Every gay person has a moment in their lives that they look back on and say, "Wow, I can't believe I didn't know!" For me, there were probably enough moments to constitute a sitcom, but the thing that sticks out to me the most was playing Star Wars with my friends when I was little. And while I don't remember who was working for the Empire and who were the rebels, I remember who my teammate was: my friend Ben. And when we were under attack, it was my job to protect him. I remember feeling my heart beat just a little bit faster when that happened. “Don’t touch him!” I yelled, using the imaginary force to keep him safe.
If there’s one thing I can assure you about five year old Andrew, it’s that he was in love with love. Whether it was begging for Robin and Starfire from Teen Titans to get together or watching every Disney princess movie and waiting patiently for that true love’s kiss, I was no stranger to romance. Although I loved watching these characters be awesome and kick butt, I always enjoyed when a good romance story worked out. However, despite watching and reading different stories about love, there was always a very common factor between them all: I was always rooting for a straight couple. If I had seen two guys kissing on that screen, instead of a guy and a girl, would I have realized that my heart beat fast because I had a kindergarten crush on Ben? Fifteen years later, I’ll never truthfully be able to answer that question. Maybe I really was that dense of a child.
In “Danger of a Single Story,” by Chimamanda Adichie, the author uses tales of her life to talk about how her experiences as a child and as an adult have shaped her perspective on the world. She speaks about being biased towards people who were of a lower class, people who were from foreign countries, and even speaks about the biases that she received from others. It’s a powerful message, but the one that speaks out the most to me is that after reading books about white children, Adichie had painted this portrait of herself in her mind where she was “white.” No, this did not actually make her white, but she associated herself with these white characters. As a woman born and raised in Nigeria, Adichie was anything but white. As a writer now, Adichie’s stories are filled with characters that are racially and sexually diverse. Despite these being things that could alienate people, her characters are always very relatable. She has found her voice in a world that did not give her one.
Adicihie states in her TED Talk that, “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” Like Adichie, the lack of LGBTQ+ representation in my childhood affected the way that I viewed myself. I had only grown up seeing and reading opposite-sex couples. I didn’t read a story with a gay character until the seventh grade, and I didn’t see one on TV until I was in the eighth grade.
Six years later, at nineteen, I am thankful to have had just a small bit of queer representation in two cartoon shows when I was in middle school and high school: The Legend of Korra (2012-2014) and Steven Universe (2013-2020).
The Legend of Korra, which is a sequel to Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005-2008), has a very similar ending to the original. After many seasons of building up a strong friendship between the two leads, Korra and Asami, they reunite alone, away from the rest of the cast. They gaze into each other’s eyes, and I feel that same sense of expectation that I always feel right when two characters are about to kiss. “This is it! This is it!” They clasp each other’s hands... and vanish in a ray of light. It felt as if someone had knocked the air out of my lungs. Its predecessor had ended with a heartfelt kiss between leads Aang and Katara, so this lack of a kiss felt strange. In fact, I wouldn’t have even been able to identify Korra and Asami as a couple, had I not known that fact beforehand.
The reason to not include the kiss was not on the creators. Both of the creators, Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino, are fairly frequent posters on the social media website Tumblr. A few months after the series finale aired, Konietzko confirmed in one of those posts, which he titled, “Korrasami is canon,” that there were reservations from Nickelodeon, stating “We approached the network and while they were supportive there was a limit to how far we could go with it...”
This highlights a major aspect of LGBTQ+ relationships in television, in particular with children’s television. It is considered something that is too mature for a young audience to handle. Straight couples are allowed to kiss at their own discretion, because it is viewed as something that is “appropriate.”
It’s this perspective on LGBTQ+ characters, and relationships that made me ashamed of myself for a long time. I spent three years of my life feeling as if there were something wrong with me. Even though there are many who have suffered longer than I have, what would the world be like if those queer characters were no longer considered taboo?
While I had already acknowledged my feelings for boys when I started high school, I buried them down deep inside of me, ashamed of who I was. I had a few LGBTQ+ friends who I would talk with about their own experiences. As for Steven Universe, I kept watching it, and it became more and more unashamedly queer, making two of their four leads queer characters.
As I began to identify with the characters and my new friends more and more, I started to realize that what I was feeling about boys wasn’t unnatural, and more importantly, that I was not alone. I could relate to the characters on screen, I could relate to the people around me, and everything started to feel right. I began to grow comfortable in my own skin, enough to come out to my friend in the middle of our Italian class during one of our infamous games of “Would You Rather?”
Even though I grew more and more into my identity as time went on, I still reminisce about my formative years, and a lot of “what-ifs” pop up. Steven Universe was a show that really changed the way that I felt about myself. What would have happened if I had had that ages ago? What if I had realized that I had a kindergarten crush on Ben? What if I had been able to come to actually understand why I blushed when I was around Kyle in middle school? What if I had been proud of who I was my first year of high school?
