Why Queer Adults Love (and Need) Queer YA Media

Nick (Kit Connor) and Charlie (Joe Locke) are British teens that fall for each other in Netflix's "Heartstopper" created by Alice Oseman.

Source: Netflix/ Fair use

In recent decades, we have seen a growing surge of media telling the stories of queer people—created, distributed, and widely acclaimed across literature, theater, film, and TV.

A large portion of this content has been stories created for the young adult (YA) audience, featuring queer teen characters navigating adolescence, identity, relationships, and sex. This influx in queer YA is helping change the culture by normalizing and providing representation of the young queer people's experience. It also is having a profound effect on many queer adults.

The Impact of Queer YA Media on Queer Adults

Queer adults make up a large sector of the consumers of contemporary queer YA media. As a psychotherapist who specializes in supporting LGBTQ+ adults, I often hear from my clients how it is queer YA, such as Heartstopper (graphic novel and TV series), The Prom (Broadway musical and film), The Half of It (film), They Both Die at the End (book), and Love, Simon (book and film), that impact them the most out of any other media they consume. This impact is often a confusing mix of emotions felt all at once.

Many feel excitement and joy that our world (and today's queer youth) now has access to stories like this being told. At the same time, they can feel a complicated sense of sorrow, envy, and grief.

Grief for their younger selves not having access to these stories as they were trying to figure out their identity. And grief for their younger selves never getting to have the queer adolescence that these teen characters in today’s queer YA are getting to have. Crushes actualized. Romantic relationships. Supportive coming outs. Fulfilling sexual experiences. First loves. First heartbreaks.

Having our true selves seen and known by those who matter most to us.

Though painful, this grief and other emotions evoked by queer YA media does present an opportunity for queer adults that is often overlooked when we are watching, listening to, or reading these stories: We can use queer YA as an intentional tool for our own healing

Queer YA as a Path to Healing: An Exercise

We all carry within us these wounds of our younger selves. For queer people, our wounds are often those of deeply internalized shame caused by anti-queerness and grief for not getting to have had the adolescence and upbringing we wished could have been. The feelings we feel when witnessing the teens in Heartstopper, and other queer YA, in many ways are feelings both of our current adult selves and those of our younger selves.

We feel our adult selves’ response to observing the lives of queer teen characters (grief, joy, jealousy, etc.) and we may also feel our younger selves’ response (desire, longing, envy, etc.).

Here is an exercise queer adults could consider before pressing play or opening the page to begin the next queer YA media pulling them in: What if we intentionally invite our younger self to join us?

What if we consciously bring our 12-year-old, 14-year-old, or 17-year-old self to mind and into the room with us and see what happens as we engage in contemporary queer YA together?

Letting them share what they feel as they watch or read these stories with us. Letting us share with them what we feel. Acknowledging to them that these were stories they needed when they were growing up, and the experiences the characters get to have were ones they needed when they were teens. Letting them share how they feel was missing what the characters get to have.

As adults in our second adolescence, seeking to heal from growing up within an anti-queer world, finding ways like this to be with our younger selves, and process such feelings together, can be so helpful. And, it can be a place to let our younger selves know we are trying to live fully for them now, seeking out the life that exists beyond the limits internalized anti-queerness made us once, perhaps, believe.