When Queer Coding Works Better Than Representation: A Look at The Summer I Turned Pretty

In this month’s Queer Cinema Catchup video essay, I dove into queer representation in the popular YA series The Summer I Turned Pretty. In this corresponding blog post, let me first fill you in on my relationship to the Belly, Conrad, Jeremiah love triangle of The Summer I Turned Pretty. I first tuned in back in 2022 when the first season of the show-slash-pop culture phenomena premiered, but I can’t claim to be an OG fan like my sister can. As she tells it, my sister found this book in the local bookstore back in 2009 and showed it to my dad, who said, “yea, I’ll buy it, so long as you’re reading.” From there, she was hooked, so much so that I was making fun of the protagonist’s nickname ‘Belly’ years before that name graced our screens and our TikTok.

Through the years, my sister insisted this book was magical and profound, but I couldn’t believe a novel with that title and a character with that name could fit either of those descriptors. In fact, I only agreed to watch to bond with my sister, live texting her my reactions to the show, initially as a kind of joke. Take this gem from one of my early live viewing reactions: It doesn’t matter if he knows all her favorites at 18. What matters is that you respect and want to grow with a person and want to learn about their favorites. Conrad is like a poisoned apple setting them up for failure. Also, he’s moving to CA. As an aside, Bonrad fans, I may or may not be a person who avoids their feelings who, at one time, also moved to California. Please consider that context as you learn about my initial Team Jeremiah stance.  

Something unexpected happened as I watched for my sister. Like apparently many, many women in my demographic, I became a true fan of the show. There’s a whole separate video essay-slash-blog post to be had detailing the why behind the popularity of this series. The power of a built-in book lovers fanbase; the pull of nostalgia from the stories we millennials consumed while young; the viral ship wars; the actress who plays Belly Lola Tung’s TikTok sounds; the music of Taylor Swift; the escapism of a rich kid love triangle where your heart and nothing else is at stake in the world; the yearning of one brooding, black cat, Heathcliff-like boyfriend; and word-of-mouth over three seasons attracting more and more viewers eager to see narratives that take emotions seriously all represent explanations worthy of consideration…but I’m here to delve into a different topic.

Does the queer representation in The Summer I turned Pretty work? I say no, unless you’re looking for it in a perhaps unexpected place. We’ll get into why in a moment, but, first, let’s describe the representation in The Summer I Turned Pretty. In the book, one of Belly’s love interests is Jeremiah, a straight boy. In the recent television adaption, however, the author and showrunner/creator made a significant departure from the book in establishing Jeremiah as potentially bisexual. In season 1, we see Jeremiah share a kiss with a boy, though we otherwise don’t really hear much about his bisexuality beyond a few references, jokes, and a friendship with a queer frat brother in the third season. Other than Jeremiah, we have Skye, a character who didn’t exist at all within Jenny Han’s Summer books but who is the nonbinary cousin of Jeremiah and Conrad in the show. There are a few queer lady pairings sprinkled throughout Belly’s world: a couple at the debutante ball that is a main plot point of the first season and another couple who become some of Belly’s closest friends in Paris, the city she escapes to post-love triangle wedding debacle in season 3. Finally, and most delightfully in my opinion, we have Belly’s mom Laurel and her exceptionally close best friend Susannah, the mother of the brothers Belly loves who passes away from cancer in season one but remains a weighty emotional presence in the characters’ lives. While not textually in a relationship, Laurel and Susannah have what I would call an undeniable queer coding. They are women who loved one another in what could be a deeply platonic and profound friendship kind of way but could also be interpreted in a romantic and or longed for but never realized romantic relationship kind of way.

Before we pass judgement on this queer representation, let’s next do our best to guess at the motivation of the author and television creator Jenny Han in making these changes. Han perhaps first came to your attention via the Netflix adaptation of her other book To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, which was followed by a spin-off show following the main character’s little sister Kitty, XO Kitty, which is not based on a book. XO Kitty in part chronicles the titular character’s journey toward identifying as bisexual. This is important because it demonstrates (1) the author’s commitment to incorporating queer representation when she revisits characters she wrote years before and (2) highlights an essential difference between the change to Kitty’s character in XO, Kitty and the change to Jeremiah’s character in the Summer I Turned Pretty.

To start, Han has specifically stated that Kitty was always canonically bisexual. In an apparent social media comment, Han said this was “definitely not added for representation. Kitty being bi was canon and was always where the story was going.” In contrast, when it comes to Jeremiah, Han explained in an interview with TheWrap that she approached the television adaptation by asking herself what she would do if she was telling this story for the very first time. The change to Jeremiah’s sexuality was the result of this line of thought, with Han stating, “To me it felt very natural. It was not like a hard decision because I think that Jeremiah, I really could see that for him in the early 2000s. But I think nowadays young people are a lot more free with sexuality as a spectrum. There’s less of a binary.” Jenny Han told EliteDaily something similar: “I think perhaps if I was writing the novel today, I may have made that choice because I think that he’s always been a character, to me, that is really at ease with himself, really comfortable in his own skin, and open-minded and open to exploration. I do think that’s more reflective of today and young people today and the way they view sexuality being much more of a spectrum.” In spite of the general perception that Jeremiah is bi in the show, Han in this same interview instead describes Jeremiah as “sexually fluid…. A young person who’s figuring out where he falls in all that and hasn’t experienced a lot of love yet. It’s still kind of early on in that journey.”

So to summarize: Kitty was always intended to be a queer character and a big part of XO, Kitty, from what I understand having never seen the show, is Kitty’s journey to understanding and embracing this facet of her identity. In contract, Jeremiah’s sexuality was an update on the source material to help the narrative fit with youth culture today. While Han has said this part of Jeremiah’s identity was a bit in flux, a part of his journey, we don’t ever get the chance to see that journey in the show because it isn’t his story; it’s his eventual fiancée and childhood friend Belly’s story.

