Queer Creators Collection: Introducing Brooke Finegold

Brooke Finegold is a multi-medium creator based in New York City. Brooke dabbles in comedy, poetry, collaging, photography, event production, and community engagement. She invites themes of playfulness, colors, and queerness into her various creative works.

Brooke notes one of her earliest inspirations growing up was Hayley Williams of Paramore. She has always looked up to Hayley’s fashion, hair, songwriting, and boldness in taking up space in a male-dominated field. She marks the beginning of her creative journey to be the moment she finally dyed her hair with Hayley’s hair dye brand Good Dye Young. Before her life as a creator really began, as Brooke puts it, she was planning to study business at a state school in San Diego. She told GO that she had no creative outlets—until she picked up the memoirs of Amy Poehler, Mindy Kaling, and Tina Fey. “I was like, oh my god. Comedy is a thing that [I] can do,” she said, noting that comedy is often dominated by white, straight, cis-gendered men.

The revelation hit Brooke. “I was like, okay, I’m going to transfer schools and actually do comedy. I remember I texted my family in our group chat and was like, super dramatic. I was like, ‘Guys, I’m transferring to USC and I’m going to start pursuing comedy,’” she told GO. “…I remember exactly where I was sitting when I sent that text and I was like, ‘This is the beginning of my life.’” 

After transferring to USC, Brooke did stand-up improv sketches, open mics, and got to run her own comedy show, but was struggling in the incredibly male-dominated comedy scene. She called her dad for advice, wondering why none of the men around her would give her a spot in their shows. “My dad was like, ‘Just make your own show.’” And Brooke did just that. During COVID, she set up a stage in her backyard, with the help of her set designer and costume designer roommates, and called it “The Unbirthday Show.” The Unbirthday show soon made it to different venues, like Lyric Hyperion and Zebulon. 

A few years later, Brooke moved to New York City to pursue a creative career and surrounded herself with like-minded creators. After moving, she found herself immersed in a slew of creative projects and opportunities. “I started curating art galleries, running a poetry night, doing a photography project, doing collage, and everything started to come into focus,” she told GO. “Now I do all sorts of creative stuff, like doing stand-up, doing my own solo show, and writing for the show Gaydar.” 

Brooke’s initiative to host a bi-weekly poetry writing group aims to create a safe space for queer people to write about raw, silly, and sexual content. “Something that I really care about is lowering the stakes about reading and creativity, and bringing back life, spirit, and playfulness.” She later added that the idea of playfulness counteracting repression that queer people may have felt in their adolescence is incredibly important to her work, especially giving people the platform to blend horniness, playfulness, and childlike wonder.  

Brooke hosts her solo show, “Something Blue,” about gay stories told through straight weddings, where she often wears her mom’s wedding dress and veil. “I do a live poem in the show. So I do a collaborative poem with the audience talking about their families, their lives, their gay lives, and we write a poem together,” she said. “That’s what I’m holding in the picture, and that’s my typewriter which I write the poem on.”

Another one of Brooke’s creative passions is collecting vintage magazines and making gay collages. She told GO, “I collect a lot of playboys, which literally says entertainment for men, and physically cut out women to put them together and make them gay, which is really fun, because I’m kind of rewriting this erotic history of being like, ‘Oh, this is the male gaze, this is entertainment for men’ and flipping the script and being like, ‘No, this is for women and is of women.’”

Brooke just released her photo book “Lesbian Hands” which showcases niche and distinct codes for lesbian hands. “I feel like in an image, it encapsulates so many different aspects of lesbian culture and these visual cues that the straight eye wouldn’t pick up on, but like, if you’re a lesbian, or in the queer community, it’s such a clear like ‘Oh, that’s a lesbian’”, she told GO. “It’s this sort of way to document our lesbian archive in a way that is also safe.” She later adds, “Seeing the way that other people’s outfits and clothes coincide, like the rings, the chains, the way people hold a drink, hold a joint, put on lipstick, or even just hold each other’s hands, it’s been really fun to just explore that.”  

To purchase “Lesbian Hands” check out Brooke’s website and the Lesbian Hands Instagram! To follow Brooke’s work on Gaydar, check out her episode here and the show’s Instagram. To join her weekly comedic musings and poetry, subscribe here.