Monster High is Queer AF: Here’s Why It Matters Right Now

Written by Daphne Bryant

Image courtesy of @ratttown on Instagram

“My freshman year of college I took a class called Making Monsters, which was about well...monsters: monster culture, monster media, monster theory, etc., Throughout history, monsters have been seen as the ‘other’.”

I’m always on nostalgic kicks, so it’s not unusual for me to casually listen to songs from High School Musical or Winx Club. Last night I was re-listening to the song Madison Beer did for Monster High way back when, entitled “ We Are Monster High.” It sounded the same as it always did (no grand conspiracy here), but for some reason the lyrics were really hitting different. When I heard“ United, not divided, won’t get cast away / They say,‘ Go run and hide’”, I was reminded of all the anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric that’s been floating around in the American psyche and government. I couldn’t help but think of queerness when I heard“ Don’t stop rocking your right to fright”, and I found myself chanting“ We are monsters, we are proud / We are monsters, say it loud” as though I were at a protest.

When the song ended, I had this uncanny feeling that even though Beer was singing about monsters, it felt like she was singing about me. Our community. Our spirit. As silly as that might sound, there’s actually some logic behind my thought process.

My freshman year of college I took a class called Making Monsters, which was about well...monsters: monster culture, monster media, monster theory, etc., Throughout history, monsters have been seen as the“ other.” There’s something about monsters that make them different, makes them banes of society and perfect rage fuel. A monster can be visually grotesque (like Frankenstin), or have a disturbing moral code (like serial killers do). And sometimes monsters are beautiful, but it’s their behavior or way of life that makes them subjects of hate and fear.

Sounding familiar? That’s probably because conservative Americans have been using queer people as scapegoats for decades now. We’ve been called every name of the book: sexual deviants, predators, radical pigs, and so on.

Why must my love, the people that I choose to love, be radical? It shouldn’t be, and yet it is. In this country and most others, love, gender and identity is political. It’s an uphill battle and it sucks, but community is what makes us strong. It’s what holds us together when it feels like the rest of the world is falling apart. In“ We Are Monster High”, Beer sings about staying fierce forever, screaming for our teams (wink) and not being afraid of who you are. These are great themes for anyone, especially kids, and especially queer people. When our identities feel most under fire, that is when we need to be the loudest. In its’ own strange way, Monster High reminded me of this fact.

You can find more queer (and also race) parallels in Monster High’s Ghouls Rule (2012), an hour-long TV special that pins humans and monsters against each other on the week of Halloween. When I was younger and watched it I didn’t realize just how applicable it was to real life, but now the mirror is so obvious. If being queer is monstrous, so be it. I’m proud to be gay as FUCK. I don’t need anyone’s permission to be queer because that’s just who I am.

And if that’s who you are too, in the words of Madison Beer, step out and let your spirits fly <3