Girls Can Kiss Now: Questions and Answers

1. Why did a Game of Thrones meme lead to an FBI interrogation?

The FBI visited Gutowitz after she tweeted a meme about a character’s death to mock Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings. Republican users reported it as a threat, triggering an investigation that starkly contrasted with the FBI’s failure to act on an actual domestic terrorist’s later threats. The Glomar response denying her records deepened the sense of internet-born trauma.

This incident opens Chapter 1, “Memeing with the FBI.” Gutowitz uses the absurdity to show how online spaces can simultaneously offer queer community and invite disproportionate punishment. The government’s refusal to even acknowledge the case reflects the vulnerability of queer women whose speech is policed while real dangers are ignored. The chapter sets the stage for a memoir built on the collision of pop culture and personal danger.

2. How did the 2007–2008 financial crisis fuel Gutowitz’s obsession with Disney Channel fame?

When her family went bankrupt and relocated to wealthy Mountain Lakes, she buried her trauma by idolizing Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers. Convinced that fame would provide a complete escape, she auditioned for acting roles without genuine passion. What she truly craved was the visibility and validation of stardom, a misdirection that delayed her self-acceptance for years.

In Chapter 2, “I’m a Famous Actress, MOM!,” Gutowitz confesses that she “wasn’t an actress; she was just gay.” The chapter reveals how economic collapse and a homogenous new town drove her toward celebrity worship as a survival tactic. Fame became a substitute for dealing with repressed sexuality, illustrating how external chaos can push queer teenagers further from themselves until they eventually confront the truth.

3. What is “Outing 2.0,” and how does Gutowitz defend her Gaylor theories against Perez Hilton’s tactics?

“Outing 2.0” refers to the public speculation about celebrities’ sexuality in the digital age. Gutowitz acknowledges her participation in Taylor Swift–Karlie Kloss fan theories but argues that her intent is community-building, not destruction. She contrasts her behavior with Hilton’s outing of Lance Bass and his harmful campaign blaming Samantha Ronson for Lindsay Lohan’s addiction, which led to a lost defamation suit.

Chapter 3, “One Day, You’ll All Be Gay,” forces an ethical mirror: can queer yearning for representation justify invasive speculation? Gutowitz wrestles with the possibility that she might have become a version of the villain she criticizes, yet she concludes that finding shared queer subtext in a straight-presenting world is an act of survival rather than malice. The chapter highlights the fine line between connection and harm.

4. Why does the photo of Cara Delevingne and Michelle Rodriguez vaping at the Knicks game count as historically Sapphic?

It queered the heteronormative paparazzi trope of celebrities kissing courtside. Instead of replicating the straight playbook, the two women laughed, drank, and vaped, transforming a ritualized romantic photo op into an explicitly queer, rule-breaking moment. Gutowitz argues that every puff of vape smoke literally “queered” the space, modeling that lesbian couples didn’t have to mimic opposite-sex traditions to be visible.

Drawn from Chapter 4, “The Ten Most Important Sapphic Paparazzi Photos in Modern History,” this entry sits alongside canoodling on yachts and carrying a sex bench. The essay reframes checkout-line gossip as a vital queer archive. By elevating vaping to a political act, Gutowitz celebrates how small gestures of autonomy allow queer women to rewrite the scripts they were denied in their own adolescence.

5. How did Darcy’s request “make out with me so he thinks you’re my girlfriend” trap Gutowitz inside the yearn cage?

Darcy weaponized Gutowitz’s secret crush to ward off a man at a bar, offering a performative kiss with no emotional follow-through. Gutowitz complied, receiving a fleeting taste of intimacy that only sharpened her unreciprocated longing. The moment crystallizes the “yearn cage”—the self-imposed prison where queer desire is permitted only as spectacle but never as genuine connection.

This scene from Chapter 5, “A Supercut of Lesbian Yearning,” follows Darcy’s return from a trip where she had met a new boyfriend. The kiss is framed as a favor, not a confession, leaving Gutowitz with the message that her feelings are useful but not real. The chapter argues that lesbian films and culture relentlessly teach women to yearn but never act, and this encounter is the epitome of that damaging narrative.

