"Glee"'s Kurt Hummel and the Power of Representation

Picture this: the year is 2009.

Young Nico is 12, soon to turn 13, years old, in the midst of his sixth grade year, still relatively enjoying the novelty of being in a new, bigger middle school environment alongside new faces from other elementary schools in the Ann Arbor district, still not stressed and overwhelmed by the anxiety, sleep deprivation, and social toxicity that will mushroom the following year.

Barack Obama has just become the forty-forth president of the United States. Iceland has just experienced its intense and dramatic economic collapse in the midst of the Great Recession, and newly elected Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, the world's first openly lesbian head of state, as prime minister. Michael Jackson's passing has fans the world over in mourning. Velvet tracksuits, multicolored tights, and leggings as pants are all the rage in fashion. Owl City's "Fireflies," the Black Eyed Peas' "I Gotta Feeling," Miley Cyrus' "Party in the U.S.A.," Jason Mraz's "I'm Yours," and Beyonce's "Single Ladies" hover at the top of the hot 100 charts and reverberate on radios anywhere.

And the first season of the hit TV show Glee has just started airing.

For the uninitiated, Glee is a musical comedy-drama series which aired on the Fox network for six seasons from 2009 to 2015, focusing on the adventures, triumphs, struggles, and close bond of the members of the show choir New Directions at the fictional William McKinley High School in Lima, Ohio. It follows the evolution of the group and its original members from a shaky beginning as a newly formed, rag-tag little bunch of misfits, which the school's cheer coach Sue Sylvester constantly tries to have disbanded, to a strongly competitive, talented, and high-energy powerhouse of excellent covers. The show features and covers numerous social issues in American society through the experiences of the characters and their relationships to one another, in ways which sometimes reflect the clumsier nature of social issues and how they were understood ten years ago - but always with a lot of heart, affection, good intention, and genuine desire for greater understanding and harmony among all people.

Many such examples are to be found with Kurt Hummel - talented member of the New Directions' original founding members, a consummate fashionista, and for much of the show, McKinley High's only openly gay student.

From coming out for the first time to good friend and fellow New Directioner Mercedes Jones, opening up about his sexuality to his quite traditionally masculine father Burt (to great acceptance - Burt later goes on to go out of his way to educate himself on gay issues and sexuality so that his son can come to him with questions like any straight boy could), and never being afraid to sing music, wear clothes, and experiment with forms of expression deemed traditionally feminine, to overcoming vicious bullying issues, and eventually finding a loving relationship with his first boyfriend Blaine Anderson, the other half of the iconic duo dubbed "Klaine" by many fans and shippers, Kurt's role in the show and gay representation in the media is not to be understated.

In the summer of 2018, a Klaine video popped up in my YouTube "recommended" list after I had just returned from my junior year of college studying abroad in Moscow, Russia and Turku, Finland. My curiosity piqued, I then spent the month I had at home before leaving for a summer program in Reykjavik, Iceland watching the first three seasons of Glee. The latter two for the first time. But I was surprised to find that the first season felt almost wholly familiar, like I was rewatching it, even though I didn't feel like I had watched it that closely when it was coming out.

Flashing back to 2009: At the time I had just received my first little netbook laptop as a Christmas present. But in spite of the greater mobility it offered to sit on my oversized beanbag in the quiet comfort of my own room, I still often preferred to spend my long sessions of perusing my new Facebook page on the computer in our living room, and often wound up at least peripherally watching whatever my sister was watching on TV as a result. Case in point with Glee. 

At the time, she was closely following Season 1. And even though I seldom actually sat down on the couch across from her to watch it together, it looked and sounded nice enough to capture my attention and get me to rotate the swivel chair at my parents' desk where the computer stood to pay attention for a while. Perhaps no more so than when Kurt was on screen.

