Spirited Gay Aunts In Fiction, Ranked

Auntie Em: Reliable, a knitter, worried about the mortgage, grey by comparison with younger, more attractive, gayer relations; altogether too relatable by half. Gay only inasmuch as her proximity to her husband seems to have drained her of life.

Aunt Polly: Aunt Polly is gay for the rules, and the natural-yet-beloved enemy of the soft butch Tom Sawyer.

Aunt Spiker and Aunt Sponge: Their cruelty to James is, uh, a powerful refusal of…compulsory motherhood. 7/10 aunts.

Aunt Dahlia: Wodehouse aunts are classics for a reason! Enjoy the smooth, refreshing, familiar taste of a Wodehouse aunt today. Reliable, quick, convenient: Wodehouse aunts.

Aunt Agatha: Yes, wherever you go, you’re sure to find a Wodehouse aunt to fit your taste and budget. Order one today! You can’t go wrong with a good old-fashioned Wodehouse aunt.

Aunt Trudy: “Aunt Trudy lived in a little apartment above the garage. The boys called her Green Thumb Trudy because she was crazy for gardening. She went to meetings on the subject of gardening and belonged to several gardening societies in the area. She also had a wicked sense of humor.” Sure!!

Aunt May: Widowed 1000 times, and will be widowed 1000 more. Played by every woman in the world; every actress will eventually return to Aunt May, both a single aunt and a collective of all aunthood. Sometimes she is old, sometimes she is very old, sometimes she is Marisa Tomei. Married to the dead, yet she cannot die; aunt to a boy and a spider, she herself is a web of contradictions.

Aunt Hilda and Aunt Zelda: From the Melissa Joan Hart era, obviously; never let themselves have the kind of fun they clearly wanted to. I blame the 22-minute runtime of 90s-era sitcoms.

Aunty Entity: BUST A DEAL…FACE THE WHEEL. The most aunt – the mad-maximum aunt imaginable. Worth making you look at Mel Gibson for, which is saying something. “What’s this? You think I don’t know the law? Huh? Wasn’t it me who wrote it? And I say this man has broken the law. Right or wrong, we had a deal. And the law says, ‘Bust a deal and face the Wheel.’” Gay for chaos, most aunt, two hairstyles at once, AUNTY’S CHOICE.

Aunt Patty and Aunt Selma: Sank to the bottom of the Dead Sea, lesbians except for MacGyver and Troy McClure, a pillowcase full of seashells from Sulfur Bay, human extensions of the DMV, lifelong hatred of astronauts, always plenty of lizard pictures. “Selma, Jub-Jub is fantastic! He’s everywhere you want to be.” Where does Troy want to be that he hasn’t been to yet – or can’t? Welcome to Spinster City.

Auntie Mame: Too anxiety-inducing to top the list, seeing as how she embodies most of my fears about my (former) womanhood and (current) likeability; I’ve leaned too heavily on the “People like it when I’m too much. My particular brand of too-muchness is inviting, exciting, expansive, invigorating, and life-affirming. I’m shaping young minds! A whole generation of young men will be primarily attracted to mature women in caftans because of me! When I use a cigarette holder, it’s not an affectation, it’s a form of embodied calligraphy!” shtick not to get shivers at the thought of her now. But she’s certainly the one to beat; the gold standard of Gay Aunts. She wears nineteen bracelets at a time, none of which quite coordinate with her outfit, only loves two men in the whole world, and one is dead and the other is her nephew.

Aunt Beast: Nothing is gayer than tentacles, no familial relationship is inherently gayer than that of the aunt, probably invented self-care, doesn’t know what time is (that’s gay). Nothing’s more spirited than a religious alien, especially one who’s also a registered nurse.