Gay pop culture
Lady Gaga
It’d be unworkable to understate out bisexual musician and actor Lady Gaga‘s impact on identity and pop tune, or the impact she’s made as an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ+ rights. Every Gaga production and high-camp costume was iconic. Her male alter-ego Jo Calederone was absurdly hot. Her harmony video for “Telephone” opened with Gaga making out with butch Canadian recital artist Heather Cassils and ended with her holding hands with Beyonce and driving into the sunset. “Born This Way” doesn’t even matter —it’s “Bad Romance” and “Poker Face” and “Alejandro” and “Bad Romance” and “You and I” and “Paparazzi.” Lady Gaga is a queen of gay pop.
Hayley Kiyoko
On the cover of Nylon Magazine’s first-ever Pride Issue, Hayley Kiyoko was described as an unprecedented force in the gay pop scene, a lesbian teen heartthrob unafraid to court a fiery, starving queer fan base who crowned her Lesbian Jesus. She was the first lesbian pop star signed to a major label to make multiple music videos in which she kisses girls. It’s incr
For the most part, pop tradition in 2024 was “very demure, very mindful,” even as we were all having a Brat Summer.
The year kicked off with Elmo checking in to spot how everyone was doing, which led to the largest trauma dump the little red guy has ever seen, and it was a roller coaster all the way to the end.
Beyonce came riding in on horseback with her country album “Cowboy Carter,” queer women like Chappell Roan and Billie Eilish controlled the charts, Kamala tried to stop all the drama-la and once “Wicked” was released in theaters, we were all taking the lyrics of “Defying Gravity” and really holding space with that.
As we do every year, we have been trying to make sense of all the pop culture happenings in 2024, and the best way we know how is to initiate with our ABCs.
lan Cumming wins the Emmy for Outstanding Life Competition host, beating RuPaul and ending the drag icon’s eight-year winning streak, at the Primetime Emmy Awards in September.
illie Eilish comes out as queer to Variety in the publication’s Might of Women issue in November. Later, during the publication’s annual Hitmakers Brunch, Eilish expresses repent talking about her sexuality, saying she prefers to ke
This past year will likely be remembered by the correct inescapability of two things: Barbie and Taylor Swift. The former was a pop-culture juggernaut over the summer, bursting from meme to hot-pink dream. The latter was arguably even more dominant, with Swift dominating the tour circuit, album charts and theatres with her Eras Tour clip and even the football field in 2023.
Both of those, regrettably in the case of Barbie and with apologies to the Gaylors, are for the most part straight culture. But don’t worry: plenty happened for the gays as well. From M3GAN to “Padam Padam,” George Santos to Gag Capital, 2023 was a rich year when it comes to queer and transsexual culture.
Don’t believe me? Let’s journey advocate through 50 gay and trans moments that defined 2023.
1. To kick off the year and coming out of 2022, nepo babies had their moment, including peak nepo baby and noted gay, Ben Platt.
2. Janelle Monáe brought sex sex sex with The Age of Pleasure.
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3. A bunch of prudes got
Beaming With Pride: How TV Became the Unsung Hero For LGBTQ+ Representation
The shift of the 21st century was a pivotal occasion for LGBTQ+ representation. Before streaming services and social media, television was the medium that mattered. Mainstream movies largely avoided lgbtq+ themes, which could amount studios at the box office. And those that did tread in gender non-conforming waters weren’t widely seen, such as Too Wong Foo, Julie Newmar, Jeffrey, and Thanks for Everything! In the music planet, pop stars like Young man George, Elton John, and George Michael either danced around their sexuality or avoided pronouns or other telltale specifics in their lyrics.
But television was universal. There were only a handful of channels, watched by millions of people, mostly in real period. The impact of a single scene couldn’t be underestimated.
I remember vividly the first time I saw a gay person on TV. Not a lgbtq+ character—or an actor that everyone “knew” was queer in real life. I mean a real-life out-and-proud gay man. It was Norman Korpi on the first season of MTV’s The Real World.
By the time I was 14, I figured out I was gay. But the only mentions of homosexuality on TV were either played f