One of the most iconic movies of the noughties is Mean Girls, and it turns out that all of the main male characters have one big thing in common.
They have all come out as gay since Mean Girls debuted almost two decades ago in 2004 (we feel old just acknowledging it).
This fact was recently noted by Buzzfeed, who went on to hail it as an LGBTQ+ classic.
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Its leading male actors are Daniel Franzese as Damian ("She doesn't even go here!"), Jonathan Bennett as Aaron Samuels and Rajiv Surendra as Kevin G.
Damian was famously 'too gay to function', with Franzese himself coming out in 2014.
He went on to open up about being an LBGTQ+ icon on the film's 10th anniversary, telling AOL: "I get a lot of fan mail, but around the tenth anniversary of Mean Girls, I got a letter from a fan who was grown up that said, 'When I was in 8th grade, I was beat up for being chubby and tortured for being a sissy, but then your movie came out and, in 9th grade, on the first day of school, the popular senior girls walked up to me and said, 'You're like Damian, come sit with us!'
"And he was like, 'Thank you so much, I don't know if you're gay or not…' but then I realised it's so important that I come out."
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He added: "And then I did come out, and I made two of my other co-stars come out - Kevin G and Aaron Samuels - we're all gay!"
Jonathan Bennett - AKA heartthrob Aaron Samuels - explained that he felt pressured to keep his true sexuality a secret at the time of its release.
He told Too Fab of his eventual decision to come out: "There comes a time in your life when you realise it just doesn't matter and it's not worth it to not just live completely open as yourself.
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"And that's what happened for me. I never really talked about it when Mean Girls came out, my friends all knew. I just was kind of told by not anyone specifically, but everyone [to stay closeted]. We lived in a weird world where us actors who were working in the public eye at the time that were gay, we all didn't know what to do."
Another actor who felt like he couldn't come out at the time was Rajiv Surendra.
"I know full well that if I was an openly gay actor, there was no way I'd be considered for the role of a sixteen-year-old religious Indian kid in a movie that Fox was putting $100 million dollars into," he told Kajal magazine. "I never felt like it was unfair, I just accepted that that was the way the world worked."
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Thankfully, all three men felt comfortable enough to live their truths in time, and this reflects the improvements in LGBTQ+ representation and rights that have taken place since the film's release.
If you're a member of the LGBTQ+ community and would like further advice and support, it can be found at Stonewall
Topics: Film and TV
Emma Guinness