However long before both of these confessions confirmed what we essentially already knew, the question of Velma’s sexuality has long fascinated queer pop culture fans, Velma finding herself an unofficial queer icon, and the theory that she’s a lesbian appearing in an early 2000s Washington Post article discussing her sex symbol status – particularly among queer women – however, the roots of this widespread speculation has seemingly traceable origins – more specifically, the IRL inspiration behind her character.
Yep, Velma Dinkley is based on a real-life lesbian – well, sorta. Before banding together to solve capers generally perpetuated by bitter old white men hiding behind monster costumes in Scooby-Doo’s original 1969 iteration, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! (nice) the characters had a different basis – a popular live-action sitcom entitled The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis from roughly a decade earlier. Featuring a cast of characters consisting of a hot popular jock, his gorgeous, but sometimes superficial love interest, a mousy, but tack-sharp brainiac, and a relaxed, lazy stone- sorry, I mean beatnik, the teen TV program’s characters evidently served as a blueprint for the makeup of Mystery Inc, according to a 2017 retrospective (or should we say ruh-ret-rospective) from MeTV.
Zelda K. Gilroy – a.k.a Velma’s live-action counterpart with a very rhyme-y name – in all her, short-bang-wearing, nose-scrunching glory was portrayed on the series by actress-later-turned-politician, Sheila Kuehl. Considering the show first hit the very, very small screen in the 1950’s, an era of television in which married couples sharing a bed and seeing even the tiniest glimpse of a belly button on national television sparked national controversies full of pearl-clutching and probably fainting, Gilroy’s character was straight as an arrow. The same, however, could not be said of Kuehl, who is a lesbian.
The Real-Life Gay Inspiration Behind Scooby-Doo’s Velma
Source: Pinoy Daily News
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