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Sign up todayThe 2000s Made Me Gay
Essays on Pop Culture
Narrator
Grace Perry
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Length
8 hours 21 minutes
Language
English
Bookseller recommendation
“Wow! I picked this book up thinking it would just be a fun collection of personal essays. Boy howdy was I pleasantly surprised by what this book actually was! Perry makes each piece intensely personal, yes, but she also dives deep into many of the fundamental pieces of media for teens and tweens in the 2000s. Each essay looks at a different pop culture phenomenon (be it Harry Potter, The OC, MTV's The Real World, and everything in between) and examines the impact they had on burgeoning queer - specifically lesbian - youth through the lens of her own experience. I laughed, I sat and pondered, I used these topics to start conversations with my friends, and I felt incredibly seen. This is essential reading for every queer millennial. ”
— Tee • Quail Ridge Books
This program is read by the author.
From The Onion and Reductress contributor, this collection of essays is a hilarious nostalgic trip through beloved 2000s media, interweaving cultural criticism and personal narrative to examine how a very straight decade forged a very queer woman.
"Honest, funny, smart, and illuminating.” —Anna Drezen, co-head writer of SNL
"If you came of age at the intersection of Mean Girls and The L Word: Read this book.” —Sarah Pappalardo, editor in chief and co-founder of Reductress
Today’s gay youth have dozens of queer peer heroes, both fictional and real, but former gay teenager Grace Perry did not have that luxury. Instead, she had to search for queerness in the (largely straight) teen cultural phenomena the aughts had to offer: in Lindsay Lohan’s fall from grace, Gossip Girl, Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl,” country-era Taylor Swift, and Seth Cohen jumping on a coffee cart. And, for better or worse, these touch points shaped her adult identity. She came out on the other side like many millennials did: in her words, gay as hell.
Throw on your Von Dutch hats and join Grace on a journey back through the pop culture moments of the aughts with The 2000s Made Me Gay, before the cataclysmic shift in LGBTQ representation and acceptance—a time not so long ago, which many seem to forget.
A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Griffin
GRACE PERRY’s work has been published in a variety of outlets, including The New Yorker, New York magazine’s The Cut, BuzzFeed, Outside, and Eater. She is also a longtime, regular contributor to The Onion and the feminist satire site Reductress. Most of her work, comedy and journalism alike, interrogates the intersection of queerness, pop culture and the internet. She lives in LA.
GRACE PERRY’s work has been published in a variety of outlets, including The New Yorker, New York magazine’s The Cut, BuzzFeed, Outside, and Eater. She is also a longtime, regular contributor to The Onion and the feminist satire site Reductress. Most of her work, comedy and journalism alike, interrogates the intersection of queerness, pop culture and the internet. She lives in LA.
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Reviews
“The 2000s Made Me Gay is a gay hike through the media that shaped my little gay life, revisiting all of the big questions of my adolescence (Do I want to f*ck her, or be her?) via every dusty DVD I quietly watched in various finished basements in 2003. If you came of age at the intersection of Mean Girls and The L Word: Read this book.” —Sarah Pappalardo, editor in chief and co-founder of Reductress and author of How to Win at Feminism
“Grace Perry’s debut essay collection is the peak of pop-culture–peppered Millennial reflection. For anyone who recalls the special romance of G-chatting a new love until dawn, or whose “Team Seth” stance during The O.C.’s run was life-defining, this masterful first book will cut deep.” —Joel Meares, editor in chief of Rotten Tomatoes, author of We’re All Going to Die (Especially Me)
“It’s not just that Grace Perry is hilarious—she’s also incredibly particular, and dynamic, and so keen an observer of this demented world. This book is a searchlight. Her essays will explain you to you.” —Claire Luchette, 2020 Pushcart Prize winner and author of Agatha of Little Neon
“It’s impossible to resist the pull of [Perry's] prose and the ease of her humor; Perry specializes in the kind of writing that makes you feel like you’ve known her for years. [W]hip-smart...hilarious and sneakily thought-provoking, The 2000s Made Me Gay is a compelling collection of essays that seamlessly weaves together pop culture references and tales from Perry’s sexual own awakening.” —Morgan Olsen, editor in chief of Time Out Chicago
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