Pop Culture as a Tool for Identity Formation in Girls Can Kiss Now

Defining the Thematic Claim

In Girls Can Kiss Now, Jill Gutowitz argues that pop culture functions as both a prison and a playground for queer identity formation. She treats Disney Channel celebrities, Britney Spears songs, Taylor Swift albums, and tabloid gossip not as mere entertainment but as raw materials—sometimes toxic, sometimes liberating—that she uses to understand, repress, and finally embrace her lesbian sexuality. The book traces a progression: from using pop culture as escapism from family trauma, to experiencing it as a trigger for same-sex desire, to finally curating it into a communal “lesbian canon” that actively builds queer selfhood. This analysis explores that arc across three key plot movements, linking characters and symbols, and confronting the moral complexities of speculation and male-gaze appropriation.

Part One: Escapism through Disney Stardom (Chapter 2)

During the 2007–2008 financial crisis, Gutowitz’s family lost their home and her father’s business collapsed. Rather than confronting her trauma or repressed sexuality, she entered what she calls a “Disney Channel fugue state.” The Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus, and Taylor Swift became vessels for her fantasy of fame as a rescue. She didn’t want to act; she wanted to be famous—a strategy borrowed directly from the mid-2000s celebrity industrial complex, which promised that extreme visibility could erase suffering.

This phase reveals pop culture as a dissociative tool. Gutowitz describes filling “each hole” scooped out by her father’s tears with a Jonas Brothers song. The narrative emphasizes that she had no emotional vocabulary for her queerness; instead, she copied the Disney Channel template of “be yourself” while remaining deeply closeted. The contradiction is central: the same media that offered escape also enforced heteronormativity. Disney stars like Miley Cyrus were marketed as aspirational yet implicitly straight, and Gutowitz’s desire to become them was a way to avoid becoming herself.

Part Two: The Gay Panic Trigger (Chapter 7 and Chapter 3)

The pivotal moment occurs in Chapter 7, when ten-year-old Gutowitz watches Britney Spears’s “I’m a Slave 4 U” music video with her high school tennis team. Her cool, magnetic teammate Brooke declares, “I’d go down on Britney Spears. Easily.” Gutowitz describes a physical blackout—her “first gay panic.” The song becomes a Pavlovian trigger: for years afterward, those six synth hits transport her back to that moment of horrified recognition.

Here, pop culture acts as a catalyst for desire, but the desire is mediated through the male gaze. As Gutowitz explains in Chapter 3, 2000s lesbian imagery—from the American Pie 2 girl-on-girl scene to Britney and Madonna’s VMAs kiss—was created for straight men. She internalized shame because she couldn’t enjoy those images “correctly.” The Britney video is both the source of her sexual awakening and the symbol of her confusion. She couldn’t reconcile wanting to be Brooke (the popular girl who expressed same-sex desire) with wanting to avoid being a lesbian. The symbol of “I’m a Slave 4 U” thus embodies the tension between pop culture’s power to provoke authentic feeling and its historical packaging of queerness for heterosexual consumption.

Part Three: Active Curation and the Lesbian Canon (Chapter 12 and Chapter 3)

By the time Gutowitz writes Chapter 12, “The Current Lesbian Canon, as It Stands,” she has reversed her relationship to pop culture. Instead of passively consuming exploitative content, she actively curates a list of implicitly queer objects, people, and concepts: oat milk, folklore, Rosamund Pike’s vape, weighted blankets, the moon. This canon is intentionally fluid and subjective; she declares, “if the list is amorphous, then the list itself is queer.” The act of gathering these artifacts becomes a communal identity-forming practice, connecting queer people who historically had limited representation.

This phase also reckons with moral complexity. Gutowitz participates in “Gaylor” Taylor Swift speculation, wondering if she has become a modern Perez Hilton—the blogger who outed Lance Bass and vilified Samantha Ronson. She concludes that her intent is community, not harm, but acknowledges the fine line. Pop culture remains a double-edged sword: it can build solidarity or cause real damage (Ronson lost a defamation suit). Gutowitz’s later chapters, especially the folklore breakdown in Chapter 14 and the Clueless comparison in Chapter 13, show her using pop culture to articulate love over fame, finally integrating her queer identity with genuine connection to Emma.

Symbol Connections

Several symbols recur throughout the analysis. The Britney Spears “I’m a Slave 4 U” song is the primary trigger for desire and shame. The “yearn cage”—Gutowitz’s term for the restless longing that pop culture can provoke—appears in her listening to folklore and imagining a werewolf transformation. The pop concert countdown represents the anticipatory ritual of queer fandom, waiting for representation that rarely arrives. The Lesbian Canon itself becomes a symbol of self-authorization: by naming the list, Gutowitz claims the power to define her own identity through pop culture.

Complexity and Contradiction

The book never simplifies pop culture as purely good or bad. Gutowitz acknowledges that her escapist Disney phase delayed her coming-out, and that the same gossip blogs that fed her curiosity also enabled predatory outing. Yet she also insists that without pop culture—without that Britney video or the paparazzi photos of Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson—she might never have discovered queerness at all. The final chapters suggest a mature integration: she no longer needs fame to feel worthy, but she still uses Taylor Swift albums to process emotion. Pop culture remains the medium through which she understands herself, but she now controls the frame.

Study Questions and Answers

1. How does Gutowitz use the Jonas Brothers in Chapter 2 to illustrate escapism?
   She describes filling “emotional holes” with their songs after her family lost their home. The Jonas Brothers represented a nearby, attainable fame that could lift her out of trauma, allowing her to avoid dealing with her repressed sexuality.

2. Why is the Britney Spears music video “I’m a Slave 4 U” crucial to Gutowitz’s identity formation?
   It provokes her first conscious same-sex desire when Brooke announces she would “go down” on Britney. The song becomes a Pavlovian trigger for the memory of that gay panic, forcing her to confront that she wanted what Brooke described.

3. What does the “Lesbian Canon” in Chapter 12 reveal about queer identity construction?
   It shows that queer people historically collected implicit signs (oat milk, folklore, “vibes”) because explicit representation was scarce. The list’s fluidity is itself queer, and the act of curating builds community and self-definition.

4. How does Gutowitz address the danger of queer speculation in relation to Perez Hilton?
   She admits she engages in “Gaylor” theories about Taylor Swift, but distinguishes her intent from Hilton’s malicious outing. She argues that intent and cultural context matter: her speculation seeks connection, not harm, yet she remains uneasy about the power of gossip.

5. What is the role of the character Emma in Gutowitz’s final understanding of pop culture?
   In Chapter 13 and 14, Gutowitz realizes that trying to fill existential voids with Hollywood status was hollow. Listening to folklore alone leads her to tell Emma she no longer wants to be “special”—just to be with her. Pop culture shifts from a tool for escape to a shared language for genuine intimacy.