At the time, I had barely even begun to realize that I was gay. I knew very little about what it meant to be gay, or the history and community behind the label, and was not self-aware enough to realize that the feelings I was struggling with were closely tied to feeling uncomfortable in my own body, not understanding the feelings that I couldn't control that so much of society was telling me were wrong, and feeling out of place and unrepresented in such a straight world. But among all the other tensions of feeling lonely, weird, and not enough in the socially cutthroat environment of Tappan Middle School, my baby gay angst and anxiety were some of the top causes of the stress I was undergoing. Even without an exact handle on that being a big source of my confusion and issues, even thinking that my stress and loneliness were exclusively products of the social environment and how I fit into it, I couldn't help but feel like something was deeply, fundamentally different about me compared to many others around me, far beyond the unique interests and habits that had defined me growing up, which often differed from those of the other kids, especially the other boys, around me.

"Gay" at that time was not a word with a pleasant connotation, usually either used as a general synonym of "bad" or "sucky" ("that's so gay") which has thankfully greatly decreased over the years, or to refer to what it actually describes - homosexuality - but in a greatly overstereotyped and disdainful way. Even though I wasn't yet aware of my own sexual orientation, every time I heard the word, or so many other hurtful and nasty ones associated with it, echo down my middle school hallways, my chest would clench and I would go numb with fear.

When I turned in that swivel chair from the ever-important business of making copious amounts of Facebook statuses with positively atrocious spelling and syntactical construction of all sorts (because for some reason I had it in my head at the time that proper spelling and grammar online was not cool), it was for a reason.

I was captivated and mesmerized by Kurt. I loved his energy. I loved his extravagant and innovative style, his fearless desire to push aesthetic boundaries, his refusal to let himself or anything he loved be defined by meaningless and trite expectations of gender norms. I loved his powerful singing voice and how it seemed to soar effortlessly into alto high notes. I loved his covers and how he brought who he was and his heart and soul into all of what he sang (perhaps nowhere else more so than his cover of "Defying Gravity," which I listened to for years, mesmerized by his beautiful voice and empowered of his rendition of a traditionally feminine song, especially before important turning points and new chapters of my life, like when I went to Italy in middle school for six months, before high school, and as I was getting ready for my high school exchange year in Egypt that I'd dreamed of for years, imagining myself soaring high above the Pyramids of Giza as he hit his high notes - I still listen to it lovingly as a reminder of my periods of greatest drive and determination in life, as well as to find new inspiration). I loved his high-pitched, softer-spoken speaking voice, how relaxing and soothing it was to listen to. I loved how even though sometimes he felt alone, afraid, mistreated, or ignored, he never let himself be walked over, and always called people out on their bullshit and didn't let them stifle him. I loved how bright, optimistic, effervescent, gentle, loving and kind he was. Any time I saw him on screen, I would light up and be mesmerized without quite knowing why. As I was only just beginning to understand at the time, I saw myself in him, I related to him, and I felt connected to him.

I think it's important to acknowledge the fact that there certainly were moments on Glee when various issues were handled clumsily or even in very insensitive ways, or where there were humorous references to things that shouldn't ever be joked about. I will be clear in saying that I don't overlook or play those down. It's definitely important to keep them in mind (in a way, it's also kind of helpful and reassuring to see how far we've come in terms of perceiving those things in just a few years). But conversely, I don't think it makes sense to write off the show completely as being problematic and overlook all the things it got right for those missteps. There are also numerous instances of very important issues, relationships, conversations, and representation that the show absolutely nailed, and as many of those moments and relationships are deeply important to many people, they deserve to be wholeheartedly celebrated.

