The 2000s Made Me Gay

Essays on Pop Culture

By: Grace Perry

Narrated by: Grace Perry

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

©2021 Grace Perry (P)2021 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

BuzzFeed Best Books of the Year, 2021

Lambda Literary Award - Nominee, 2022

“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)

“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)

Loved it!

I saw someone post about this book on Instagram and I was very intrigued. I’m so happy I downloaded this. I’ve recommended it to all my queer friends too! It talks about a lot of things that are not discussed enough in the queer community.

Fabulous read!

Fellow 1989ers unite! Wonderful essays on pop culture and the millennial queer experience. Great audio performance. Recommended!

3.5

It was fun enough. For a middle class cis white girl. It was very white. It was a journey that seems ideal--in some ways.

Narration was good, kept me engaged.

Basically a review of my whole childhood

“I didn’t want to be Satine, I had a crush on Nicole Kidman.”

The 2000s Made Me Gay is at once a collection of essays on 00’s pop culture and a memoir of a woman putting together the puzzle pieces that make up the Queer Millennial mindset, my mindset.

I went into this book thinking it was going to be a funny analysis of the queerest fandoms in the 2000s, and it is to an extent. The author, who like me was born in 1989 at the center of the millennial generation, highlights the Disney Channel original movie tomboy character trope, the Harry Potter phenomenon that overtook the 2000s, Buffy ending, Moulin Rouge, Mean Girls, the poorly contrived I Kissed a Girl song, etc.

But what Perry does best is fit these pop culture touchstones in the context of her journey from child to adult, and how they helped or hindered forming her queer identity. She calls out the duality of our generation growing up in the first half of the 2000’s with virtually no LGBTQ rep in media, to the end of the 2000’s where shows like Glee had forced their way to mainstream leading to today’s queer landscape.