Representation Matters: Why kids need LGBT characters

When I was growing up, I didn’t realise it was possible to be bisexual.

This post will be about how a novel introduced me to the idea that I am bisexual, and why I believe LGBT representation in media for teenagers (and possibly even younger) is important.

I can remember having “crushes” on boys from quite an early age. Certainly by the time I was 10 or 11, crushes were a common topic of conversation with my friends, and everyone knew I “liked” a boy in my class. It was normal, and even expected, that every child in the class “liked” someone of the opposite sex.

“Gay” was used by my classmates as an insult. I’d never met an openly gay person (to my knowledge), and LGBT people were just sort of hypothetical to me. I had no particular feelings towards them at all; they simply weren’t part of my world. I never could have imagined I was actually part of this community!

There were signs, which I entirely missed/denied. When I was twelve, I borrowed a Destiny’s Child CD from my friend purely for the photo of the band on the inside. I just couldn’t stop looking at Beyoncé. I was obsessed.
“I like that picture, they have really cool jewelery on,” my friend said, and I clutched this excuse like a life ring. I must just be interested in the jewelery! I didn’t know how else to explain my obsession. It didn’t even occur to me until years later that I had a crush on Beyoncé.

I started attending an all-girls high school when I was 13, and I quickly noticed a girl who was a couple of years ahead of me. She was one of those confident, bouncy, loud drama types. We never once spoke, but I admired her from afar. I had no idea why. I reasoned to myself that it must be hero worship – I just admired her confidence, as I was quiet, shy and introverted, and uncomfortable in my own skin. I probably just wanted to be like her – right?

On the bus on the way home from school, I’d look out for this girl from the window, hoping to get a glimpse of her. If I did spot her, I’d quickly shrink back from the window so she wouldn’t see me staring at her. I didn’t know why I was staring, but I was very aware that I didn’t want to be caught. It felt shameful, and I was so confused.

When I started my second year at that school, at 14, there was a new girl in my class. I thought she was beautiful. She was effortlessly cool, creative and individual, and everything I would love to be. Again, I found myself drawn to her. And again, I told myself it was just hero worship. I couldn't be a lesbian - what about those crushes on boys? I was deeply in denial. That is, until I found a life-changing book in a secondhand bookshop: Good Girls Don’t by an Irish writer named Claire Hennessy.

Good Girls Don’t is about Emily, a 17-year-old bisexual girl trying to navigate her love life and grow into herself. I was immediately hooked in by Emily’s voice. She was a revelation to me. She spoke of staring at her friend Abi, who she had kissed once and had unrequited feelings for, and feeling a little creepy for looking at her. She worried her friends thought she was “corrupting” Abi by kissing her. She wished that her classmates would just get over the kiss - “my love life is not that exciting or unusual”. That line affected me so much, I still have it memorised.

What an amazing new thought: being drawn to girls, staring or wanting to kiss them – that could be normal! It didn’t have to make me weird or unusual! Some people could just be this way. Some people could like both. So many things about myself started to make sense.

I gave the book to my new classmate (by this point, one of my best friends) and insisted she read it. Long story short, the book allowed me to start a conversation with her about liking girls, and we ended up in a “relationship”. We were only 14, but I felt like it was love. It may only have lasted 4 months, and I did temporarily lose all my friends over it, and have my entire school turn against me and treat me like a disgusting leper...but I don’t regret it. I am a stronger person with a better understanding of myself because of that period of my life, and Good Girls Don’t was fundamental in me figuring it out.

If I ever have children, I’d love them to be aware of the LGBT community from the word go. I’d love for them to find it completely normal that some boys like other boys, and some girls like other girls, and some people like both, and so on. I want that to all be so accepted that they don’t even think of it as “a thing”. It should just be the way it is, like how all kids were just assumed to have opposite-sex crushes at school. Totally normal. No big deal.

One way this can happen is through representation of LGBT people in children’s/teenage shows and books. I kind of wish I could write fiction so I could be part of this myself. I’d love to give my kids books that portray being gay or bi as the “not that exciting or unusual” life that it really is. Maybe my kids will hit puberty and realise they’re interested in the same sex, and not be as confused and scared and sometimes ashamed as I was. Or maybe they’ll be able to support a friend, or just refuse to spread nasty gossip about an LGBT classmate.

I want them to have a proper understanding of this community; I don’t want LGBT people to be hypothetical, in that “nothing to do with me” way of my childhood. That’s why an openly gay Disney character (as was recently announced) or a bisexual book protagonist are important. It matters. It’s all about normalising something that can be misconstrued as abnormal. And I’m hopeful that we’re getting there. I don’t know about you, but I’m excited for our future.

(Images from Wikipedia and Goodreads)