Why Watching ‘Pose’ Is a Great Way to Celebrate Pride Month

One worthy way to celebrate this Pride month is to watch the industry-shattering, Golden Globe-nominated drama Pose. The show, which follows the triumphs and tribulations of competitors in New York’s underground ballroom scene — a subculture of the LGBTQ+ community which formed in response to the stigma around the HIV/AIDS epidemic and rampant homophobia in the 1980s — boasts the largest cast of transgender actors in series regular roles.

Trans actress Mj Rodriguez stars in the show as Blanca, who is a member of the House of Abundance; houses in the ballroom world refer to chosen families who provide each other shelter and support. Houses have house “mothers,” or women have been part of the ballroom scene for a long time; in Pose, the House of Abundance’s mother is the reigning ballroom champion Elektra (portrayed by the phenomenal Dominique Jackson). Pose begins with Blanca breaking free from Elektra and competing in balls with her newly formed House of Evangelista, which includes members Angel (Indya Moore), Damon (Ryan Jamaal Swain), Ricky (Dyllón Burnside), and Lil Papi (Angel Bismark Curiel).

Most media that has taken on queer stories has existed on either end of a polarized spectrum of gay stereotypes — it either tokenizes queer characters or focuses solely on the community’s plights. Pose could have fallen into this trap by being just a flashy runway series or exploitative of LGBTQ+ trauma. Instead, Pose proves there is space for stories of queer lives and achievements and honors the LGBTQ+ movement’s roots as a political movement that demands visibility of LGBTQ+ people.

First, there’s the way ballroom culture is depicted. Pride month celebrations often include colorful parades and demonstrations of queer expression, where LGBTQ+ people feel joy in not hiding who they are. The ballroom competitions shown in Pose share that spirit; by showing queer people feeling joy for the sake of joy, Pose argues that marginalized communities deserve more than the bare minimum of constitutional rights — that they deserve to be proud of their journeys as human beings who choose to love fearlessly.

Then there’s the representation of true allyship in the show. For any liberation movement to work, there has to be overwhelming support from allies who participate in dismantling the systems that benefit them yet harm others. In the episode “Something Old, Something New,” directed and written by the talented Janet Mock, Lil Papi — a cisgender, macho Latinx character — thanks his friends who, in his words, taught him to be a real man, “because you have to be tough to love who you want, and the whole world tells you something’s wrong.” Lil Papi declares his love for his trans, Afro-Latina bride and stands in solidarity with her community and, in doing so, humanizes the trans experience. In light of the violent killings of 27 transgender or gender-nonconforming individuals this year, most of whom were trans women of color, the need for pride and solidarity not only within, but also outside of, the LGBTQ+ community is essential.

The show’s portrayal of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, specifically in its final season, also highlights the political roots of the LGBTQ+ community. In 1994 — the year in which the final season of Pose is set — AIDS was the leading cause of death for Americans ages 25 to 44. The show openly portrays how fan-favorite characters Blanca and Pray Tell handle their diagnoses in different ways: Blanca immerses herself in applying to nursing school while Pray Tell struggles with alcoholism. Yet neither character is portrayed as having HIV become their second skin; it’s something they live with, not something that defines them, in a message of hope to anyone struggling to come to terms with their status. Pose’s final episode, which aired on June 6, took this message a step further and critiqued the U.S. government’s exclusion of people of color from HIV combination therapy trials in the 1990s.

Although Pose is set in the 1980s, the struggles around LGBTQ+ discrimination it touches on remain in today’s headlines; more than one in three LGBTQ Americans faced discrimination of some kind in the past year, including more than three in five transgender Americans. These statistics make it all the more important to give LGBTQ+ characters on television robust storylines that aren’t only about them experiencing hate, but showing how much love they have to give. As Pose co-creator Steven Canals said in an interview with OUT magazine, Pose has given trans Black and brown people the ability “to dream regardless of what the outside world is saying.”

No matter what obstacles they face, the characters of Pose keep showing up to the balls, for each other and for the people they love. They show that LGBTQ+ pride is a farrago of loyalty, love, heartache, and disappointment — it’s about living the queer experience, not only surviving it.