Paper Girls emerges as an LGBTQ+ coming of age story: A full season review
Paper Girls is a brand new Amazon Studios production that is taking the internet by storm. It’s the story of four 12-year-old girls with nothing in common except they all are responsible for the paper runs in their town. On the morning after Halloween in 1988, all four girls are out at the break of dawn fulfilling their duties when something spookily supernatural, and unbelievably terrifying, happens in their town.
The girls don’t know what is happening, but they have enough self-preservation to know that it’s bad. They don’t know each other at all but it’s clear they’re faced with a choice: stick together and try and figure out a way through this, or head out into… all that and just hope for the best. They choose the former.
Why are we reporting on this show? A little birdy told us that there was just a smidge of queer representation in this show, and that it was done remarkably well. The girls are 12 though, which left us raising our eyebrows at just how much queer rep they could cram into a 12-year-old’s coming of age story. However, thank the heavens above that we watched this show. Paper Girls is so much more than just a show with a sprinkling of queer rep. It’s an incredible story in general, with incredible young actresses, and yeah, the way they expertly weave in the young queer exploration is also pretty freaking incredible.
Here is what we have to say about Amazon Studio’s Paper Girls.
The 411
It’s Erin’s (Riley Lai Nelet) first day on the job as a paper girl, and it doesn’t get off to a great start. She upsets a customer and is rescued by Tiffany (Camryn Jones) and soon they’re joined by Mac (Sofia Rosinsky). Word on the street is that the local trouble makers have KJ (Fina Strazza) cornered and they all set off to help her.
After they rescue KJ from the local creeps – who are definitely up to no good with her, by the way – they band together to try and get their paper routes finished, attempting to reclaim some of the time they lost to the post-Halloween shenanigans happening in their town. But things take a turn down Very Weird and Unexplainable Lane. The sky turns purple, there is a lot of weird noise, and the paper girls definitely don’t recognize what – or who – those things are that are walking around.
Suddenly, the paper girls are being pursued and they’re pushed into a capsule kind of thing and when they emerge on the other side, they don’t realize it, but they’ve time traveled into the future. They land in 2019, and well, that’s very bad indeed.
They run into Grown Up Erin (Ally Wong) and Erin realizes her life isn’t at all what she hoped it would turn out to be. Reality check: adulting sucks, especially if you’re Erin Tieng.
All the other girls experience moments like this too. They get a glimpse into what their life is supposed to turn out like, just so long as nothing is disturbed in the inter dimensional spaces that keep everything together. And most of them aren’t particularly happy about what they find.
They all have their fair share of disappointment, heartbreak, loss, and generational family drama that follows them all well into their future selves.
They spend the eight episodes trying to get back to 1988. They are clearly being pursued by the big bad not-so-alien spacey people because they broke the time traveling rule, so naturally, they’re constantly on the run and dodging death at every turn. The final episode ends on one hell of a cliffhanger, and honestly, someone please tell us there is going to be a second season. We might just die, if there isn’t!
The gay stuff
The story unfolds for a good five-ish episodes before any hint of rainbow activity is presented to the viewers. When KJ runs into herself in the future, older KJ is studying film at New York University. This surprises KJ immensely, but doesn’t surprise her as much as finding out that future KJ-is-gay does.
Future KJ has brought her college bestie home for the weekend, but clearly KJ’s parents don’t know the truth about the extent of their relationship, because they keep trying to set KJ up with all the local single dudes. 12-year-old KJ doesn’t even really get what is going on until she sees herself kissing said friend.
KJ goes into what can only be described as the 12-year-old equivalent of a full on gay crisis. As this revelation sits with her and she processes what she saw, there seems to be some kind of understanding that settles into KJ’s psyche, and we think that she probably was thinking about herself in these terms without really knowing it for a while.
KJ doesn’t tell anyone that future her is gay, although she does come close a few times. However this is where the chemistry with Mac starts to ramp up a little. We don’t want to call it sexual tension, because they are 12, but it certainly starts to look as if KJ cares about Mac in a different way than she does the others.
And although it’s never confirmed, we kind of think Mac feels the same way in return. We don’t get to see what Mac is thinking about all this though, or even how she would react to the news of KJ being gay, because the season ends before any resolution is presented here.
LGBTQ praises
This storyline was masterfully woven into the larger arc of this season. Young KJ is a tween in the 80s – which was not an easy time for the LGBTQ community. Her initial shock and horror that she is gay in her adult life was right on brand. However, and even more importantly, the fact that she didn’t let herself stay in that emotional place for long is both important and beautiful.
There is a reluctant acceptance of herself, and while she may not be ready to march out into the world brandishing a rainbow flag, not once does she think about trying to mess with the universe so she could change this about herself.
The creators of this show treated this 12-year-old queer kid with just the right amount of… well, everything. She was not oversexualized, or sexualized at all for that matter. She has an internal identity awakening that makes her reconsider everything she knows about herself, as much as she can at 12-years-old. The realism of her self-discovery, despite the fact that this is a sci-fi show, was authentic and lovely.
The creators could have chosen many different paths for KJ’s journey, but honestly we’re super impressed that this is where they went. KJ, in all her gay crisis, could have been any one of us and it was all just so relatable.
Even though we say gay, all day, even without the gay, Paper Girls is an incredible show. Thank you Amazon Studios for giving the community a place in this amazing story. We can’t wait to see what happens next.
Paper Girls is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram for all queer stuff!
