert notes, “Films like Jennifer’s Body still include queer villains but do not make their queerness what makes them evil. Films like The Fear Street Trilogy allow queer characters to be seen in leading roles. The leads of this trilogy have agency in their story and are not defined by their sexuality.”
Yet, the current state of media representation still doesn’t give everyone a voice.
A good way into our conversation, Nicholson remarks, “We’re still talking about sexuality here. Not trans[gender] people. They’re not benefitting from the normalization because that is focussed on sexuality [and not gender identity].”
Indeed, transgender folks often get the short end of the stick when it comes to queer representation. Nicholson believes this is because transgender people are less socially accepted today compared to people who are queer and cisgender. If production companies favor what is deemed widely palatable, a genuine representation of the transgender experience “won’t be [considered] profitable, so they won’t put it in movies.”
The artist’s struggles
Even with the best of intentions, creating art is never as straightforward as it seems. What challenges might be involved in creating queer media?
Bornholdt has been working on a queer soccer film for their undergraduate honors thesis. Through the film, they hope to explore what it means to be non-binary in a sports context. The biggest struggle for Bornholdt has been “just not knowing how to talk about it. A lot of queer people aren’t given the language to talk about these things and there’s just been so much self-educating.”
They also brought up the challenges of working in a male-dominated film industry and not being respected by men on set. They emphasized the importance of queer-friendly, feminist spaces “exist[ing] on set, not just on the screen.”
Looking forward
We’ve come a long way since the times when queer media was inaccurate at best and non-existent at worst. Television shows and songs featuring queer experiences are now widely enjoyed by straight and queer people alike. The younger generations have been key to bringing about this shift and have greatly benefited from it.
Will the rise of queer media, and LGBTQ+ acceptance, continue?
Nicholson acknowledges, “It’s very possible there could be some cultural backlash to queer people that kills representation and forces everything to go backwards. Especially with certain groups and prominent politicians being opposed to the discussion of queerness in literature. It’s a very simple jump from there to music or film.”
Will it go or stay? I cannot say. But one thing is certain: Queer art gives our lives color.
Feature photo: Lesbian Couple Wearing Pride Merchandise Holding Hands, by RDNE Stock project on Pexels.