Was Kurt, for instance, a bit stereotypical? Oh yeah, no doubt about it. But even rewatching the show today, I often find myself forgetting it. Because he's so confident and fearless and self-assured of who he is that he doesn't let the stereotypes define him. He always brings his own unique perspectives, experiences, and approaches to everything that the does, and does everything that he loves with immeasurable passion. He is fiercely devoted to the people that he cares about. He is brave and determined in everything that he does. He is committed to growing, to fulfilling his dreams, to doing what he believes is best. But, in spite of all the pain and hardship of growing up as a feminine, openly gay man in a small Midwestern town, he also remains strongly connected to the place he comes from and conscious of his sentimental connection to it and how it's shaped him, as well as to making Lima and all the places that matter most to him there better. He's an unapologetic hopeless romantic, both in love and life goals. He knows who he is, and he shares that with his loved ones and the whole world in absolutely beautiful ways. He sang with drive and passion, bringing all of who he was and what he had lived into gorgeous covers of iconic songs.

The issue of representation for marginalized people remains a critically important one for this reason. Looking back on how I felt watching the first season of Glee as a twelve and later thirteen-year-old, I am conscious of how important it was to have a character like Kurt on-screen that I could look up to. Seeing him being who he was openly and fearlessly was deeply, deeply validating and empowering. Even not being fully conscious of who I was just yet, I looked at him and I felt calm. Seen. Heard. And like I had a future. Like I could hope for growth and love and community and pursuing my dreams just like anyone else around me.

And for that reason, I will always be deeply grateful to Glee and to Chris Colfer, the amazing actor and singer (and now best-selling writer of the Land of Stories series!) behind Kurt, for allowing me to come into my own as a young gay boy looking up to such a beautiful and inspiring character.

The last year of life

Hi, everyone.

Although I have occasionally put out some posts, mainly of general reflections and some original written pieces of mine, I've recently realized that it's been just about a year since I properly updated my blog with actual events, comings, and goings of my day-to-day life. And that's far too long.

It's hard to sum up such a long period of time in all its multifaceted complexities, especially in retrospect. But I'm going to do my best to summarize and get across an impression of this last year of my life, and some of the most important things that have happened in that time.

Senior year of college:

From August of last year until May of this year, I moved back to Beloit, Wisconsin to finish the last year of my undergraduate degree at Beloit College. The first semester was incredibly difficult, as a number of trivial and not so trivial matters all came to a head at once: not feeling at home anymore on campus because it had changed so much and there was such a disconnect between my first two years on campus and my senior year; getting my heart broken; dealing with intense culture shock while readjusting after my time in the Nordic countries; having to really come to terms and deal with my depression; dealing with a lot of academic pressure; and so on. Some adjustments and changes were made: I dropped my international relations major, as I knew that taking all the classes I would have had to in order to finish it, while possible, was not feasible with my mental health issues. I gave a symposium on what I'd learned during my experience on my second language program in Iceland the previous summer. I got involved with a Sustained Dialogue group as a means of having deep and important conversations with people about critical issues, and getting to know some people from the two new classes that had come to campus in my time away (which was easy, given that I was the only senior in my group). Already scheming my way back to the Nordic world I missed so much, I submitted my application for a Fulbright fellowship to participate in an Icelandic as a second language program at the University of Iceland in Reykjavik. I found an amazing, cozy, and deeply important place among the community and friend group I gained by living in the Sexuality and Gender Alliance (SAGA) house, who truly took me under their wing and made me feel so welcome in such a difficult time of my life. We even spent Thanksgiving at my friend Sloane's house, taking advantage of a much-needed chance to get off campus and just chill, talk, and watch movies before finals. After working very hard to put down roots again and get involved with different groups and initiatives on campus, I thankfully finished my rather awful first semester finally starting to feel like I was getting settled and regaining a sense of place on campus again.


