Queer Media from the Global South: The Emerging Girls Love (GL) Media Industry of Southeast Asia

This article examines the recent rise of Girls Love (GL) media featuring women’s same-sex romance, produced in Thailand. While Boys Love (BL) media has gained mainstream attention since the mid-2010s, GL has received less industrial and scholarly attention. Despite Thailand’s relatively long history of producing BL television series for the global audience, its first GL series, GAP (Thai: ทฤษฎีสีชมพู, “Pink Theory”) premiered only in 2022. The success of GAP has sparked an increase in GL productions and the formation of a transnational fandom largely consisting of queer women. In 2023, two GL series aired. By August 2024, eight full-length series and two mini-series had aired and finished, with several a few more currently ongoing. Through a preliminary discourse analysis of the GL series broadcast by August 2024 and media interviews of creators, this article explores how the GL media industry charts a new path in queer media, despite its commercial underpinning and references to the production and marketing practices of BL.