Gay best friend trope

Rickie Vasquez threw the first brick at the Gay Best Friend trope. For one of the first times ever, a network show featured a gay male lead who did technically fill the best friend role to his. From Rupert Everett in My Best Friend's Wedding to Dan Levy in Happiest Season, here's a look at some of the most notable GBFs of the past few decades, and recent characters who are changing.

The term ‘gay best friend’ (GBF) is inherently microaggressive. It may seem as though this term simply connects someone’s identity to their relationship with someone else, but this phenomenon is riddled with subtle dehumanization. With a Gay Best Friend ™, you won't have to feel that your masculinity is being threatened.

We have Camp Gay for cheap laughs and fashion advice, and Straight Gay for bros, burgers and beer. The gay best friend (GBF) is a recurrent trope that is the most common of LGBTQIA+ tropes. It typically involves a white, gay, male best friend whose entire plot revolves around being the best friend to the heterosexual female lead. After I came out, I faced bullying, rejection, and depression. Always listening to her boy problems and being her comedy side queen should have been an honour.

Having dabbled with the thought of being straight and denying who I was for far too long, I stopped pretending that my best friend was a potential love interest thank you Alex and told my family just before I left sixth form. Although it felt like I'd just climbed a mountain, that was only the beginning.

gay best friend urban dictionary

My straight girl friends were supportive, and excited to suddenly have a GBF. To them, I could be that trusty friend to go bra shopping with, who'd talk about men with them into the early hours, all while braiding their hair. And at first, that was fine with me. Those friends brought me back to life after hiding for so long. I finally felt needed and, for the first time in my life, like I fitted in.

But the negatives that came with the GBF label gradually started to creep in. It felt cruel. According to the Urban Dictionary, " The gay best friend is the best friend of any hot girl you know, and the key to getting with that girl. Behind every hot Girl is a GBF. Forever the odd one out. I lost count of the times I was the only boy shopping with a group of girls.

An adult man who towered over me, pulled me to one side, and said it wasn't right for a boy to be friends with a group of girls.

Unaware of his homophobia, I assumed he was right I remember once being the GBF on a cinema trip, where all of the girls had a guy and I had popcorn. No amount of jokes they cracked could hide that as the awkward single gay boy, that I wasn't like them at all. A plus no one. I got used to being the only boy in a crowded room, feeling ignored and fighting tears.

Because the reality of being the GBF was an uncomfortable and lonely existence. As much as I adored my friends, I knew they'd never truly understand how I felt. I worried that person had heard the word gay and now that's all they saw me as. And as someone who struggled with being gay for so long, having it constantly highlighted was hard. All I craved was to be 'normal' and to fit in. But all I did was stand out.

A role that was meant to make me feel accepted and loved gradually turned out to be a pretty hard gig. But re-watching the romantic comedies I'd loved when I was younger, I noticed the GBF was always a side-line character, wing man or supporting role. It's a role that on the surface works for the happy ending of a rom com, revolving around one character. But because we rarely heard a back story for those unsung heroes, we never got to find out who they really were.

Their lives and struggles weren't important enough.