What Other '80s Teen Stars Have to Say About Equality

 The 1980 drama The Blue Lagoon made sex symbols of both Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins. Both are also longtime allies to the LGBT community.

Shields played a lesbian in the 1998 film The Misadventures of Margaret and again in the 2001 television drama What Makes a Family. In a cover profile to promote the latter film Shields toldThe Advocate about her close lifelong connection to the gay community, which she calls the "proudest part of her life," and revealed she'd been partially raised by two gay men who were friends with her mother.

Atkins is appreciative of his status as a heartthrob to gay men. In 2009 he discussed gay fans with website Out in Hollywood. "I'm actually very lucky in that respect because I am able to have that crossover so I have both straight and gay fans," he said. "The 80s was a big time for the gay movement and here came a movie where it was male nudity being prominent rather than female nudity and so [I] became sort of an iconic poster child at that time. To me, it was kind of flattering.