Pinpointing the exact moment of my gay awakening isn’t easy—most LGBTQ+ people experience multiple moments of realization. While I didn’t fully come out until my mid-20s, looking back, the signs were there much earlier. My teenage obsession with Tegan and Sara, every character on The L Word (especially Shane), and Casey Novak from Law & Order: SVU slowly clued me in that my feelings about women weren’t exactly straight. But now, in my proudly queer 30s, I realize my middle school hours spent dressing up celebrity avatars on Stardoll might have been the gayest thing I did back then.

I haven’t visited Stardoll since I was 13 (and now the site won’t even load for me—maybe my adult IP address gives me away?). Back then, it was a pink digital playground where I wasted hours styling cartoon versions of Rachel Bilson, Paris Hilton, Lady Gaga, and other fashionable women—all conveniently starting in their underwear. To be clear, it wasn’t as scandalous as it sounds. The goal was dressing them up, not staring at their virtual undergarments—though closeted tween me was absolutely capable of both.

At the time, I would’ve fiercely denied any queer subtext to my Stardoll obsession. As a lonely, imaginative kid, what I loved most was crafting elaborate backstories for the celebrities I styled. If I’d written them down, they might’ve counted as early fiction—like Kate Winslet going undercover as a scuba instructor or Lindsay Lohan becoming a champion horseback rider (some of the outfit options were bizarre, okay?).

Sure, spending hours staring at semi-dressed cartoon women might seem like an obvious precursor to coming out, but for me, it was more about creativity than attraction. Like Ocean Vuong says about queerness fostering imagination, my version involved spinning stories to keep myself company. Stardoll gave me a safe space to do that, away from kids my age who’d have roasted me for both the game and my very gay thoughts about it. (Let’s be real—they’d have mocked me for playing at all while they were sneaking Smirnoff Ice and kissing boys named Trent.)

Now at 31, I don’t know if I’ll ever be a mom, but if I am, I hope my kid spends their tween years glued to harmless sites like Stardoll instead of rolling their eyes when I say, “Enough TikTok for today.” In a world where so much online time is performative, I just hope today’s queer kids have their own ways to explore—whether through digital paper dolls or something entirely new.