Growing up can be incredibly isolating. If you don’t fit the status quo, or fit with the rest of the crowd. Personally, I remember being so alone that I didn’t ever hang out with people until 7th grade. In our childhoods, we consume cartoons or other forms of visual and audio media that imprint certain ethics on us- how to behave, navigate issues, etc. -but in the case of myself and many other queer youths, we don’t see ourselves reflected in that media where as a heterosexual child can relate and therefore learn from media. It’s my opinion that in gay men’s searches for both representations in content and simple framing of content (i.e pronouns) they become enveloped in pop singers- specifically women singing about unrequited or forbidden love. As they grow, keeping these songs in mind, they then begin to internalize feelings of loneliness and the general moods of the songs they grow up with. There’s an incredible Huffington Post piece about gay men being lonely in the modern age. It is my thesis, then, that by consuming melodramatic music simply because it fits the pronouns of our attractions, we internalize them a fair bit more. I’d research how we intake information in our childhoods, anxiety/depression rates in gay men, the music tastes of gay men between 20-30, and more to fit my thesis. Even beyond that, shame over adoration of these artists in our childhoods is what makes the post-closet gay man proclaim his love for certain artists with the furor they usually do. They “stan” so to speak, and carry the voices of female artists on their backs for generations.
Article on Gay loneliness: http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/gay-loneliness/
