12 LGBTQIA+ tropes we don’t want to see in pop culture anymore

Large age gaps

Age gaps are inexplicably unescapable in media. Even in recent films like Call Me by Your Name, the main couple of film features a significant age gap in their relationship. Granted, Call Me by Your Name also steps into a problematic territory, seeing as the age gap features a 17-year-old minor and a 24-year-old man, which can conflate the age-old stereotype that gay identities are predatory.

Not every LGBTQIA+ love story featuring an age gap has harmful implications. Some impending love stories, like Ammonite, not only feature historically revolutionary women paleontologists, but also showcase a lesbian couple with a larger age gap.

As Intomore notes, not every trope in media and film is explicitly or implicitly harmful. Seeing as age gaps, large or not, exist in healthy couples within the LGBTQIA+ community, highlighting a lesbian or gay couple who also have a larger age gap doesn’t inflict or distort the community. At the same time, it’s become so overdone.

If films really need to fulfill a certain cliché requirement, we’d suggest a more interesting trope, such as the enemies-to-lovers trope. After all, there are a ton of LGBTQIA+ stories to tell in every genre. Any existing tropes don’t necessarily impede on getting multifarious LGBTQIA+ stories produced in film, books, or otherwise. However, it seems disingenuous that productions featuring gay and lesbian characters don’t also highlight diverse narratives.