It is something that still crowds my mind as a 26-year-old queer woman who passes by a Gap store, one of the earliest memories of coming to realize how society viewed people like me. The “gay and proud” Gap taunt made it abundantly clear that LGBTQ sexuality was supposed to be shameful and hidden. Queer sexuality wasn't something often talked about in my small Massachusetts town, and I certainly didn't know any queer people. It was rare to see out and proud public figures except people like Ellen DeGeneres and Rosie O'Donnell. Unlike today, LGBTQ lives weren't often displayed in media in the early 2000s except for in shows like Queer Eye For The Straight Guy. “I didn’t know what it was, but I knew it was bad, and I felt like I was going to get made fun of if I asked what that meant.”īy middle school, I knew liking girls was not “normal” from tiny clues in my life, like my sister once saying my mom thought there was “something wrong with me” because I never talked about crushes on boys. “I walked into middle school as a fifth grader with a GAP hoodie on and had to go home and Google what ‘gay’ meant,” 25-year-old Meghan Welch, who is one of my former classmates, tells me. But that didn’t stop children from latching on the the pseudo-acronym as a form of homophobic bullying. I already knew the answer - of course it didn’t mean gay and proud. I will admit, my early 2000s search history on dial-up Internet probably contained the phrase “Does Gap really mean ‘Gay And Proud?’” But even so, I only half-heartedly typed the question to Ask Jeeves. But when you add in the opinions and judgement of the outside world, things can get tricky. After all, it’s really simple to accept your feelings when they are just your feelings. It was a fact that was pretty easy for me to accept and rationalize without trauma or turmoil. I have known I liked girls since elementary school.
The schoolyard taunting related to Gap is one of the most formative memories I have about fashion - and my own queerness. That’s because “Gap” was synonymous with “gay and proud” amongst my ruthless, pre-teen peers. If I had, I knew that I would immediately be made fun of, followed around the halls with finger-pointing and incessant taunting.
Though I recognized the new pieces of clothing as prestigious and special, I almost never wore my sweatshirt to school in southeastern Massachusetts. They were true luxury items for children in my family’s financial situation. The sweatshirts, which boldly displayed the word “Gap” across the chest, were much more expensive than any other sweatshirt we had ever owned. When I was in middle school, my sister and I ripped open wrapping paper one Christmas morning to reveal matching periwinkle sweatshirts from my aunt.