Love Lies Eating

This vintage photo of Kristen Stewart at Hooters is the gayest thing on Earth

Do you remember 2009? If not, I completely understand. It was a dark moment in time, and if you’ve managed to completely erase it from your memory you’d be not only forgiven, but marked 100% sane. It’s kind of a miracle that queer people survived the second half of the ‘oughts and early 2010s, a horrible era when people openly dragged Britney for having mental health issues and proudly assumed that Kristen Stewart was a man-loving straight heterosexual.

It’s easy to look back on that time and laugh so we don’t cry: the culture was so insanely closeted that it took a mainstream TV series about show choir to bust us out of it.

But in case you need a refresher, this should tell you everything: back in 2013, a tabloid snapped a photo of sapphic icon Kristen Stewart posing outside of a Hooters with a bunch of employees, and the caption truly says it all.

There’s so much to take in here. The aggressive flash photography, the incredibly 2013 side part with swoop hair look that everyone was rocking…it’s history in motion. But the best part is that somehow no one involved realized just how gay this entire deal was.

Now, of course, we know KStew for the sapphic icon she is. But back then, the culture was completely oblivious to what is patently a statement of gay intent.

This is basically a hagiographic image at this point.

Before there was Love Lies Bleeding, there was KStew at the Amarillo Hooters.

Hooters should really have taken this opportunity to hard launch a new slogan: Come for the wings, stay for the sapphic iconography.

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