I spent winter break in my hometown of Ann Arbor, and in St Louis, where my family lived until recently. At around three weeks, it was the longest period of time I'd spent in Ann Arbor since my family moved away from my childhood home a little over three years ago, and after such an emotionally and mentally difficult few months, it was deeply soothing and nourishing to spend such a solid amount of time in the place I come from, to make it feel like home again a little bit, and to spend time with loved ones and family friends I've known and cared about my whole life - at Christmastime, no less. I originally feared my time in St. Louis would be greatly boring, as I've never managed to make a lot of friends there, due to the fact that my family moved there after I started college and I was only ever there for college breaks. But it actually turned out to be quite a lovely and relaxing time - my mental health improved greatly, and I was able to take a bit of time for myself and work on some little personal projects, like watching movies and catching up on shows I'd wanted to for a long time, and reading a bit for fun (I finished three books and started a fourth in just three weeks!) before returning to campus for my final semester of college.

My final semester was in some ways better and in some ways worse than the previous one. On the one hand, I felt comparatively much more settled, and was able to benefit from the structures I'd built during the first semester that helped me feel more at home and settled in. And I felt far less depressed. But unfortunately I struggled with far worse anxiety, and had some pretty tough, full academic schedule to work with on top of writing my thesis. I struggled with intense burnout, and at times really struggled to move forward.
But overall, it was quite nice in other ways. I solidified my place among the SAGA friend group and community, and the house environment changed nicely when some friendly new faces moved in. I wrote my thirty-page thesis about reciprocal linguistic influence between Russian and the Turkic languages, and gave a symposium about my thesis research halfway through the semester. I continued working my job as a student manager of the call center. I made some great new friends. I took chances and went all out, performing three times. I attended some great events on campus that showcased queer ball culture beautifully. And had a lot of fun.
Perhaps most triumphantly, I was chosen for the Fulbright fellowship I'd applied for, which was an intensely proud moment for me, a culmination of my previous Icelandic language studies, and a testament to my now solidified Nordic passions and life trajectory.
In May, I enjoyed all the great events during Senior Week - the Senior Gala, Party, visits from friends, and an excellent graduation ceremony - and walked across the stage in front of my advisor Donna Oliver to shake President Scott Bierman's hand, proudly holding my Bachelor of Arts in Russian as four intense years of learning, growth, experiences, trial, error, friendship, love, and struggles finally came to a close.

Spring Break in New Jersey and New York

When I had my spring break in March, I traveled to my dad's hometown of New Brunswick, New Jersey to meet him there at my grandmother's house and stay with her for the week. We spent lots of time with my grandmom, eating out at some of the great local restaurants. We visited a few of my aunts and uncles who live in the area, making the short drives out to Long Valley in the inland hills to visit my Uncle Rob and Aunt Carol, and to Point Pleasant Boro to visit my Uncle Bill, Aunt Jane, and their dog Molly, and go for a great walk along the shore of the Atlantic Ocean. I went into New York City two different days of the week, once to catch up with my good friend Sikander over a Sri Lankan lunch and a delicious, authentic Pakistani chai, and do a bit of wandering on my own before and after, and a second time with my dad to explore the city while he had a meeting.
I had a lot of fun everywhere I went and spent time during the week - New York is one of my favorite cities on the planet, and I greatly enjoy every visit. But I truly enjoyed everywhere we went - the variety of the different places, the coziness of spending time with relatives, and the beautiful feeling of being able to easily and quickly access authentic spaces of diverse communities. It was a much-needed escape from the Midwest and the day-to-day stresses of college life.

Summer 2019 in Italy and the Midwest

After graduating, I went back to St. Louis with my parents, and just managed to have a late dinner with my sister the evening we got there before she flew out the next morning to work an intense and exceptional position as a worker at a refugee welcome center in Austin, Texas. The rest of the six days I spent in St. Louis were devoid of any noteworthy activity, since I got all four of my wisdom teeth out at once the second day and was down and out for the count for several days thereafter.

