The 2000s Made Me Gay

April 19, 2021
In this laugh-out-loud debut, Reductress contributor Perry blends memoir with cultural criticism to dissect the influence that 2000s-era media had on millions of queer millennials, including herself. “I’ve had some latent queer beast within me since childhood,” she writes, sharing her innocuous thesis that popular media “can shape our responses... to such preexisting gayness.” To support this, Perry dives with relish into such films and TV shows as The Real World, Harry Potter, and Mean Girls, combing each for relevance to her own muddled path toward coming out as a lesbian. While a few essays feel a bit rushed, the collection as a whole is greater than its parts; Perry wrings deep pathos from her attachment to tomboyism—as presented by such stars as Hilary Duff (aka Cadet Kelly), in the eponymous Disney Channel Original Movies film—snarks at her teen self’s crush on Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge, and observes the jealousy of younger queer people that gay millennials—who “straddle the pre-Glee and post-Glee worlds”—feel in a time “where it’s never been easier to be same-sex parents.” Perry’s casual, off-the-cuff charm and astute analyses mark her as a talented new voice. Agent: Tim Wojcik, Levine Greenberg Rostan.

Starred review from May 1, 2021

Perry's book of personal essays is both an overview of her experience as a gay woman and an examination of the pop culture that shaped her. Each essay pairs gay cultural issues with popular media like Glee, The L Word, and The OC; endnotes both add context and supply resources for further exploration. The book's cultural references are always tied to parts of Perry's experience as a gay white woman in a heteronormative world. She muses on being part of the Harry Potter fandom and wishing that Dumbledore had been openly gay, and discusses Tumblr's influence on queer culture. Referencing TV shows and movies with queer characters, Perry is reminded that representation doesn't always equal acceptance. The book's strongest essay, "Be the PR Team You Wish To See in the World," discusses the complexity of celebrities coming out and what it means to the baby gays paying attention. VERDICT A funny, accessible analysis of pop culture that will benefit nonfiction collections; it informs about gay history and grounds its importance in real experience. And for many gay readers, even if the cultural touchstones aren't their own, Perry's anecdotes will still be relatable and uplifting.--Rachel Rosenberg, North Vancouver District Lib. Vancouver, BC

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2021
A self-styled queer millennial, Perry confesses, "Pop culture might be an escape from real life, but I haven't been able to escape pop culture." Indeed, her collection of 12 personal essays, which evoke such pop-culture staples of the 2000s as Real World, Mean Girls, The O.C., Gossip Girl, and more, prove that fact and also provide a nifty springboard into an examination of their (typically implicit) queer content--content that contributed to Perry's own coming-of-age acceptance that she's queer. While all of her essays contain such autobiographical material, they also boast dives into examinations of the condition of being queer so deep as to approach exercises in queer theory. Yes, the collection sometimes takes itself a wee bit too seriously but is more often lively and thought provoking, the best example of this being the finest essay in the book, "The Glee Bubble," which marries analysis and affection in a deeply satisfying way. Perry's book will obviously be catnip for millennials but will also, happily, be deeply satisfying to any generation whose pop culture made them gay.

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April 15, 2021
Essays that incorporate elements of 2000s pop culture to examine broader themes of queer identity and sexuality. Longtime Onion and Reductress contributor Perry revisits the songs, movies, and TV shows she was drawn to as a closeted, Catholic adolescent in the Midwest. She examines them in order to explain her coming-out process, interspersing personal anecdotes with recaps of the plotlines and characters involved in the media that informed them. Her knowledge is extensive, running from The Real World to Harry Potter, Dawson's Creek, The O.C., the Disney Channel, The L Word, Taylor Swift, and Glee--and beyond. Perry isn't interested in dissecting 2000s pop culture or passing judgment. Rather, she analyzes how it shaped a generation of queer people despite the scarcity of actual LGBTQ+ representation. Perry deploys specific pop-culture phenomena to open up larger conversations about a variety of relevant topics--e.g., MTV's programming and gender essentialism, Dumbledore's sexuality and the problem of disingenuous representation, singer King Princess and the etymology of "coming out of the closet" and whether it is still a relevant framework. The author also turns her critical eye toward the ways in which queer viewers were drawn to queer-coded characters because of what they saw in themselves but also modeled themselves after those characters, in a long game of chicken or the egg. As sexuality and gender became better understood and celebrated in the late 2000s, pop culture reacted to the trend, but millennials straddle the divide. "We grew up without queer characters in our cartoons or Nickelodeon or Disney or TGIF sitcoms. We were raised in homophobia, came of age as the world changed around us, and are raising children in an age where it's never been easier to be same-sex parents. We're both lucky and jealous," Perry writes, hopeful for the future in this post-Glee world. A humorous and reflective journey of self-discovery via pop culture.

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