Are there any limits on the conception of 'normal'? It's tough to understand it in the 21st century.
The etymology of it is the description of something that follows a norm, a law.
At first sight, the matter of generations can help us understand the authority one can have to make use of that word.
Being anything but heterosexual in Latin America was pretty much abnormal for any generation preceding the Millenias, 1984 and backwards -unless you were devoted to serving Christ, which is still labelled as normal-. There must have been something that shifted the perception of that abnormality at any point between the '90s and the '00s in this region. Could it have been the first sight of coloured telly in the early 80s, followed by content explicitly showcasing Queer characters?
It's 08:30 p.m. on a night in 1999; Grandma would've finished serving dinner to everyone in the family. The TV was on probably since 06:00 p.m., 14 minutes before you'd hear her setting up the fire, the pans, the meat, and the sunflower oil (clearly, I was hungry enough to keep track of my nanny's own time). From that moment until bet time, the TV was that thing unifying and segregating 19 family members, all at once, in one single house.
The TV unified a behaviour during dinner across the family. Still, it segregated it by having different TV rooms to address the difference in content taste. I was part of the only-ladies TV room, of course. Full of Soap series. See? Those old good days became my first perception of normal.
I'd hope someone can prove me wrong on this, but until that happens, I can say that the first shift in the perception of homosexuality in Colombia was on Thursday, 25 October 1999. Yes, that day specifically. I can even go deeper and say it was at 08:00 p.m. That night, the dinner was particularly different. It is the night of the first Colombia-made prime-time series showcasing a Queer character: Yo soy Bety, La Fea. Later known to the rest of the world as Ugly Betty - after Hollywood made out of that series one of Colombia's exports we take pride in.
Hugo Lombardi was his name. The most annoying attention-seeker fashion designer one could ever imagine - Don't be surprised if Meryl Streep took inspiration right there! Though the main character was not him, an entire audience gave authority to that TV series; it made history in the history of living rooms in Colombia; by extension, part of that legitimacy was transferred to Hugo. The first gay person on air. (Wait for it - I promise I will get back to this idea later).
Whatever had a good rating back in the '00s could be considered normal. By the chitchat I'd hear the morning after watching any of the 335 episodes, I'm telling you this series did become the new normal. Homosexuality was finally being part of a national conversation. Not the conversation one would ambition. We were not there yet. But at least the Spanish translation faggot, got the entrance pass to the land of Normal.
Hugo is a very emotional, dramatic and flamboyant designer, quite a forced one. From that series, we would see male characters being managers, CEOs, investors, and decision-makers. Hugo was given the fashion designer role. After all, what else could I queer man do in life? - don't cancel me. Remember, this is a Thursday night in 1999.
It meant to Colombians that there was a space in normality for Queer people, still reduced to a picky Fashionista. Other Queer, Gender and Sexual identities could not still be entitled to be normal just yet. That's how I bring back the first-gay-person-on-air line. It was not that Hugo was the first gay person on TV or in the country. It was just that the LGBTQ+ community was not a community yet. For us, it was all about making sure our parents, grandparents and social institutions would not segregate us. In other words, we didn't want to be treated abnormally.
Unfortunately for many of us, women, men, and non-binary wanting to be a flamboyant fashion designer was not our life dream. I'd then rather keep watching any Soap series with my aunts, mom, and grandma every night from 8 p.m. to sometimes 11 p.m., Monday to Friday, with no rest in between. That was my best attempt to be normal. To follow the norm. The law. Later in life, I understood those 18 years of doing the same thing every night were not normal. At all.
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