Who doesn’t love a good early 2000s coming-of-age movie? I mean, they’re just so fetch! When it comes to these movies, if you've seen one of them you’ve practically seen them all. By that, I mean that they all pretty much follow the same predictable base plot with minor differences. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s actually one of the aspects of these films that makes them so consumable. Even the characters in these movies are practically the same. There’s the uncool new girl, the stereotypically popular mean girl, and last and least -at least in terms of the level of character development- the gay best friend. The gay best friend, or GBF, is a comic relief character. He doesn’t really have any major personality traits besides his sexuality. Overall, he is reduced to being an accessory for the main character.

When movies and television shows portray queer characters in this way, it does significantly more harm than good. First, the GBF tends to be an extremely stereotyped character. This character also teaches straight people that queer individuals only exist to be their uber-fashionable besties. A Google search of the term gay best friend pulls up a shocking amount of results marketing “why evey girl needs a gay best friend”. This character is especially harmful in media marketed towards teens and young adults. A person's late teen years are an extremely important time when it comes to self discovery. This is when many LGBTQ+ people are just starting to come to terms with their sexuality. Feeling like you have to live up to a certain set role is just adding more unnecessary stress to what’s already an anxiety inducing life point.

What movies and shows have done well when it comes to queer inclusivity?

The CW’s television show The 100 did an amazing job with this when it came to one of the main characters Clarke Griffin. In season 2 of this show, Clarke shares a kiss with another female character, Lexa. This kiss and their following relationship were natural, none of the other characters in the show made a big deal about the relationship, and both of these characters still had vast personality traits and participated in major plot points that weren’t related to their sexualities.

In the Netflix original show Sex Education, the main character, Otis, is best friends with a gay boy, Eric Effiong. His character has substance. He’s funny and witty, but his jokes aren’t all about his sexuality. Sex Education also shows how Eric struggles when his sexuality is at odds with both his religion as a Christian and his culture as someone of Nigerian descent.

Recently, we have also seen more movies targeted towards young adults in which the main character is gay. A great example of this is the movie Love, Simon which won the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Film. This movie is one that would have been nearly impossible to even air 25 years ago. The fact that a movie with a realistic LGBT main character received such praise is amazing.

Someone’s sexuality does not define their personality. We would expect this to be true of people, so why do we portray it this way in TV or film characters? Certain shows and movies have recently done well at portraying LGBT characters, hopefully setting the example for how we show these characters in the media for future filmmakers.

Written by Chloe Foster, Photography: Linh Tran, Social Media: Lauren Ercolani

The Problem with the GBF