Confession, Coming Out, and Postfeminism: Gendered Representations in Love, Simon and Alex Strangelove

ABSTRACT

I argue that the gay teenage coming-of-age films Love, Simon and Alex Strangelove enact two conservative gendered representations. First, both films portray a post-feminist, single-issue LGBTQ allyship which rationalizes a male-centered understanding of coming out at the expense of the girl best friend. Second, both movies display gendered spatial arrangements which reify problematic gender dynamics by physically displacing the girl best friend with the lead’s new boyfriend. While both films ought to be celebrated for their portrayal of positive environments for closeted teenagers to come out into, they simultaneously deliver narratives which should be further investigated by rhetoricians and media theorists. This essay invites scholars to interrogate gay teenage coming-of-age movies to better understand coming out in the modern era.

KEYWORDS:

• Coming out
• confession
• gay coming-of-age
• gendered spatial rhetoric
• postfeminism

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Benjamin Bates as well as each of the anonymous reviewers for taking the time to critically engage this essay. The author would also like to thank Belinda Stillion Southard who this paper would have been impossible to complete without. Finally, the author would like to thank Cecilia Cerja, Savannah Downing, and Taylor Johnson, whose valuable feedback on previous versions of this project made it possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).