“Sparks” singer Hilary Duff re-established herself as a pioneer of the queer rights movement yet again this week.
Pentatonix member Scott Hoying and his fiancé teamed up with the star to recreate an enduring public service announcement from 2008. In it, Duff confronts two girls in a shop for using the word “gay” derogatorily.
The fact that she read the girls down in the process just added to the magic of it all.
This new recreation really takes us right back to ’08:
How about we take this to the next level?
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@scotthoying @hilaryduff ♬ original sound – Endless Pride
In the words of Derrick Berry, “That was fighting for gay rights. People were killed.”
Related: Is this the most totally bonkers HIV PSA ever made?
The original PSA was part of the award-winning “Think Before You Speak” campaign, the Ad Council’s first ever pro-LGBTQ awareness ad campaign. Created with queer rights organization GLSEN, the series aimed to eliminate the usage of phrases like “That’s so gay” in a derogatory sense.
This spot in particular lives on partially because of Duff’s shady delivery. When she overhears two teenage girls calling an outfit “so gay” during their shopping trip, she drops everything to go for the jugular.
“What if every time something was bad, everybody said, ‘Ugh, that’s so girl wearing a skirt as a top?’” she asks. The follow-up of “Those are cute jeans, though.” is the cherry on top.
Each spot ended with the tagline, “When you say ‘that’s so gay,’ do you realize what you say? Knock it off!” Period.
Related: First-ever “Rock The Vote” PSA featuring Madonna resurfaces just in time for this year’s election
Comedian Wanda Sykes also had an ad spot with the campaign, in which she drags a group of teenage boys for saying the dreaded phrase. She kind of tears them up.
“It’s like if I thought this pepper shaker was stupid,” she says, “And I said, ‘Man, this pepper shaker is so 16-year-old boy with a chessy mustache.’ Just sayin’.”
GLSEN says that the campaign was designed to “motivate teens to become allies in the effort to raise awareness, stop using anti-LGBT language, and safely intervene when they are present and anti-LGBT harassment and behavior occurs.”
It mostly served to give gays another reason to appreciate Hilary Duff, but we really appreciate the effort.
Relive the iconic original PSA here:
bachy
It totally worked in my high school. But you never know what’s going to happen with these efforts to manipulate the language.
Instead of saying “that’s so gay” when something was bad, the students would say “that’s so Hilary.”
I still maintain that the negative association they attached to the name “Hilary” (Duff) ended up contributing to presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016.
johncp56
xoxoxox hugs Hill