Author Grace Perry, courtesy of Kort Havens.
By Maggie Wills ’25
Staff Writer
“Pop culture may be an escape from real life, but I haven’t been able to escape pop culture myself. It’s glommed onto my psyche; it’s shaped my view of myself, my reality, my body, my sexuality,” Grace Perry writes in her new book, a collection of essays entitled “The 2000s Made Me Gay.” Published in June 2021, Perry’s essays explore the intersections between contemporary pop culture and queerness. Perry is a freelance writer focused on the overlaps of media, queerness and identity. Her work appears in BuzzFeed, The Cut and The New Yorker.
The essays of “The 2000s Made Me Gay” blur the line between social commentary and memoir. In each piece, Perry hones in on a specific moment in early 2000s pop culture and dissects its social or cultural implications, as well as how it personally shaped her identity. There are equal amounts of healthy self-deprecating humor, niche early 2000s references and deep analysis into internalized homophobia, gender performance and media representation.
Perry wrote the first essay of the collection, entitled “Cherry Chapstick,” in response to Katy Perry’s hit song “I Kissed A Girl,” ten years after it was released. “I was like ‘Oh, I can do this kind of exercise with a bunch of different books, movies [and] TV shows,’” Perry said in an interview with Mount Holyoke News. “I started thinking, ‘Okay, what were genuinely the things I watched in that decade, what were the things that I was taking in?’ It suddenly became like: ‘Oh, I could do that with ‘Harry Potter.’ I could do that with ‘The OC.’ I could do that with all different kinds of things.’ Once I really hit the ground running with it, the ideas came pretty naturally.”
Her essay on “Mean Girls” begins with a flashback to when the film first came out when she was 14 years old. Perry writes about watching the film in theaters and being instantly drawn to the quick-witted humor that gives the movie its quotable lines. She then zooms in on how the film portrays queer women.
“In ‘Mean Girls,’ calling someone a lesbian is treated as an insult unto itself,” Perry writes. “And so, a subtle but disappointed narrative nestled into a corner of my brain for years after 2004: it’s cool for guys to be gay. It’s cool for girls to be friends with gay guys. But it’s an insult to be called a lesbian.”
For years after, Perry repressed her own sexuality, even noting that it was this “soul-affirming movie,” not her Catholic upbringing, that was the greatest contributor to her own internalized homophobia. This essay may leave readers reflecting on media that were pillars in their own lives. It sheds light on the power of language, and the idea that what may be intended as a joke can create damaging stereotypes and shape individuals’ attitudes towards their own identities.
Her essays also share refreshing moments of navigating adolescence and young adulthood while finding humor in the challenges and imperfections of growing up. Stories of coming out, first relationships and heartbreak are weaved in throughout media analysis. To Perry, these personal anecdotes are “a really useful tool in storytelling and getting your point across … the anecdotes make [the essays] something that’s really worth reading and really worth sinking your teeth into.” She added that through these personal touches, she “can really put [her] voice into it and … make it easier to hold onto for the reader.”
Perry grew up in a Catholic family in Chicago, Illinois. Many of the essays share how her upbringing in this religious environment made her queer identity difficult to come to terms with. In “The 2000s Made Me Gay,” she recounts experiences from her high school, where there were no openly queer individuals. In one anecdote, she recalls a class in which students debated homosexuality as an ethical dilemma. Her family attended a relatively progressive church and were socially liberal themselves, but these experiences led to Perry not coming out to herself until college.
While attending Tufts University just outside of Boston, Massachusetts, Perry studied History and American Studies. In “The 2000s Made Me Gay,” Perry frequently touches on these years in college, a time when she was able to come to terms with her sexuality and experience her first queer relationships.
It was not until after college that she saw writing as a possible career.
“It took me a while to really come to writing, and I think that has really informed my attitude towards writing,” Perry said. “I’m not very precious about it.”
In writing this book, she intended to create something that felt casual and conversational.
“So much of what I wrote about in this book was ideas that I had been screaming to my friends about at parties for a decade or whatever,” Perry said. “These are ideas that I had been wanting to get off my chest for a long time.”
While Perry intended the book to be mainly nostalgic for millennials, she did not expect it to resonate as deeply with readers who grew up in other generations.
“It was interesting. I’ve actually found that a lot of people who have reached out to me about this are people who are in their early 20s … and I didn’t think about that at all when I was writing the book,” Perry said. “The 2000s Made Me Gay” is a charming and insightful collection that cleverly blends analysis and nostalgia, making it a perfect choice for anyone who enjoys consuming and avidly discussing media. It reminds those that grew up in the early 2000s of the characters and moments that defined a generation. It’s also for queer folks who wish to seek comfort and community in the shared experience of what it means to have an identity greatly shaped by the digital age.