by Maya Brown
I’ll be the first to admit that if there are lesbians on a TV show, I will be all over that TV show. I’ll have seen all the episodes, be watching it right
now, or at least have read the Autostraddle recaps to see if it’s any good. If you asked me right now, I could list almost every show that has a main female character (or even recurring character) who’s into ladies—especially if there’s a lesbian couple that lasts any length of time. I watch these shows because they make me feel seen. I watch them for the same reason I watched The L-Word under my covers when I was 16, because in a world where 99% of the time the guy gets the girl, I like to see it happen the way I want it to. I like these shows because they remind me that other people like me exist in the world. It is important for girls of all shapes, sizes, races, and sexual orientations to be able to see themselves on TV, to feel a little less alone.
But here’s the problem: even though there are more and more lesbians on TV, it is nowhere near enough. Take The L-Word for example. While I watched it when I was first coming out in high school, now it’s the last show I would recommend to any other babygay. Not only does it paint lesbians’ lives as drama filled, it also shows a very specific image of lesbians, one that is mirrored in many other TV shows. It is the male fantasy version of lesbians, the ones that appear mostly in porn designed for men. the characters are feminine and hypersexualized. They are upper-class and fashionable with long hair, short pencil skirts and male characters who catch them having sex. Don’t get me wrong, there are some amazing characters in The L-Word, and it is an important show in the queer community, but the characters still play into stereotypes about women that are meant to appeal to men.
If you look around, you’ll see a lot of these kinds of lesbians on TV. There are super feminine lesbians in Glee, Faking It, Pretty Little Liars, Gone Girl, Jane the Virgin, Degrassi, The Good Wife, even Grey’s Anatomy. I love a lot of these shows, I really do, but I am also sick of seeing two extremely femme women fall for each other. Sick might be the wrong word; really, I’m just bored. The issue isn’t in the portrayal of femme lesbians—it’s great that some girls can look up to characters like Santana from Glee or Emily from Pretty Little Liars (although not great that they’re used too often to appeal to men). The real issue is that if I, or countless other girls, turn on a TV, we would never see anyone who looks like us.
The closest I get to people who look like me, besides Ellen, are the really butch women—the few that show up on popular TV anyways. The issue is that I can’t even list names for these women: they show up as caricatures of themselves, as truck drivers and gym teachers. They send a message that lesbians, if they are not pleasing to men, are disgusting and wrong. They are a warning. Other lesbians, feminine lesbians, are appropriate because they are still attractive, they can still be sexualized. If women dare to be anything other than feminine, they suddenly become aggressive and undesirable. They are not meant to be relatable.
According to the media there is either super feminine or super masculine, either a male fantasy or a stone butch, with no in-between. But there is an in-between. There are lesbians who wear bowties and skirts, have short hair and still wear make-up when they feel like it. Who have real personalities outside of the fast that they are queer.
And there are queer women of color, something that is almost always ignored except for a few choice characters. There are far too few women of color in TV to begin with, let alone characters that are developed enough to really have a complex identity or sexuality. While a few characters stand out, like Poussey from Orange is the New Black, Callie from Grey’s Anatomy, or Lena from Meet the Fosters, the numbers pale in comparison to white queer women (check out what Brittani Nichol is doing to change this here).
I want to see lesbian characters like me, whose entire personality is not based around the fact that I like girls and whether or not that storyline will appeal to a male audience. And I want to know that queer women of color have characters to look up to too, because their representation is just as important as my own. At the end of the day, we all just want to have someone to identify with, we all just want to be seen, everyone deserves that. And for me, that means being able to turn on the TV and see someone who looks and acts like me, who validates my identity and who gives me access to a community I might not otherwise have access to. That’s what queer representation is all about.