Angelina Jolie Made Me Gay

A Pride Month reflection on the 90s/00s women who were my gay roots

Happy Summer everyone! We’re officially on summer break from school and the days are longer and slower, which is just how I like it.

I couldn’t let June go by without writing something about being gay, even though I’m gay 365 days a year. Pop culture plays a huge part in the understanding of my sexuality, both consciously and unconsciously. I’ve written about my teenage attraction to Christina Aguilera before, so no need to rehash that part. But before then, there were rumblings of a little lesbian just waiting to be let out. 

When I was a kid, I watched a lot of TV. Even though I had a strict bedtime on weekdays during the school year, I never had a bedtime on the weekends and was allowed to stay up during summer break. Late nights were always my time — my parents were usually asleep by 11pm and if I was prepared, I could stay up until the sun rose. In elementary and middle school, I was given free reign over the TV unless it was time for one of the few shows my mom watched. 

Sometime in 1998 while up late after my parents fell asleep, I watched the movie Gia on HBO. It starred Angelina Jolie as Gia Carangi, one of the most famous 80s supermodels who sadly died of AIDS-related complications. She likely contracted the virus due to her intravenous drug addiction. Gia was queer and has a girlfriend in the film. That was the first time I had ever seen a sex scene between two women, and both of them were femmes. At that time, I didn’t even know lesbians could be stereotypically feminine. The only lesbian I knew was my mom’s best friend, who is an old school butch. That sex scene was burned into my brain — I remember searching the TV Guide to see when it would be airing again. I could only watch it when my parents were asleep, and I did as many times as I could.

Angelina Jolie and Elizabeth Mitchell in ‘Gia’

That was the first time I was ever consciously aware that I was attracted to women. The sex scene was so hot, and also really tender. It made me feel things in places where I hadn’t really felt things before. Watching it made me understand why I wanted to touch my friends’ boobs at sleepovers. I wanted to touch a woman like Angelina Jolie, and have her touch me back. Of course, this wasn’t something I shared with anyone for a few years. I kept Angelina and Gia as a precious secret for a long time.

As an adult, I began to reexamine a lot of the pop culture and actresses I claimed I loved as a kid and teen and began piecing things together. I watched The Brady Bunch Movie a million times because I thought Christine Taylor was hot — that crush went back to the Nickelodeon show Hey Dude. Sure, Drew Barrymore is a good actress, but I watched Boys on the Side because you see her boobs. Kate Winslet? Fucking brilliant. But the reason I love Titanic had little to do with Leo DiCaprio and his floppy hair and a lot to do with her boobs and that sex scene in the car. Jennifer Love Hewitt? BOOBS. But that’s not all.

Before I became an MTV girl, I was very into VH1. I loved shows like Pop-Up Video because I saw a lot of older music videos and learned fun facts, which is something I’ve always enjoyed. It was on VH1 that I learned about singers like Sheryl Crow and Jewel. Music videos were an art form in the 90s because they were still new. There was an eclectic mix of mini movies, performances, and general wtf-ery that began to exist less and less over time as they became more slick.

There are two music videos from the 90s that I can absolutely cite as roots for my queerness, even though I wouldn’t realize it until I was an adult. The first one is “Freedom ‘90” by George Michael. Michael had decided by then that he would no longer appear in music videos, so instead, he got five supermodels: Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington and Tatjana Patitz, to star in it instead. I was OBSESSED with that music video when I was younger. Anytime it would come on, I would sit in front of our TV set riveted for six minutes. Even though I had seen it a million times, I would act like I had never seen it before. 

While I was definitely very attracted to the big four (I will one day write about their documentary), I was most intrigued by Linda and Naomi. There’s a section of the video where Linda pulls her head inside the turtleneck she’s wearing and you can see her bra straps. I was always a little extra tingly during that part, hoping that maybe this time, the camera would pan an inch or two lower and I’d get to see her bra. Naomi spends the latter minutes of the video in a sheer dress, and I always wished that she’d move her arm over just a hair. It never happened, but that didn’t stop me from dreaming. I was so enamored with the women in that video that I forgot there were male models in it until a few years ago. I’m not even kidding.

