It’s been a while since I talked about this (or maybe never?), but it’s 801 Day, a celebration of everything related to boys’ love.
Over the past year, I started to read more boys’ love. Though to be fair, it’s been mostly series like Given, Cherry Magic, and Sasaki and Miyano. The stories of those three have charmed me.
I also think back to all the fujoshi I’ve met over the years. I think about the golden age we’re in for boys’ love manga.
And I think about what impact BL has had on me. Or maybe what it has allowed me to express. The more I read BL stories, the more I realize how vulnerable I am. I also realize that I crave emotional intimacy. I know there’s commentary about how girls who read BL use it to process their own thoughts on gender norms. For me, I feel the same. BL has made me think about how to talk about my own insecurities in a way that brings people together.
I have thought “Maybe I have the heart of a girl in a man’s body?”
At the same time, BL has its problems in how it displays relationships that involve lack of consent and fetishization. I stay away from those types of stories. Nevertheless, there are fujoshi friends I still talk to this day and recently at a local anime con, I was talking about BL and using BL humor to describe something I saw.
I always found it easy to talk to fujoshi maybe because I have never felt totally comfortable being around male anime fans who always tout about how tough/powerful certain characters were. The fujoshi I’ve been around have been some of the kindest people I have ever met in my life.
I’m proud to say that I enjoy BL and want to see more of its endearing aspects. I want to see how the genre continues to evolve in ways that can bring people together in smashing norms concerning love and gender and get them to change themselves and/or the world around them..
To anyone reading BL on this glorious day, enjoy it and take great pride in doing so!
If you want BL manga recommendations, Book Riot has a list of great titles that portray healthy relationships.