Lesbians Are All Around
Where are they? Everywhere. An assessment of the presence of queer women across popular culture.
Published
The Female Gays is a monthly column about queer women in pop culture, including but not limited to horny doritos ads, Jojo's Siwa's Disney trauma, Tiffany "New York" Pollard's queer TV show, the most recent straight actresses to play gay, lesbian Super Mario characters, and Cate Blanchett.
It feels like every day I hear about another lesbian love story that never saw the light of day because a studio thought audiences would be scared of two women kissing. From Now and Then making Roberta “straight,” to Scooby Doo cutting a Velma-Daphne kiss, to Love Actually removing two lesbian storylines, to Netflix canceling a show as soon as it gets a little dyke-y, you might think Hollywood hates lesbians. But I think they enjoy challenging our overactive, ultra-horny imaginations by making us project queerness onto characters based on things like hair length, eyebrow shape, and blazer choice. They can take our Velma-Daphne kiss but they can never take our Velaphne fanfiction.
Being erased from the mainstream but constantly toyed with—you’re gonna make funky-button-down-wearing, GI-Joe-loving Roberta straight?!—has made queer women an eagle-eyed audience, our ears perking up at the sight of anything even slightly sapphic. This skill’s come in handy considering it’s been nearly 30 years since Now and Then came out and there’s still a screaming lesbian deficit in pop culture. (And if there is a queer woman she usually doesn’t live to see the sequel.) But that doesn’t stop us from making up our own lesbian characters. We see lesbians everywhere, even where there are clearly none present.