6. What role did the “Dinner Crew” cult-like gatherings play in Gutowitz’s first major lesbian yearning?

The weekly Christian “Dinner Crew” hosted by a family of teen actors became the unlikely stage for Gutowitz’s obsession with Darcy. Though she felt out of place praying and holding hands with aspiring Disney stars, she returned solely because Darcy was a regular. A quiet exchange over guacamole—“Hey, I missed you”—lit the first spark of a yearning that would consume her for years.

Chapter 5 also traces how this cult-adjacent environment fostered an intense friendship that blurred into romantic fixation. Gutowitz’s homosexuality was the reason she entered Christianity, a darkly comic inversion. The setting accelerated the enmeshment that followed: house-sitting, daily FaceTimes from Darcy’s bathtub, and the eventual ghosting that would leave her devastated.

7. What realization caused Gutowitz to abandon her need for male validation, both straight and gay?

Watching Orange Is the New Black gave her the visible queer representation she lacked in college, but she later noticed she had simply shifted her “boys’ club” approval-seeking from straight comedy gatekeepers to gay men in Los Angeles. The epiphany arrived when she recognized the same insidious pattern: needing to be deemed “the only funny girl.” She consciously erased that hierarchy to build a self-worth grounded in queer coolness.

Chapter 6, “Kill the Creator of ‘Entourage’ in Your Head,” details her college era where a male peer anointed her “the only funny girl,” rewarding her with a brief relationship. The chapter connects this to the Entourage-era conditioning that taught women to compete for male approval. Gutowitz’s lesbian identity ultimately freed her from the compulsion, though not before she admits how thoroughly she once craved the validation.

8. How did Brooke’s comment about Britney Spears during a teen tennis dinner trigger Gutowitz’s first gay panic?

While watching the “I’m a Slave 4 U” performance, the popular older girl Brooke casually announced she would “go down on Britney Spears.” The remark hit Gutowitz like a shockwave, forcing her to recognize her own suppressed queer desires in that instant. The confusion, shame, and physical panic became permanently anchored to the song, turning Britney into a lifelong trigger for self-interrogation.

Chapter 7, “A Britney Spears ‘Blackout’—No, Not That One,” explores how pop music can codify memory. The hierarchical tennis team dynamics magnified the moment’s power: a bold, socially secure girl voiced what Gutowitz couldn’t admit. The chapter doesn’t offer a neat resolution, instead sitting with the raw, awkward latency of adolescence where a single sentence can rewire an entire identity.

9. What does the aisle kiss at the pop concert reveal about Gutowitz’s “cinematic narrative fallacy”?

She and Kate had already broken up, but during the concert countdown they met in the aisle, cried, and kissed as if in a movie ending. Gutowitz later admits she is an unreliable narrator: she saw Kate again after the concert, and the real conclusion was quiet and unglamorous. The “cinematic narrative fallacy” is her tendency to force her life into dramatic scripts, ignoring the messy truth.

Chapter 8, “Crush Me at the Forum,” dissects a toxic three-month spiral. Gutowitz clung to the orchestral swell of “All Good” to give meaning to a relationship built on breakup texts. Two years later, a dinner with The Pop Star she hoped would provide closure fell flat. The chapter illustrates how chasing a perfect story can prevent genuine healing from a love that was never stable.

10. How does Gutowitz connect accidental infant malnutrition to the queer “step on me” phenomenon?

Her mother’s shocking disclosure that baby Jill was malnourished becomes the backstory for a lifelong hunger for female attention. The “step on me” meme, voiced online toward older celebrities like Julianne Moore, thus expresses a desire not for mere submission but for nurturing, safety, and reparative care. Gutowitz redefines the MILF archetype as a queer figure that mends early maternal wounds.

In Chapter 9, “Step on Me, Julianne Moore,” the author pivots from analyzing The Bachelor’s heteronormativity to her own attraction to older women. She traces a path from childhood crushes on teachers and friends’ older sisters to the present-day digital thirst culture. The chapter ultimately reclaims the shame surrounding those longings, presenting “step on me” as a reclamation of desire that society taught her to hide.