After about six days back in St. Louis, I left for Ann Arbor with my parents. As usual, I had a great visit and a lovely time being back. I didn't do too many specific things; I made my rounds of my favorite restaurants and parks in town, visited some old haunts, got to catch up with a couple of my closest high school friends, and had a lovely college grad party which was attended by many of my dearest family friends and loved ones in town.
Every time I go back to Ann Arbor, I struggle a little bit emotionally, as returning to the place where I grew up, which I miss so much, as a visitor is still something that I struggle to adjust to and makes me feel detached from my past. But this time just like being back last winter, I felt more relaxed and at home than I had pretty much anywhere else previously for a long time.

After a week in Ann Arbor, my parents dropped me off at Chicago O'Hare on their way back to St. Louis, and I left for a six-week-trip to Italy.
I applied for a couple of summer programs, but didn't get in for the one that I wanted the most, the ARIT fellowship to study Turkish for six weeks at Boğaziçi University. As I studied elementary Japanese both semesters of my senior year of college, I looked into doing a summer program at Akita International University in Akita, Japan, but unfortunately didn't qualify to apply since I was going to be graduating. Realizing that I wasn't exactly desperate to rush into another academic program, especially given the fact that I was going to be on one during my Fulbright too, and that it had been a while (nearly a year and a half) since the last time I'd been in Italy, I decided to spend a large chunk of time visiting my friends and relatives in Italy.
I'll be honest in saying that the trip was something of a mixed bag. Being in Italy was, of course, amazing. As a place that I feel extremely connected to and at home in, it felt amazing to be back, and I felt so happy to catch up with all my loved ones there. I spent some relaxing afternoons swimming at the local pool to escape the intense, oppressive heat and humidity. I got to spend some amazing quality time with my relatives, close family friends, friends my own age, and even some AFS exchange students and volunteers that my friend Alex knew from volunteering in the local Intercultura Mantova chapter. I traveled to some lovely places - to Milan, to Rome, to my mom's close childhood friends' new house in the Apennine hills near Parma, to the beach at Marina di Carrara in Tuscany. I went on some lovely day trips and to an incredible falconry show with my aunt and uncle. And I got a rare chance to just relax, soak it all in, and catch up on some personal projects, like reading and writing for fun, perhaps most notably the piece on my identity, which I've since titled Everywhere Boy, inspired by the memories of my cherished childhood summer visits to Italy, reawakened in my mind by the feelings and sensations of being back in Viadana over the summer for the first time in eight years.
But the time period I chose to be there, as I found, just sort of happened to be a bad time for pretty much everyone that I was there to visit. My relatives were all working. My few friends my own age in Viadana that I remain close to were all studying for exams and had little free time, because the Italian university system is terrible in that exams are scheduled and sprinkled all throughout the year. My good friends that live further afield were also all either still studying or working. And so there were long stretches of time where I wasn't doing much of anything, repeating the same monotonous routine of waking up, going for a bike ride in the morning before it got too hot, avoiding the worst part of the day indoors, and then going to the pool in the afternoon. And so I was often left alone with my thoughts. 

I unfortunately spiraled in terms of mental health and got to some very dark thoughts and places, mainly on account of the constant body shame I was getting from my grandmother and the intense anxiety and depressive symptoms I had, which were being greatly aggravated by concerns about the news, reports, comments, and online rabbit holes I fell down relating to climate change and ecological breakdown. 

(As a side note, it's still something that I'm extremely concerned about and am doing my best to spread awareness about and fight for systemic change against in my daily life, but thankfully I haven't been constantly fighting depressed thoughts and anxiety attacks related to it for a while now).
In spite of the intense issues I dealt with over the course of the summer, it was still a great time full of some fun and important memories which I'm hugely grateful for, and it felt almost like coming full-circle in a way, being back for a long visit at the same time of year I always used to visit as a child, and reliving all those beautiful and important memories having just graduated college.