I’ve seen criticism of both characters from a representation lens. Specifically, both Kitty and Jeremiah cheat on their partners, playing into stereotypes about bisexual people, but, in general, it seems that Kitty’s bisexuality, particularly because of the way in which it brings visibility to Asian bisexual people, has been praised, while Jeremiah’s has been criticized for the way in which his attraction to men seems to have no impact on the story or the character beyond a few references and jokes. In other words, the update to Jeremiah feels like an add-on, one that’s perhaps intended to “correct” what might otherwise be viewed as a heteronormative tale of girl pining for a boy-slash-brothers on her journey toward the ultimate prize of marriage.

In my viewing of the series, I found it admirable that Jenny Han took great pains to underscore the main character Belly’s journey of self-actualization in leaving both brothers for Paris and choosing to leave the wedding out of the finale of the show, even if Belly and the other brother Conrad do reconcile and even though a movie with said wedding is apparently on its way. I noted, too, the way in which she let other couples like Belly’s brother Stephen and Belly’s best friend Taylor find happiness while also underscoring Taylor’s agency (Taylor does plan to move across the country for her boyfriend in the finale, but tells him no one can make her do anything, and it is her choice for them that will not preclude her success in life, of which she is confident). Heteronormative love in 2025 doesn’t need to preclude the empowerment of women or the centering of a coming of age that, yes, includes romance and boys, but not at the expense of everything else. I would argue, however, that this was possible because said centering of the female character and her agency always existed within the plot of The Summer I Turned Pretty source material, unlike Jeremiah’s sexuality.

Adding on queer representation to update source material for contemporary culture isn’t a bad motive; it’s great to see the casual way in which Jeremiah and the season two nonbinary character Skye’s identities are weaved into the plot, becoming a fact of all these kids’ lives that doesn’t cause controversy or inner turmoil. It just is a normalized part of their world. That said, such representation might not be very narratively satisfying for queer audiences or especially great at introducing straight audiences to queerness because it lacks depth, nuance, and consequential narrative impact.

For example, Jeremiah deciding to get married so young to a woman might have stirred up questions for him about the door he was potentially closing on same sex partners; he may have wondered how his identity would be perceived in the future by choosing what others might see as a straight marriage, but we never get to see that questioning because the show isn’t really interested in changing or updating the plot that much. The audience, too, perhaps isn’t as primed for these updates; the character of Skye as well as the actor Elsie Fisher received a lot of what I would call online bullying fan backlash, perhaps because the character never existed in the book, perhaps because of their identity, and Skye was not included in final third season of the show. In short, Han may not have anticipated how some segments of a fan base riled up by the ship wars of Bonard and Jelly might react to plot points that deviate from a more – pun somewhat intended – straight forward depiction of sweeping teenage love.

In this respect, I argue that adaptations and remakes incorporating newfound queer representation that did not exist in the original source material most succeed when said material has a foundation for such queerness. What I mean by this can be something as simple as authorial intent; Han herself said Kitty was always intended to be bisexual in the XO Kitty spin-off, and this spin-off doesn’t have the burden of an earlier text where Kitty is described otherwise. It can also be more complex, pointing toward material that uses queer coding, which is the narrative result of the 1930 Hays Code, or the film industry guidelines that prohibited depictions of homosexuality that were positive. This meant explicit references to queerness were often paired with death or villainy and all other representation was regulated to hints, suggestions, a kind of code that might let those in the know recognize their own without breaking any rules. While the Hays Code was replaced with the film rating system we know today in 1968, the legacy of this approach to queer storytelling has persisted, resulting in queerness often existing in subtext within film and media and in the perpetuation of harmful tropes were queer characters often meet tragic ends.

As a result of this historical context, I would posit that the most successful modernized re-tellings that include new queer characters are those that make previously subtextual queerness explicit. For example, the recent TV adaptations of the 1992 movie A League of Their Own and of the 1994 movie and 1976 novel Interview with a Vampire are very authentically queer, probably because the queer subtext of the original material has long been documented and analyzed.

This is why I actually think the best queer representation in The Sumer I Turned Pretty comes from what arguably isn’t queer representation at all: the moms. What I first started watching this show for my sister, I kept texting her saying, these moms are kinda gay. Laurel and Susannah are two grown women who love spending all summer without their husbands or eventual ex-husbands at the beach raising their children, saying “summer was for the women and the children.” Laurel describes Susannah as the soul mate she met in college at one point in time. Laurel’s ex-husband believes there were three people in his marriage: himself, Laurel, and Susannah. Susannah believes Belly is destined for one of her sons, suggesting as Abby Monteil in Them points out a perhaps latent, never acted upon desire to forge a family with her best friend Laurel. The two constantly touch and clearly love one another. When asked, Jackie Chung who plays Laurel said she was surprised by this reading, believing that those who see the queerness in this friendship might be responding to the fact that “it’s rare to see this kind of love on screen where these women just wholly support each other… and have a decades-long friendship.”

I believe that to be true yet can see it both ways. Deep love, whether romantic, platonic, or somewhere in between, shines through the writing and the actresses’ performances, leaving room for queer audiences to interpret however they like and straight audiences to see it as textually presented. That said, I bet you anything a spin-off where we learn that college-aged Laurel and Susannah were once romantically involved would probably provide richer, more authentic queer representation than Jeremiah’s bisexuality, precisely because the coding, whether intentional or simply the product of writing that explores a true form of love, was always there.