11. How does the letter to her twenty-three-year-old self reframe the timing of falling in love with Darcy and surviving Brian’s assault?

The letter reveals that while she was suffering sexual coercion from her boyfriend Brian, she was simultaneously falling in love with Darcy but dismissing it as a pathological obsession. The chapter braids together the aftermath of a rape she couldn’t yet name and a queer awakening she couldn’t yet recognize, showing how compulsory heterosexuality and trauma can obscure each other until therapy untangles them.

In Chapter 10, “I Know This Now,” Gutowitz directly addresses her past self. The Palm Springs trip with Darcy is colored by both the euphoria of desert isolation and the imminent assault by Brian. The chapter’s dual revelation—that she was raped and that she was gay—forces her to confront the cultural narratives that told her what happened wasn’t assault and what she felt wasn’t love.

12. Why do horror movies become a comfort instead of a terror during the pandemic?

As a teenager, The Skeleton Key haunted her for months, and her first kiss with a boy named Jack in the woods felt like a horror scene. As an adult sheltering with Emma, however, she found that scripted horror offered controllable fear. The guaranteed endings of slashers and erotic thrillers became soothing because real-world threats like a virus and relationship strain had no neat resolution.

Chapter 11, “Kiss Me, Murder Me in the Woods,” documents her conversion. The chapter juxtaposes the terrified girl fleeing a boy’s advance with the woman who binge-watches turn-of-the-millennium horror and listens to pop-punk for nostalgic comfort. Gutowitz realizes that adult anxieties are far more overwhelming than any monster, turning the genre into a coping mechanism steeped in early-2000s texture.

13. How does Gutowitz’s lesbian canon list challenge fixed definitions of representation?

She catalogs items as diverse as oat milk, weighted blankets, anxiety, and the moon, arguing that queerness emerges from a community’s shared, often idiosyncratic, attachments rather than from explicit media presence. The list deliberately includes ostensibly non-queer figures like Neve Campbell, whom the community has claimed. Its subjectivity and fluidity make the canon itself a queer object, resisting rigid boundaries.

Chapter 12, “The Current Lesbian Canon, as It Stands,” contrasts the 2003 scarcity of queerbait moments on MTV with today’s abundance. Gutowitz positions herself as a pioneer who lived through both eras, capable of cataloging the cultural detritus that sustained lesbians. The humor in classifying a beverage as lesbian conceals a serious point: representation is often built from interpreted signals rather than official pronouncements.

14. What did the hollow after-party at Chateau Marmont teach Gutowitz about her priorities?

She had secured tickets to the Emma movie premiere to impress her girlfriend, but the after-party left them invisible and alienated. Driving home, she realized she had been trying to plug existential holes with Hollywood glamour rather than investing in the genuine connection she already had. Emma cared about the hotel’s haunted history, not its velvet ropes; Gutowitz had been performing a status she didn’t need.

Chapter 13, “Clueless at Chateau Marmont,” calls back to Cher Horowitz’s misplaced values. The chapter contrasts her friendship with Sam, which is joyfully built on shared pop-culture interests, with her romantic bond with Emma, based on inexplicable magnetism. Gutowitz learns that no amount of “coat culture” or valet parking can replace the person who makes you feel seen without pretense.

15. How does Taylor Swift’s folklore catalyze Gutowitz’s rejection of the pursuit of fame?

As pandemic isolation deepened, the album triggered a breakdown she imagines as a werewolf transformation. In that raw state, she recorded monologues railing against capitalism’s insistence on being exceptional and realized that love with Emma was more fulfilling than any public achievement. She emerged from the metaphorical woods to tell Emma she no longer wanted to be special—just present.

Chapter 14, “The Beast,” closes the memoir’s arc. Gutowitz’s early chapters detail chasing fame as an escape, but here she abandons that ambition entirely. The folklore album, dropped without warning, became the emotional catalyst for a final reckoning with what she truly wanted. The werewolf imagery suggests a monstrous but necessary shedding, after which she chooses a quiet, authentic life over the hollow glow of celebrity.

Explore the full book guide or read the ending explained for broader analysis.