Following on from my last post
about seeing platonic female friendships in television shows, I’ve decided to talk
a little bit about NON-platonic female relationships in television. That’s right, I mean LESBIONICS! (That’s just
slang, I don’t mean lesbian robots. Although that sounds pretty great and let’s
be honest, Rosie from The Jetsons was a single, butch, 45 year old STRAIGHT
robot? I have my doubts).
Rosie was built with the only lesbian chip in the factory. She is destined to be alone.
Just a note, pretty much all of the things I mention
can be applied to the GBTQI part of the acronym also (and it’s much worse for
some of those letters), but I’ll be specifically talking about the L as that’s
my letter. THIS IS MY ALPHABET SOUP GET YOUR OWN FAMILY RECIPE.
Anyway, this might be news to my
LITERALLY THOUSANDS of male admirers, but I am in fact one of these lesbian
people. (If you just passed out from
shock or sadness and are reading this again ten minutes later, please make sure
you see a doctor if you got a head knock). Also, don’t be too upset that you
didn’t realise, because unless having a long-term girlfriend and tweeting about
cats constantly is a signifier, even Jessica Fletcher herself couldn’t have
figured it out. And Fletch can sniff out a lesbian like nobodies business. I’m unsure why that last sentence was so
upsetting, but I can’t delete it because I’m lazy so you’ll just have to deal. That reminds me, how good was
Jennifer Love Hewitt’s ‘How do I deal?’
Okay, before I left just then to watch the film clip for ‘How do I
deal?’ I WAS going to say I had gotten
off topic, but I really hadn’t because ‘Love’ Hewitt (that’s what her friends
call her) was very prevalent in my early lesbian development. By that I mean I
was watching her on Party of Five when I was 13, pretending to fancy Scott Wolf
and his dimples, but actually ‘Loving’ Love instead (see what I did there, who
said lesbians don’t have a sense of humour?)
The thing about being a lesbian lady of my age (very young and beautiful)
or older, is that it was very rare that you got to see any kind of
representation of yourself on the screen.
Gay kids these days have it a little bit easier what with their Glee
programme where estranged brothers sing a Goyte love song to each other and teen sexting and such. I had to walk ten miles in the snow with no
shoes on to see a lesbian on television! As a straight person you don’t really have
to think about what it is like to never see some kind of reflection of yourself
epitomised on screen. You are constantly
surrounded with vision and stories of heterosexual people meeting, dating,
falling in love, having sex, having complicated relationships, and having lives
together. You have the opportunity to
seek out a character or a movie that you identify with, because there are so
many examples for you to choose from. You
never have to worry that you probably aren’t normal because nobody acts like
you on your favourite television shows.
You get to recognise yourself in Dylan because you too have a scar in
your eyebrow and you also like pashing crazy brunettes named Brenda.
Can you identify with wearing this much denim?
For me, the first major development in finally seeing something along
these lines makes me sound VERY VERY COOL.
As a teenage lesbian in a small town, I was taping (yes taping on VHS I’m
old lol) the show Buffy each week in the desperate hope that Tara would be in
the episode, and perhaps I would see her and Willow hold hands or KISS!!!! or even
look at each lovingly. This probably
explains why I am now only attracted to witches. Those few moments each week filled up my tank
with enough lesbian juice to keep me going.
I don’t think you can understand what it feels like to finally see two
girls love each in a romantic way when you are a teenager unless you are
deprived of those images whilst simultaneously ONLY EVER THINKING ABOUT THAT because
of hormones. It’s something that
heterosexual people will never experience, because it’s impossible to get away
from seeing it. Trust me, I spend most
of my time yelling ‘YUCK STRAIGHTIES KISSING’ at the television.
How did EVERYONE not become gay after this?
These days it is slightly better (at least on American television), with
LGBT characters accounting for about 3% of series regulars in 2011. That
still isn’t high, and if you split that percentage between gay men and lesbian
characters, and then split THAT percentage into characters you actually
identify with on any other level other than sexual identity, it’s still very rare
to have a fulfilling experience. I think
proof of the problem is that most lesbians have happily watched a pretty terrible
show like The L Word.
The problem also extends to movies, where not only are gay characters
rare, but were historically evil/gross/suicidal/murdered. And in the case of lesbian characters, you
also have the incredibly well-worn category of going back to men/getting
pregnant to a man/ending up with a man.
There are very few movies about lesbians that are good, well-made movies
where the lesbians survive and are happy and are still lesbians at the
end. Instead you have to go on YouTube
and watch videos where (lonely heroes of society) people have cut together scenes of a show or
movie so it looks like they are gay,
usually set to a Shania Twain song. I mean, if you want to do that, you weirdo.
Of course I never would.
Anyway, I think it is getting better, and I hope it continues to improve for all the gay kids out there. But MOSTLY I hope that someone invents a time machine and goes back and stops the movie
Gigli from being made. That’s basically
what this whole blog post was leading up to.
Please someone go back in time and incapacitate Ben Affleck or J-Lo in
some way. I suggest the hobbling scene
from Misery. Just stop that atrocity. Lesbians deserve better. As does general society.
3 comments:
ROFLOL!
You're absolutely right, as well as being hilarious (and young and beautiful). It's something most people don't realise unless you actually point it out to them. Which is why I posted this on Facebork as well!
Totally right. I think of Rosie a bit like Alice, the heart-of-gold, middle-aged, single house-keeper in The Brady Bunch.
now i feel sad about poor, lonely Rosie.
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