I would still die for Linda Evangelista

The other big video for me was “Crazy” by Aerosmith. It’s the last of three music videos by the band starring Alicia Silverstone. Even though they were made before Clueless, I saw them after, when I was already quite into Alicia. Clueless is one of my favorite movies — I was absolutely a Dionne, but Cher always had such a special place in my heart. Probably because I wanted to rub my soft parts against her soft parts. “Crazy” is special because it’s also the debut of Liv Tyler, who I was in love with because of That Thing You Do! The two of them in that video held my rapt attention. They play two schoolgirls who cut school and go on an escapade. There is a scene where Alicia dons a suit, tucking her long, blonde hair up under a fedora and Liv wears a crop top and bellbottom pants. They head to a strip club, where Liv competes in a pole dancing competition. My soft parts were on fire. 

Alicia Silverstone, the woman you are…

I always say I fell in love with Liv Tyler when her character Faye breaks up with Jonathon Schaech’s character Jimmy in That Thing You Do! Her eyes were so big and sad and her face was so open, that all I wanted to do was take her in my arms and make her feel better. But the movie Armageddon really cemented it for me. I saw that movie twice in theaters. Looking back, it’s one of the earliest instances of my bisexuality, because I was attracted to both her and Ben Affleck in that movie. Of course, I only mentioned Ben, but I think that was mainly because I didn’t yet know that I was so into Liv. I still have it bad for Liv and Alicia. They’re both getting more beautiful with age, and if I ever saw either of them in person, I’d probably faint.

I have never recovered

I didn’t truly understand that I was bi until the summer of 2000 when I was 14. Summertime is the worst for TV because pretty much everything goes on hiatus. But thankfully that summer there was a summer series called Young Americans. It was marketed as a “spinoff” of Dawson’s Creek that was heavily sponsored by Coca-Cola. I put spinoff in quotes because they really shoehorned the main character into Dawson’s to get the audience to tune in that summer. And I did, because I was desperate for something to do. That was a tough summer — I was about to start high school and had moved to a different borough, and my friends kind of abandoned me. Anyway!

The show centers around an all-boys boarding school that the smart kid from the wrong side of the tracks ends up attending after cheating on the entrance exam. The show mostly deals with class, but it also deals with gender through a storyline where a female student poses as a boy to see if her mother realizes that she’s missing. That character, Jacqueline aka Jake, falls in love with the dean’s son Hamilton. Hamilton was played by a very young Ian Somerhalder, and Jake was played by an equally young Kate Moennig, who you may know as Shane on The L Word. I was obsessed with their storyline, but I was more clued in at that point and knew that I thought both of them were hot. Jake (and by extension Kate) is the reason that I am attracted to tomboyish, masc of center women. The first time I saw The L Word, I was like, “Oh my god, it’s Jake from Young Americans!” I got to talk to Kate last year and I totally reverted back to a starstruck 14-year-old. We’re talking, full on shaking and feeling like I was going to fall over. Young Americans also starred Kate Bosworth, and yeah, I thought she was cute too. That’s probably why I dragged my mom to see the movie Blue Crush.

Kate and Ian: a goddamn bisexual nightmare

There are other ways aughts pop culture wove its way into my queer journey. I had my first kiss when I was 17 by acting out the scene from the movie Cruel Intentions where Sarah Michelle Gellar teaches Selma Blair how to kiss. I’m not kidding, we did the dialogue and everything. The girl with whom I shared said kiss, a friend of one of my friends from school, sent me the scene so I could learn the lines and we could do it off book. That kiss led to months of hooking up in secret the summer before my senior year of high school. We lost touch not too long after that, but whenever that movie comes up, I think of her. 

I’m sure there are other examples that I’m missing, but I think y’all get the point. I have to thank 90s pop culture for making me the little lezzie that I am today. God bless Angelina Jolie, patron saint of millennial queer women.