Last time I was at the movies, they showed one of those really long previews. It didnt look very interesting Im pretty sure at least two of the top-billed actors were actually semi-automatic weapons but I was struck by the fact that the preview had been going on for so long, and I had yet to see one woman.
Not even in a sidewalk crowd.
I leaned in to my friend and whispered The first woman we see is going to be a stripper.
I only have so much space, so Ill tell you now that within 30 seconds, we saw our stripper. I guess I really won that one.
Perception is everything. The Geena Davis Institute for Gender in Media reported that in studies, men perceive a group with 17 percent women to be a 50/50 male/female split, and when 33 percent of the room is women, perceive the group to be mostly women. No wonder so many guys came unhinged when the Ghostbusters remake came out. Women, it turned out, were accurate about estimating the rooms demographics. Were good at it because thats what we do, and queer women do it even more, especially when it comes to whats on-screen.
Lesbian roles are still rare enough that we rejoice over each one (and theyre still never the lead, unless its a specifically-gay program). I dont like superhero movies, but I know that last week, Black Lightning put Nafessa Williams on the air as the first black lesbian superhero; the announcements popped up everywhere like victory flags; we keep spreadsheets of queer characters as though theres going to be an inventory check at some point.
Its exciting that so many queer women are being incorporated occasionally, even well into mainstream television, but its hard not to notice that theres a very specific type of queer woman being given the green light. Shes not in a leading role, of course. She adheres strictly to the narrow ideals of Western beauty, including femininity. Occasionally, she will sleep with women, often in that gay television, fade-to-black kind of way. She doesnt know any other queer women.
It doesnt feel progressive; it feels unfamiliar, and uncanny.
When Sara Ramirez tweeted a photo from her new role on Madam Secretary last fall, the response was overwhelming. The photo was everywhere. Straight women in my group chat asked if I had seen it. Queer women on the web were flailing and overusing exclamation points, because this was something different.
It was CBS, and the character is unapologetically, distinctly butch.
Autostraddles TV blogger Carmen Phillips encapsulated this excitement when she gushed that the character appears in all of her dapper butch, nerdy, avocado farming, policy savant glory. Shes wearing a broad checkered navy suit with subtle purple highlights in the pattern and a deep purple tie. Her undercut is SHARP. Its the gayest thing my eyes have ever witnessed on network television. This writers joy is real. This character feels familiar to her. Not that theres something inherently rare about a feminine lesbian, but queer women are diverse, and just slapping a sticker that says Gay on a woman isnt enough.
But Deena, you might be thinking, isnt this all a little selfish? Arent you just complaining that you dont have enough celebrity-crush fodder?
In a way, yes.
So get to the writing room, folks its finally time to satisfy the female gaze.
If youre a creator committed to providing a constant visual stream of women whom straight male viewers want to bang, creating masculine-of-center woman characters requires a great deal of imagination. In addition to more imagination, we simply need more queer creators. Comics Rhea Butcher and Cameron Esposito figured this out when they created their own roles in the SeeSo comedy Take My Wife (just canceled after its first season). Comedians are particularly well positioned to make progress here, it seems, since they already write their own material. Tig Notaro became well known as a stand-up comic and guest star, frequently playing herself and eventually playing a version of herself on One, Mississippi, a show she created (also just canceled).
British television may be outpacing us, here: It has a finer understanding of real characters, to begin with. The first time I saw Charlie Covell as Detective Constable Alex Dier in the British police drama Marcella, my roommate and I both made exclamations aloud. Theres nothing like seeing dapper, androgynous, or butch, women on TV to make you realize how out of the ordinary it is (we made the same sounds when we saw Susie from The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, who chain smokes with her sleeves rolled up, carries herself like a dockworker, and wears trousers with suspenders despite 1950s norms). Covell is also a writer, so Im guessing shes responsible for creating the two quite-believable and quite romantically-entangled woman detectives on Netflixs British series The End of the F***ing World, one of her current projects.
I dont worry too much about femme erasure, other than the obstacles it presents in meeting women while Im out and about. But the erasure of butch and androgynous women on television is so backwards that it gives me whiplash. Its time to see the full spectrum of queer women in leading roles, even if that means that writers are forced to put on their thinking caps until they can imagine the humanity of women theyve never bothered with before.