You needed heartstopping courage to come out in ’90s
Netflix has been a pioneering streaming service for promoting programmes that are a little outside of the box. Its new LGBTQ+ school drama, Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper is about a shy, geeky, gay boy falling for a rugby player and it’s been an overnight success.
It features a wide spectrum of identities that started out as a beautifully illustrated graphic novel that squirreled its way through to my reading collection just before the pandemic hit. It was a simple youthful story full of hope and sweetness that was a welcome alternative to the slowly unwinding world of Covid chaos.
It is very important that Heartstopper exists. Coming out as LGBTQ+ in any school in the 1990s was akin to being thrown into a piranha infested pool of guaranteed social pariahdom.
Hard bullying and crippling isolation were the only things waiting for you if you had the bravery to be yourself and speak out.
Homophobia was and still is rampant in life and is used to punish anyone that deviates from the norm of social expectations. School was and still is one of the riskier places to come out. If you were not the same as everyone else, you were a target. If you were LGBTQ+ you were a target forever.
Heartstopper is different. It promotes a normality and honesty you don’t often see in LGBTQ+ shows and puts forward a strong but much-needed message that being gay and having crushes is perfectly normal and is part of everyday life.
No, Heartstopper is sweet and normal, and is needed. Having an affirming representation on your screen of your own existence is something many older people would have craved in their day.
Obviously the show is not aimed at a slowly moulding millennial like me. It is for teenagers and that’s fine. There must be many older fans who have streamed Heartstopper wishing this show had existed years ago.
I’d love to see more of Alice Oseman’s works brought to the big screen. Loveless for example is one of the few books that explores asexuality. I’d be surprised if that was not next in line. Roll on for more identity representation!