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Come on, who doesn’t love Mitch and Cam?! | Source: WENN.com
In awesome television news today, GLAAD has reported that the 2012-2013 season of prime-time broadcast TV has a record high number of LGBT characters. In other words, there are more LGBT characters and storylines on some of our fave TV shows than ever before. We were totally thrilled to read this! We love hearing that members of the LGBT community are being more positively portrayed in the media. After all, why shouldn’t they be?
The GLAAD “Where We Are On TV” report has a few statistics to back themselves up: 4.4 percent of regularly featured characters on the five broadcast networks this season are LGBT. Compare that to the 2011-2012 season, which was only 2.9 percent, and you’ll see that the numbers have gone way up.
New shows like The Carrie Diaries and Emily Owens, M.D. feature LGBT characters. And The New Normal, which premiered this fall, focuses on a gay couple trying to have a baby via surrogate as the main characters. Then there are some of our old favorites like Modern Family, Glee, Grey’s Anatomy, Pretty Little Liars, True Blood and Revenge, which have all been featuring gay/lesbian/bisexual characters regularly for a few seasons.
GLAAD president Herndon Graddick said, “This year’s increase of LGBT characters on television reflects a cultural change in the way gay and lesbian people are seen in our society. More and more Americans have come to accept their LGBT family members, friends, coworkers and peers, and as as audiences tune into their favorite programs, they expect to see the same diversity of people they encounter in their daily lives.” Graddick added, “When young LGBT people see loving couples like Callie and Arizona on Grey’s Anatomy or Degrassi‘s confident transgender high school student Adam Torres, they find characters they can look up to and slowly start building the courage to live authentically.”
We love that Emily on PLL is bisexual and all of her friends totally accept her | Source: WENN.com
Why have the numbers gone up so much this year? We’re not sure, but we’re definitely not complaining. It’s really refreshing to see a variety of sexual orientations on TV shows and it makes the characters that much easier to relate to. Who doesn’t laugh uncontrollably at Cam and Mitch on Modern Family? Who isn’t rooting for Kurt and Blaine on Glee? And try and tell me you don’t love Emily from Pretty Little Liars – you can’t. I mean, how boring would it be if every single show out there focused only on straight couples? Not only would it be a major snooze-fest, but it would also be unfair and seriously unrealistic.
One major bummer to take into consideration is that unfortunately, TV shows aren’t a representation of what’s really going on in our population. Basically, the LGBT community may get great representation on TV shows, but that doesn’t mean they are in real life. However, this is still a really positive step in the right direction! It’s stuff like this that helps the LGBT community gain more acceptance in society.
The other bummer is that while GLAAD found that ethnic diversity of characters on TV has improved, it still doesn’t accurately reflect U.S. demographics. That’s a major problem, in my opinion. It’s time to start representing more people of different backgrounds, colors and religions. Come on, TV! You’re so close, but you’re just not there yet.
Do you feel like the LGBT community is represented correctly on TV and in the media? Who’s your favorite LGBT character on TV right now? What would you love to see more of on your TV screens? Discuss in the comments!
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The New Normal is one of my new favorite shows of the year.