Krista Doyle: But... I'm A Chapstick Lesbian!

Yeah, so I grew up in a very small town in Central, Louisiana. I grew up out, even on the outskirts of that town, so 15 minutes from the town on my grandpa's farm — literally in the middle of a cow pasture is what I tell people where I lived.

My family was very close for most of my childhood because we all lived in the same town. My grandparents, my parents, my aunts and uncles, they had all grown up there, they had all, nobody had moved away.

That’s Krista Doyle.

Krista is a content marketing manager at Jasper. But where she works or why she’s a brilliant marketer don’t matter.

What you need to know is that she was a country gal who lived in small town Louisiana with her entire extended family — and that she was obsessed with the pop culture manufacturer we call Hollywood.

✰✰✰✰✰✰

I was always buried in a book, usually Goosebumps or whatever book was gonna get me the enough points to get like a free pizza or whatever accelerated reading program.

I really liked to read as a kid and was obviously very into pop culture from a super early age. I was obsessed with anything on NBC — Friends, Will & Grace. I just loved anything like that. My parents were also really into pop culture, so I think that's where that came from.

I think that's where the first shadows of me being an introvert were more apparent. Because I was so content to just be in my room alone. Like, even though I had a lot of really good friends and loved hanging out with them, I definitely still really enjoyed being alone and just kind of making up my, you know, my own worlds.

Then, as a teenager, I was a little bit more... I was a little bit more extroverted in the sense that I wanted to be around people all the time.

I've had the same friends since basically birth. So, you know, as teenagers, we were very comfortable with each other and always doing whatever we could find to do in our small little town, which wasn't much. Um, but yeah, I always wanted to be around people in high school and college. And...

I don't know, I think, I don't know if that was because I was actually more extroverted or if because I just, I don't know, that was just a really weird, hard time for me, um, in terms of, you know, figuring out who I was and feeling comfortable in my own skin. And I think being around people all the time, I didn't really have to think about that stuff.

I just could kind of be who I needed to be in that moment, if that makes sense.

Makes sense to me. Being a teenager is a brutally awkward experience. It always feels like you're on the outside of the world's greatest inside joke ... that is, until you're in the presence of your BFFs and all that confusion takes a backseat.

For Krista, the comfort of her friend's company continued to shield her from whatever college life threw at her.

After graduation, Krista packed her bags and headed west to fulfill her lifelong dream of working in Hollywood — even though she wasn't really sure what that meant.

And it was there, roughly 2,000 miles away from her comfort zone, that Krista would be forced to address the internal conflict she'd avoided since a teenager.

✰✰✰✰✰

I was living in Los Angeles. I had been there for maybe a year. I was still very new, had made some friends, but was still very much figuring out my place there and, you know, was very homesick and unsure of myself.

I was starting to encounter, you know, just different types of people than I'd grown up around and people who were still very, like, fun and accepting and just brought out different sides to me or made certain feelings a little more obvious and a little harder to ignore.

Um, and I had also started to come to the realization that I thought I was gay.

I thought I was into women, um, which was a very hard thing for me to admit to myself. Um, because I… well I was raised in a very religious family, uh, super Southern Baptist. Um, my grandpa was a preacher. I was very involved in the church all the way through college — all the way through, I mean, at the time in Los Angeles I was still going to church and was still very religious.

Um, and as you can imagine, Southern Baptist upbringing, um, I wasn't super friendly to the concept of homosexuality. Uh, I hadn't even really been around a ton of queer people growing up or in college.

So, yeah, it was like a super weird, hard thing for me to come to terms with, or even question or admit to myself.

Let's pause for a moment and orient ourselves.

It was 2012 when Krista started to realize she fancied women. And if you were like me, you're thinking — okay, so we're still a few years away from gay marriage being law of the land in the United States, but being gay wasn't that big of a deal then.

I mean, there was definitely a reckoning to face back in Louisiana but, according to Pew Research, nearly half of the country had already warmed up to the idea and even 40% of Boomers were cool with gay folks getting hitched.

And while Krista herself was very religious, it was only a matter of time until she would find a way to reconcile the conflict — right?

Well, as Krista continued to tell me her story, I began to realize there's a lot more to coming out than I assumed.

✰✰✰✰

As I had been kind of questioning, am I gay, do I like women, I think a big thing that kept coming up for me was, I don't want to feel like I can't be myself to be this other thing.

Because at the time, things weren't as fluid.

I feel like being gay, even a decade ago, it felt like you were way more boxed in. Like you had to be either gay, straight, or bisexual. And if you were a lesbian, you dressed a certain way, and you acted a certain way, and there just seemed to be these expectations that I feel like don't even really exist today,

But at the time, they did, to a degree. At least in the circles that I was in. And, yeah, it just made me a little bit nervous because it didn't feel like me. Like none of those expectations felt like this is me. And I would be able to be myself.

