It's time to shelve the 'Gay Best Friend' trope
I always wanted a gaggle of loyal girlfriends but the damaging gay characters on TV did a number on me and my social life. I’m glad this outdated trope is fading from the limelight…
EXCLUSIVE | 3 min read
Whenever I pictured what it would be like to have a group of close girlfriends, I imagined bearing our souls at sleepovers, gushing about random hot guys and going for cocktails. My girl gang would be my everything and I’d be theirs.
But things didn’t pan out like that in reality. Not consistently anyway, and never in the romanticised way I’d built up in my head. Gay men like me often gravitate towards women for friendship because they’re less threatening and more relatable than straight men.
Sam with his close-knit bridal party in 2020. Photo: Rebecca Carpenter
I can’t speak for all my community’s experiences - especially those who are not cis-gender (people whose gender identity correlates to the sex they were assigned at birth) like me. But, my experience is similar to many other LGBTQ+ people I’ve spoken to over the years.
Childhood
Back in primary school in the 90s, I almost exclusively hung out with girls. They were my world, but I was not theirs. I only existed on the periphery of their break-time ‘make believe’ games. They’d pretend to be dainty fairies because they were girls, but me? No way. I wasn’t the right kind of fairy.
As I progressed into my teens and twenties, I formed some close friendships with girls, but they never felt truly reciprocal. With the benefit of hindsight, I can see I existed as a trophy gay best friend. A pretty boy to go out with who wore thick black eyeliner like Placebo’s Brian Molko and generated a different, less threatening kind of attention.
Sam and a friend at a party. Photo: Samuel Sims
This was no doubt influenced by pop culture, TV and what we were all seeing around us. Like the one-dimensional characters on our screens, I was the comic relief. I was someone to moan superficially to, but rarely the person to confide deep, dark secrets to.
Some of my friendships were deeper but I was the one who often ended up hurt, my feelings and friendship discarded like the remnants of a kebab at the end of a messy night. The Gay Best Friend trope really did a number on my social life.
I adapted and survived, picking myself up when relationships fell apart. But things began to feel quite dark when I eventually watched all of Sex and the City in 2010. I became obsessed with having a tight, unbreakable circle of friends like the ones I saw portrayed on screen. Those women were there for each other through everything. Why didn’t I have that?
Pop culture
SITC has since been accused of gross heteronormativity and as much as I still love the show, I completely agree. Its romanticised vision of friendship and the role gay men played in the group was damaging, especially for queer people like me.
It presented something that many of us in the LGBTQ+ community had craved since those early childhood days, stood on the edge of playground friendships, and made it seem almost attainable.
SITC also showed the most cliched version of gayness it could with Stanford and Anthony who were never accepted into the circle. What a mindfuck for viewers.
Sam and his now husband Jay at a friend’s wedding in 2018. Photo: Nik Glazelle
The gay best friend trope has long existed in mainstream pop culture and for a while, was one of the only ways we saw ourselves represented in the mainstream in a ‘positive’ light. You know, without being murdered or dying of AIDS.
For a while there, we grabbed hold of the fashionable, camp, gossipy stereotype and aspired to be full of wit and overflowing with scathing comebacks. Who didn’t want to be that person?
My Best Friend’s Wedding, which celebrated its 25th anniversary this year, has a juicy example of the GBF. Rupert Everett’s character George dipped in and out of the film to offer Jules, Julia Roberts’ character sage advice and orchestrated an iconic musical sequence. Aside from that, he wasn’t particularly developed or multi-faceted.
Coming out at that point in his career also threw Everett into typecasting hell and he struggled to shrug off those characters. Cis-gay men, it seemed, were only acceptable and visible if placed within a small, albeit entertaining and colourful box.
One-dimensional
Arguably, Sex and the City’s Stanford was the worst example of the damaging GBF trope, with the show capitalising on how dispensable and shallow the character was. Don’t even get me started on him and Anthony getting hitched later on, despite initially despising each other. What a reductionistic and shallow portrayal of the fully formed, brilliant people many of us really are.
Sam and his husband Jay on their wedding day. Photo: Rebecca Carpenter
I also struggled with how infantilised and whiny Stanford was written to be and yet, he wasn’t the only GBF character to be represented like that. Will and Grace’s Jack didn’t take anything seriously and was happy to rely on his friends for financial and emotional support whilst gallivanting around New York as a horny man baby.
That stereotype seeped into the real world and influenced the way we were perceived. I was very much infantilised by girlfriends when the show was at its peak and perhaps, it contributed to my not being taken seriously.
According to a 2013 study on trustworthiness between cis-straight women and cis-gay men, this was found to be 20% more than in other friendship dynamics. This isn’t at all surprising and I think this aspect of the relationship has always been there. But isn’t it, more often than not, one-sided? Do women offer an ear, a shoulder to cry on too? If you go by shows like SITC and my past experiences, then no, they don't, instead seeing us as frilly, superficial cardboard cutouts that don't have any real problems to air.
But as time passes - both culturally and in my own life - I feel that two-way support is much more evident. It feels like we're seen as people with more substance and the trauma we've gone through is something wider society is aware of and wants to hear about.
Sam and one of his best friends having afternoon drinks in 2015. Photo: Samuel Sims
We’re now seeing an increasing amount of authentic stories showing us as much more than 'cookie-cutter gays'. The driving force of this being that we’re becoming masters of our own narratives in mainstream culture. Films like Bros, for example, heralded as the first gay rom-com to premiere by a major studio, had a mostly LGBTQ+ crew. The lived experiences of the crew made the film feel much more authentic and representative of our community, rather than gay people written by straight writers.
Representative authenticity
A huge shift has occurred in the last five years and with harmful stereotypes gradually fading from our screens, so is the negative way we see ourselves. This is bolstered as we gain more rights, move towards proper equality and feel empowered, leaving us willing to put up with less crap in general.
I certainly feel this as I’ve grown older and become more confident with my ‘gayness’. Empowerment also plays a significant role in how my relationship with my girlfriends has changed for the better.
I now have a group of girlfriends who’ve welcomed me with open arms into their feminist book club. I don't feel like the token gay - I just feel like 'me'. We all have our own personalities and we're appreciated for those, rather than who we happen to fancy. I think I'm the Samantha of the group - blunt and a bit scathing, but without all of the constant sex.
Sam and his book club friends protesting for abortion rights in 2022. Photo: Jay Mullinger
As the world sees shifts in women’s rights - both positive (the #metoo movement) and negative (revocation of abortion rights) - it feels like more marginalised people are recognising each other and joining forces. At least, that’s what I’m experiencing.
Whilst me being gay isn't that important to them or the reason they want me around, they do like the point of view I have as a gay person who has gone on an empowerment journey. It gives me substance, rather than froth.
Finally, I’m being seen as someone who can contribute as a human, not just ‘a gay’ - and a complex one at that. It’s giving me confidence to see myself in this way too and that feels empowering in itself.
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