As much as these “what-ifs” come up, however, I can never give an answer. The story that I have is the one that I get to tell. Maybe in an alternate universe somewhere, I had that television show growing up, and I acknowledged that I had that crush on Ben. Maybe we were even kindergarten boyfriends! Those possibilities are endless. Still, I am proud of my story. I found love for myself at a time when I thought of myself as unlovable. And whatever could have been is something that I don’t think too much on, because I would rather look forward, towards a better future that is still very much underway.
In 2019,GLAAD (The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) noted in “Where We Are On TV Report - 2019” that only 90 out of 879 regular occurring characters in scripted primetime shows were LGBTQ+. That translates to 10.2% of characters who weren’t straight or cisgender (a person who identifies with the sex they were designated at birth).
A major counterargument to these statistics is that if roughly 10 percent of the population is LGBTQ+, and 10% of television characters are LGBTQ+, then there is an appropriate amount of representation. This counterargument does not take multiple factors into account, however. To begin with, my narrative is on representation in children’s television, which would be a totally different set of statistics. These statistics show how we in the adult world view LGBTQ+ media. Second, the data serves as an umbrella term for all LGBTQ+ characters, and does not go into detail about the unique and specific sexualities and genders that the population identifies as (how many characters are pansexual, asexual, non-binary, etc). Ethnic diversity of LGBTQ+ individuals is also not listed, which is the intersectionality of these two oppressed groups being represented on television. A fourth and final factor not taken into account by these statistics is the “Bury Your Gays” trope, a common theme in television shows in which LGBTQ+ characters are sacrificed for the plot and killed off, many times in gory and morose ways. While we do live in an era of TV shows becoming infamous for their killing off their starring characters, such as Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead, it becomes somewhat tiring to see LGBTQ+ characters killed off in brutal and gory ways numerous times.
Hilton Als speaks about these negative portrayals in “G.W.T.W.”, where he mentions how he feels as a black man watching black people lynched in photographs and treated awfully in movies such as Gone With the Wind or To Kill a Mockingbird. For many LGBTQ+ individuals, that works the same way; we are tired of seeing ourselves killed off brutally on the screen when that was the only character we related to in that sense.
Representation is not as clear-cut as making an appearance, it is also about being portrayed correctly. This is true for everyone. People relate to the characters that they see on their screen, and it’s why they get so emotional when things happen to them. The difference, however, is that people who identify as cisgender and/or straight are able to find those characters who they feel properly represent them because there is a larger population to draw from. LGBTQ+ individuals will get a token gay character, who more often than not is an effeminate, thin, white man.
However, the current roster of animated shows with LGBTQ+ characters add not only diversity in who they portray, but also show positive representation for characters. Cartoon Network showcased the first same-sex animated wedding on television with Ruby and Sapphire’s marriage in Steven Universe, and later confirmed Princess Bubblegum and Marceline of Adventure Time to also be queer characters who are involved with one another. Disney has also officially created its first animated LGBTQ+ protagonist with the bisexual Amity and lesbian girlfriend Luz from The Owl House. These two shows have pushed the bounds of popular children’s television, however, there is still more to do. Children everywhere should be allowed to see themselves on screen in all different formats.
The other night, my boyfriend Jeremy and I were discussing our plans for Halloween, when he asked me a question. “Do you want to dress up?”
The “yes” slipped out of my mouth, as if it had been waiting on my tongue for ages. I admit that I was excited to dress up with my boyfriend for Halloween, even if no one saw us and it was just for each other. Jeremy and I are both very nerdy, and can go back and forth with one another for hours over cartoon shows, comic books, and movies. Surely, whatever we did was going to be super cool and more importantly, super us.
We hung up the phone shortly afterwards, and I immediately rushed to Google to see what costume ideas the internet had for us. In total, I got three: video game characters Mario and Luigi (who are brothers), anime characters Pikachu and Ash (which is bestiality), and a couple of rather provocatively dressed football players. I rejected all three ideas and went to bed feeling sad, because there were no options for the two of us that felt like it was right.
LGBTQ+ representation is still severely lacking in the world of mainstream television for both adults and children. I wish that my story had a happier conclusion, but not every story wraps up nicely, because there’s a lot more work to be done. My dream of being an English teacher is not just about getting summer vacation - although that is a nice perk - but it’s to teach kids through a diverse set of literature that stories, in particular theirs, matter.
So there is no happy ending tied up neatly with a bow. There’s no kiss that signals the end of happily ever after. My boyfriend will call me later to say good night. I don’t need to protect him with a lightsaber like I did with Ben. But that doesn’t mean that the proverbial lightsaber is put down. We need to protect all of the little kids out there who are going through their own experiences with their own Bens. They deserve a chance to understand that their feelings are natural and okay. The path to learning how to love yourself is long and grueling, but with a partner by your side, it makes the challenge just a little bit easier. And for now, that’s enough.
Comments