In every generation, there is a chosen one. She alone will inspire the gays, gals, and theys. She is a gay icon and she slays.
OK fine. That description actually applies to tons of iconic women who have made our lives better simply by existing, but there’s only one who truly slayed before that word even entered our vernacular. We are of course talking about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, AKA the pinup every gay boy had up on their wall when the parentals started to act suspicious.
Since The Greatest Show Of All Time™ came to an end in 2003, Buffy star Sarah Michelle Gellar has continued to do the Lord’s work in camp masterpieces such as Scooby-Doo, Ringer, and of course, Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, not to mention earlier classics like Simply Irresistible and Cruel “You can put it anywhere” Intentions.
RelatedTV is about to get a lot crueler and hopefully queerer too.
But what about Buffy herself? The Slayer wasn’t gay back then — although she is canonically queer in the comics that followed — but Buffy the show was. Incredibly so. At a time when TV was far from kind to the LGBTQ+ community, Buffy gave us fully realized gay characters and even more gay metaphors that spoke to an entire generation of queer fans lucky enough to exist at the same time this show aired on screen.
RelatedHere’s a little new millennium nostalgia for your day.
The hardest thing in this world is to live in it, but each week, Buffy made it a little easier for us, so let’s celebrate that by looking back at the gayest things that happened on this show.