Happy (last day of) Pride Month!!!

This Pride Month definitely has been unlike anything anyone could have anticipated. However, I have also been inspired by the return to our roots of resistance, increasing awareness and support for Black trans women, and a win in the Supreme Court when it comes to workplace discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community. I know we have a long way to go, but these steps make me optimistic for the future.

I also wanted to give you all a way to celebrate Pride in quarantine with your close friends, family, or roomies. One of the easiest ways is to immerse yourself in queer-centric media with popular movies and shows like Queer Eye, Love, Simon, Call me by Your Name, RuPaul’s Drag Race, Pose, The L Word, Blue is the Warmest Color, etc…there are so many incredible stories centered on queer relationships and culture. However, I decided to feature recent releases of movies and show seasons that came out this year to hopefully give you some new content to watch! I also feature new book releases for my fellow book nerds to add to our summer reading lists.

This is also a time to educate ourselves, which I started to do in my Pride Post earlier this month focusing on queer people of color. I included an update in this post to documentaries and books that have come out this year on a variety of queer figures. (A huge shoutout to the film Disclosure, which focuses on the representation of trans people in the media.)

In addition to educating ourselves, raising awareness, and taking action, Pride is also a time to celebrate YOU and the beautiful spectrum that is the queer community. Immerse yourself in fun games with your friends, host your own zoom Pride Party/Parade where you dress up in your gayest attire, Netflix Party watch a queer show so you can all cry or laugh together, or gather your best friends together and get day drunk on the day of your state or country’s Pride Parade! Pride is all about embracing your truest form of self expression, so do what feels right to you!

Without further ado, here are some of my favorite ways to celebrate Pride 2020 while in quarantine:

2020 Movies and TV Shows:

• Queer Eye season 5 (Netflix)
• Love, Victor season 1 (Hulu)
• Disclosure (Netflix)
• The Half of It (Netflix)
• Vida season 3 (Amazon Prime, Hulu)
• AJ and the Queen season 1 (Netflix)
• The L Word: Generation Q season 1 (Hulu)
• Circus of Books (Netflix)
• A Secret Love (Netflix)
• Work in Progress (Amazon Prime, Hulu)
• Feel Good (Netflix)

2020 Queer Books:

• Real Life: A Novel by Brandon Taylor
• dayliGht: Poems by Roya Marsh
• Something That May Shock and Discredit You by Daniel M. Lavery (as Daniel Mallory Ortberg)
• The Fire Never Goes Out: A Memoir in Pictures by Noelle Stevenson
• Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust
• Untamed by Glennon Doyle
• Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey
• Everybody (Else) Is Perfect: How I Survived Hypocrisy, Beauty, Clicks, and Likes by Gabrielle Korn
• Save Yourself by Cameron Esposito

And here’s a list of EVEN MORE LGBTQ+ books coming out later this year.

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Indoor Pride Activities:

Get adventurous with your style and embrace color this month – luckily the tie-dye trend is still going strong, so you can DIY your own rainbow apparel during Pride Month! Here are two options – a basic trio kit and a multi-colored tie-dye kit – to experiment with a variety of colors. And best of all, you can tie-dye solo or with your family/roommates and turn it into a party!

If you’re looking for a boozier, crafty way to honor Pride, you can recreate this recipe for a famous cocktail from the Stonewall Inn called “Off the Wall.” If you want to create particularly colorful cocktails, this article has tons of fun rainbow drink options. Here’s a list of less colorful, more classic or experimental drinks from last year’s Pride that were featured by various restaurants and hotels, if you’re craving a more upscale concoction. If you’re looking for something instagrammable, all of these rainbow drink options will definitely hit the spot. And if you want to get really experimental, you can pick from one of these creative drink options from Pride Month’s past to recreate on your own!

You can never go wrong with a chill night at home having a blast playing games! The Gayme: An LGBT Party Game is a cross between truth or dare and gay trivia! Top2Bottom …and everything in between is essentially the LGBTQ+ version of Cards Against Humanity, if you’re looking for a raunchy good time! For a new take on an old classic, try out RuPaul’s Drag Race Mad Libs (Adult Mad Libs) for tons of laughs. Gay Card Revoked features tons of fun queer trivia. Unstable Unicorns is a fun card game for the whole fam and accessible for a variety of ages! True Colors isn’t queer-specific, but you’ll have a hilarious time uncovering what your friends *really* think of you.

I hope you all feel inspired by this post to celebrate Pride your own way this year. While it may not be the typical celebration, I think we can all agree that this year has brought the community closer together in a different way, and I’m excited to see how that continues moving forward.

XOXO

Parisa