15 best LGBTQIA+ characters in movies

Les (Bring It On)

Unfortunately, Les doesn’t get nearly enough screentime in Bring It On. He’s a perfect example of a gay best friend allocated to being in the background and making sassy comments, a predecessor of Damian from Mean Girls.

Les is a male cheerleader and close friend to team captain Torrance. He’s often the butt of gay jokes from the school jocks, along with teammate Jan, but unlike Jan, Les is actually gay. He doesn’t utter the word “gay”  though. When asked about his sexuality by Missy, he says that he’s “controversial.”

It’s not a secret, clearly, but it’s funny to think about how, in 2000, they couldn’t even explicitly say the character is gay.

But besides that, Les is a great friend to Torrance and Missy. Whenever Torrance gets in over her head, he is right there to calm her down and motivate her. He’s her biggest fan, even when the rest of the squad starts doubting her.

What’s nice to see in a film where they won’t even refer to a character as gay is the fact that they don’t make Les completely sexless. One complaint that many gay people have had about gay characters in the past is that they are one-dimensional and sexless, meaning they’re not meant to be sexual beings. Instead, it just seems like they’re there to make jokes.

But there are two instances of Les crushing on guys. First, during the cheerleading try-outs, Les is super into one student who does a ballet routine for his audition. He doesn’t say anything, but he lets out an excited exhale at the end of the dance. It’s not a lot, but we’ll take it — especially considering heterosexual Jan gets to ogle one student who basically gives him a lapdance for her audition.

At the end of the film, Les compliments a male cheerleader on his routine as he walks backstage, with a huge grin on his face. It’s clear the two boys are smitten. It might seem like we’re grasping at straws here, and we are. This is why we need more gay characters in movies, so teens can stop getting excited over little things like one “controversial” character gleefully flirting with another, maybe.