Um, and so that scared me. I was just in a very, like, malleable state. I was very, uh, I was questioning a lot and trying to figure myself out.

And one of the girls that I had met who was a lesbian, she was the sister of one of my good friends that I had met. She was very accepting and would entertain my questions and my thoughts on the whole thing — did I like girls and what was it like — and so she introduced me to some movies. Like, Hey, you should check these movies out and just for fun, just to, like, see some kind of representation of what you're feeling, what you're thinking.

So one of the movies was a British rom com from, I think, the year 2005, and it's called Imagine Me and You.

If you, like me, have never heard of or seen Imagine Me and You, let's pause for a spoiler-free synopsis:

The story revolves around a woman named Rachel (played by Piper Perabo from Coyote Ugly) who is about to marry her longtime boyfriend. At the wedding, she meets Luce (played by Lena Headey from Game of Thrones). The two become fast friends and Rachel immediately starts to realize her feelings for Luce aren't strictly plutonic.

The central conflict of the story is Rachel's struggle to reconcile her feelings for Luce with societal expectations of being a lesbian and the impact it has on her existing relationships with her husband and other loved ones.

You can imagine how Krista, whose primary concern with being gay was how it would shape her identify and affect her relationships, saw herself in the main character and plot of the movie .

And as she explains, this type of story was like a diamond in rough compared to all the other LGBTQ+ stories at the time — which were rather grim.

✰✰✰

Yeah, I think my headspace before I watched it was most other queer movies I had seen were all just so tragic and sad. All the stories were just ended in heartbreak and everybody was so tortured and it. Things were just bleak.

And so, this movie was such a pleasant surprise, because it was just, like, a fun little rom com. It's just a very… it's, I would say it's on par in tone as, you know, anything else you might watch: You've Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle, any of those.

I don't think it's as classic as those, but you know, in terms of the comedy or the tone of the movie, you can kind of expect something in that realm.

But yeah, so that's the premise, and it was just such a pleasant surprise after kind of only seeing, you know, darker stories told — you could see these two very average, normal women develop a connection, and not necessarily have to change who they are. Maybe change their life circumstances a little bit but they didn't have to change who they were at their core. And they were very much relatable, relatable to me, and the type of relationship that I kind of saw myself having in my head.

So, yeah, it just kind of made me feel good about making this change in my life now. Like I feel good and hopeful that I can admit to myself and allow myself to be openly queer, or gay, or whatever you want to call it — without having to fundamentally change who I am.

And I think that's the biggest mindset shift that it brought. After watching it, was like, Okay, I can like, breathe a little bit, and I can like, still get the things I want, and I can be the person I want, and I can also, like, be queer.

Krista wasn't just hopeful after watching Imagine Me And You, she was outright determined to be her gay-self. She almost immediately started coming out to those closest to her — both in Los Angeles and back home in Louisiana. She had her first girl kiss and her first girlfriend.

Fast forward to today, Krista's married to her baby's momma, living in Austin, Texas, just a short drive away from the small town she grew up in — all thanks to a rare piece of media that dared to represent homosexuality more authentically.

But while Krista's grateful for stumbling upon the 2005 British rom com and the progress made in accepting LGBTQ+ people since proudly becoming a chapstick lesbian, she notes there still aren't a lot of movies or other forms of media quite like Imagine Me And You.

✰✰

There is definitely way more representation. I mean, I think that there are tons of TV shows who now have queer characters — as both leads and as supporting cast.

There was the big lesbian Christmas rom com with Kristen Stewart, called Happiest Season, which, it was fine, but I think what I wish is that there aren't, there aren't a lot of movies like Imagine Me and You. There's a lot more representation. But I will say I don't think there's as many good classic rom com with two female leads who end up together.

There's not a lot of that but there's definitely way more representation. I think I've especially noticed it in music, because, you know, a decade ago, whatever, um, I never heard music by women about other women. I never heard love songs, you know, same sex, about same sex romance.

But now, I hear that all the time. Like, there's so many artists who are queer, and so many men who are singing about men. And women who are singing about women. And um, I think that's really cool.

So yeah, there's definitely way more representation.

I do think — selfishly, personally — I wish there were more of the good old fashioned queer romcom. But, we'll get there, I'm sure.

As marketers, we often get caught up in demographics and firmographics, losing sight of the very essence of our target audience: real human beings with emotions, identities, and unique stories.

Krista's story is a helpful reminder that understanding and empathizing with the lived experiences, desires, and aspirations of the individuals we're trying to reach is the only way to truly connect and resonate with them. 

Until next time…

♥️ Ronnie

✰