Queerbaiting

When I was younger I would tape up posters all over my room, mostly boys that my friends talked about and girls I “admired”. Back then I never understood why I truly had these women on my walls other than the fact that at that time I wanted to be an actress like them. But as I grew up I started to take notice why they had a spot. Sophomore year of high school, I had three best friends that I hung out with all the time. Throughout this time we all found out why we “admired” women but only talked about One Direction. One of us loved Lady Gaga, one loved Florence Welch, one loved Demi Lovato, and I loved Sasha Alexander. Having each other to talk to about the feelings we had towards certain people, gave us an outlet to understand who we are and who we like.

Having that connection is how I figured it all out. But for most, they don’t feel safe or comfortable to talk to others they care about, due to the fact that you have no idea if that person will accept this small fraction of them. So, they look to the representation on TV and in movies for their own sort of Bat-signal. Though a lot of TV and films didn’t have representation of LGBT or really much of any race for that matter until the world got a little more accepting.

Many years ago queer-coding dominated the screen, which ultimately defines a character through traits associated with the LGBT+ community without specifying that they are indeed a part of the community. Much like male villains being depicted as flamboyant in Disney films, like Scar in The Lion King and Jafar in Aladdin. But while it died down a bit, the gay characters altered into the cliché best friend – only there for the joke not to represent the population of who identified as gay.

Nowadays, with people more open to showing LGBT+ characters that hold a value and with more people wanting to see themselves on the screen; we have entered a new form of “coding”. In the community we call it queerbaiting – if you aren’t in the community you probably haven’t heard of it – which promotes characters that are straight as if they could be gay or will become gay at one point. Just think of how the network always suggested the will they/won’t they relationship of Grace and Will on Will & Grace but just reversed. A major example of this is the first episode and the promos for season one of The CW’s Riverdale, which showed Betty and Veronica kissing in order to get on the cheerleading team. The promos had implied that Betty and Veronica may be more than friends – based solely on the promos alone – but when many watched the first episode to see a piece of them represented in a new teen drama on The CW, they were taken for fools.

(I couldn’t find the promo from the first season, but found the kiss they promoted in the first episode of the series)