Queer Relationships are More Than an Aesthetic

Graphic by Lucy Stover

We’ve all seen it.  “Call Me By Your Name” inspired photoshoots, straight girls expressing their desire to have a girlfriend to “play dress up with”, countless comments about wanting a sassy gay best friend.  Queer relationships without any of the elements that actually go into a relationship, only the aspects of the union that are palatable.  Better than palatable: Instagrammable.  The type of gay that has nothing to do with girls liking girls or boys liking boys, but has everything to do with appearances.  Mainstream media treats queerness as if its this year’s hottest trend and tomorrow we’ll all be able to buy goth girlfriends and Elio Perlman lookalikes on SHEIN.

While it may seem like the pinnacle of allyship to consume media in which two (usually thin, usually white) girls are seen kissing or two (usually thin, usually white) boys are seen crying and reading books together at some tiny liberal arts college (Netflix, have your people call my people about that one), for many, the allyship ends at the consumption of these surface level depictions of queerness.  

Reducing very real relationships to nothing more than trivial displays of “alternative” lifestyles and aesthetics poses no benefit to the LGBTQ+ community.  In fact, this infantilization and suggestion that queer relationships are only ever “cute” negates the possibility of relationships in which the two people have a genuine connection that would be treated with the same respect as any straight relationship.  Furthermore, immediately writing off every queer relationship as “cute” has the potential to turn people’s gaze away from potentially abusive patterns within said relationship.  

Seeing mainstream media co-opt queer joy and queerness in general to further an aesthetic or to appear “edgy” feels like watching a complicated, beautiful, emotional bond go through a food dehydrator; the process is incomplete until all the human elements of the relationship are gone, leaving us with only pretty pictures on which people can comment “they’re baby” and “need me a cottagecore girlfriend to bake pies with”.  No shit.  A girlfriend to bake pies with would be awesome, but that’s not the point.

It’s certainly worth examining why so called “allies’ are so obsessed with appearances when it comes to queer love, but in many cases the sad truth is because they don’t see it as love at all.  It is something less real.  Something manufactured and glossy that can be looked at, but not touched.  A relationship that isn’t viewed as a real relationship because it isn’t a straight relationship.  

Of course, if “allies” continue to look for these perfect embodiments of their idea of aestheticized, infantilized queerness, they’ll be searching forever.  There are no perfect queer relationships just like there are no perfect straight relationships.  Whatever imaginary world sassy gay best friend and cottage core apple pie girlfriend are in, we just hope they’re happy.