I left Italy on July 25th, and after arriving back in Chicago, I took the Van Galder bus up to Madison, Wisconsin, where my parents just recently moved to from St. Louis. The month I spent in Madison was honestly fantastic. Although I was still dealing with my eco anxiety, Madison was a very soothing place to be in - it reminds me a lot of Ann Arbor, as it has similar vibes as a college town with a similarly sized university. It's also a familiar place, since I spent a fair amount of time there with my parents while I was at Beloit, and Wisconsin in general feels quite homey to me after having lived there for the last three of the years I've lived in the States. I fell in love with Madison more deeply this time, exploring the downtown, the shops and restaurants, and the lovely beaches along Lake Monona and Mendota which surround the isthmus on which the city is built. It was deeply relaxing and fun. I also had a chance to hang out with two friends I met at Beloit. I also visited Chicago for a couple of days, staying at my lovely Beloit friend Julia's house, and meeting up with a few friends in town: Ri, who was our teaching assistant in freshman year Russian, and Miki and Chloe, Julia's roommate from last year and her sister. I also got a chance to see my dear, dear friend Paula for an afternoon, which was so fun and deeply restorative.

In the last week before leaving for Iceland, I went down to St. Louis with my mom, as most of my stuff was there and I had to pack. I got to hang out a bit with my sister as she arrived from a three-week visit to Italy, having arrived just days after me. I spent a lot of time going through my old journals, memory boxes, and school notebooks. And went for a few bike rides in Forest Park.

After returning to Wisconsin, I spent the afternoon of my final full day in the U.S. visiting my alma mater for a few hours, making the short drive down to Beloit to catch up with some friends, who had just returned to campus for the start of the semester the next day. I barely processed the fact that I was back due to lack of sleep and stress for the preceding few days. But it was nice to see everyone for a second nonetheless.


Iceland so far

As of publishing this, I've been in Iceland for just over three weeks. And so far, it's been a truly lovely experience.
I left Wisconsin on the 26th of August with a sense of surreal disbelief, and admittedly great anxiety, mostly just related to the stress of moving abroad alone again to a place where I don't have as many support systems. I had a fairly relaxing and uneventful trip to Reykjavik, and spent two days staying at a hostel before moving into my University of Iceland dorm, Gamli Garður (which means "old garden"). Since arrival, I've met the other Fulbrighters in Iceland during our orientation day, who are a dynamic bunch doing everything from research on Arctic fish stocks and glacial reconstruction to teaching Old English at the University. I've gotten a whole bunch of bureaucratic stuff sorted out, and now feel much more settled. I've been out a couple of times to events organized by the University and with new Italian, Catalan, and Swiss friends I've made in my University. I tried out for and got into the Háskólakórinn, the University of Iceland choir, which has proven an excellent space to practice Icelandic with the Icelandic choir members and through the music we sing, as well as a lovely return to singing, which is something that has always brought me great comfort and happiness (I sang in choirs throughout most of middle and high school). I've started classes at the University in the first year level of its Icelandic as a second language bachelor of arts, and although I do have difficulties at times, I've already improved greatly in Icelandic compared to when I arrived. And I've done my best to settle into a routine here, going to the pool often, of course (this time so far mostly to Vesturbæjarlaug, the closest pool to campus), for walks along the pond in the center of town, Tjörnin, when the sun is shining, and doing work at Kaffihús Vesturbæjar, a cafe near the pool, and at Háma, the university cafe.
This being my third time in Iceland, everything feels a lot more familiar and homey compared to other experiences I've been on like this in the past. It's almost felt like coming home, in a way. Since I got to Iceland, I've felt happier, more fulfilled, and like my life has more direction and purpose, more so than I've felt in a long time. And I couldn't be more thankful for that.

Thank you for reading. Going forward I'll do my best to keep blogging at at least fairly regular intervals. I've got some great ideas and drafts for posts keyed up, and I fully intend to publish them as much as I can going forward. And on top of that, I intend to blog at regular intervals, perhaps every month or so, about what and how I'm doing here on my Fulbright.

Heyrumst!
Nico

A beautiful fall song that I've been listening to a lot lately which reminds me of my childhood.