My sex education consisted of my mom silently leaving The Care and Keeping of You 2: The Body Book for Older Girls on my bed one random Tuesday, a singular line from “Parks and Rec” from the fictitious pornstar Brandi Maxxx about “penis in vagina,” an online health course in 9th grade, and the iconic 2000s television show “The L Word.”
Over the past five years, I’ve asked nearly every Gen-Z sapphic I know if they’ve seen “The L Word.” Out of probably at least fifty people, only like three said yes.
“The L Word,” created by Ilene Chaken, aired on Showtime from 2004 to 2009 (there’s also a reboot that we don’t talk about), depicting a group of lesbians in L.A. The show had a profound impact on queer culture and made huge strides in lesbian representation, especially in the early 2000s. As far as I know, there has never been a piece of media before or after “The L Word” that has as much concentrated lesbianism as this one, to my intense chagrin. I’ve heard rumors of dykes gathering in bars when it was on the air to watch with bated breath if Dana would die or mass-sigh with disappointment when Shane left Carmen at the altar (I imagine it was something like the scene in Midsommar when the girls are all crying in unison).
I found out about this show when I started heavily questioning my sexuality, which was during quarantine. I was 14 or 15 or 16. I was spending a lot of time living like the main character in a coming-of-age movie. I remember lots of long, contemplative walks and bike rides where I would listen to “Lights Up” by Harry Styles on repeat.
Being in quarantine also meant I had a lot of time to sit on the internet and learn about gay people. “The L Word” came up pretty soon into my research, and I began watching it on Hulu before I knew what I was. I would lay in bed and watch with the volume as low as possible in case my family could somehow hear the salacious noises of people doing things to each other that I didn’t really understand. I had to avert my eyes at times, as well as delete the show from my watch history after every session. The possible embarrassment was too much to bear.
I was very grateful I could hide under a blanket and watch it on a portable device instead of rapidly switching the channel on a living room TV like the millennial lesbians had to do. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I was born earlier. Would I have remained the self-sheltered “straight” girl who gave kids dirty looks for cursing in middle school? Or would I have entered my “rebellious” phase earlier than twenty years old?
~
There aren’t a lot of shows about a group of gays navigating life and love. “The L Word” is the only one I knew about, at least. That made it my field book for social expectations for queer people. These expectations came most of all from a fan-favorite character, Shane McCutcheon. She is the only main character who is left-of-femme, as well as the resident “cool girl.” She’s also white and very thin (for as progressive as the show was, it hasn’t aged well: mostly white and femme and thin characters, very little—and at times offensive—bisexual and transgender representation, and other cringe-inducing aspects make up a good portion of the show).
A lot of sapphics, including myself, want to be her, be with her, or both. A lot of us look up to her. She also canonically has a body count of over 900 (with no STDs!), poor communication skills, and is a serial cheater (actually, all of the characters on this show are serial cheaters). In the pilot, a protagonist named Bette says, “Have you noticed that every time Shane walks into a room, someone leaves crying?” If this was said about a male character, we’d probably hate him. But Shane wasn’t a male. We wanna make girls cry, too, even if we can’t fully admit it.
Now, how do we think this affected impressionable 15-year-old Scarlett, the same Scarlett who wasn’t even gay yet, the same Scarlett who had gotten all of her social cues from TV and the preppy girls at her childhood dance studio? It turns out, pretty poorly.
This show taught me that to be a cool gay, you have to dress differently than the straight girls, be really skinny, and fuck as many girls as you possibly can (there was no such thing as protection in that show, by the way).
In high school, I wore sweatpants every day and had exclusively unrequited crushes. I was also recovering from an eating disorder, so being really skinny was out of the picture for me for the sake of my health and happiness and my relationships with my family or whatever.
My senior year, I walked into my dance studio and read the cast list for our “Beauty in the Beast” Recital, wondering what role I was going to get for my final year, a question I’ve been asking myself since I was four years old. I scanned the list for my name. My gaze lowered until I found out: I was the dog/footstool.
~
Going to college, I knew this could change. It took a lot of bumbling around, though. My style was not fully formed my freshman year, unlike these aliens from Fashion Planet that call themselves the class of 2029. Nor were my social skills, which took manymanymanymany failed conversations and two years of putting in effort on the dating apps like I do my schoolwork—I have a 4.0 GPA—to get anywhere. I also didn’t drink or do drugs my first year. (Which I don’t regret! Be sober children! And adults!)
Things finally changed in October of my sophomore year, when a girl with mutual friends asked me out at a party. Earlier that week, the first time I’d ever met her, she showed off her skimpy bra in front of me and a couple friends when explaining some anecdote about accidentally flashing a frat brother. At the party, she was drunk off Pink Whitney and wearing white face paint and goth makeup. Not my normal type, but they were too intriguing and too gay to say no. This experienced queer—who was also a stripper and college dropout—was nervous to talk to me?
The next morning, we went to a coffee shop and talked for four hours. On our second date, let’s just say Scarlett had a lot of firsts that night. On our third date, I threw up next to her car in a parking lot.
She answered my texts quickly, called me “pretty girl,” and told me I reminded her of a song called “Jackie Onassis.” Before we could go on a fourth date, I found out she was racist. Like shockingly racist. Like even my frat boy brother who just recently called my friends “insufferable libs” agreed it was way past problematic. I was reliably told that at a late Waffle House run, she told the waitress: “Calm down, Rosa Parks.” I stopped seeing her after that.
~
A few weeks later, I hung out with this other girl a few times. Those times also lined up with my first experiences binge-drinking. She introduced me to Lauryn Hill, which is really ironic, because she’s the exact type of person Hill warns about in “Doo Wop (That Thing).” She just wanted to show off her voice. Don’t be a hard rock when you really are a gem. Well, she didn’t seem to listen to the song. (We may have randomly celebrated our “anniversary” this past October. Frankly, no regrets.)
Nearly a year and many painful anecdotes later, I’m a little more like Shane, but I don’t really have the control and power and charisma she seems to have. Deep down, she must feel pretty out of control, since she can’t commit to a relationship.
I’d like to think I could. I’d like to think I’d do great. I’d save my money to buy her flowers and learn how to write poems for her. I’d make her a playlist and learn her favorite color and tell her good morning and good night. I’d pay for her food even though I don’t have a job. I’d trace hearts on her hand with my thumb. I’d pay attention to the stuff she wanted but didn’t buy at Target and get it for her later. We’d have a shared Pinterest board. I’d introduce her to my family, maybe even come out to my aunts and uncles.
But in my lower moments I feel afraid sometimes. Afraid that I’ll never stop feeling like the dog-slash-footstool I’ve always been.
Or if we’re in a really dark timeline, there’s a different movie I see playing out. First, I meet someone off the apps. Or better yet, organically. Something corny and amazing like I drop my books and she picks them up, or we happen to have the same coffee order. Maybe she has princess blonde hair or Aubrey Plaza dark brown hair; I don’t really care. She asks for my number. We start texting (and she texts me back quickly!), then that turns to meeting. Then that turns into meeting multiple times. Then one day she hands me a bouquet of flowers similar to one I’ve saved on Pinterest (she’s stalked my account, of course). On the tag, it says “Will you be my girlfriend?” I say “Yes!” and we embrace and then it starts raining and we recreate the one scene from “The Notebook.” A month or so passes and it’s going great. I have a partner! I’m living my dream. Sixteen-year-old me would be so happy.
Then a familiar feeling creeps into my stomach and scurries to my brain. I suddenly hate myself for no reason. I feel out of control and insecure. So I smoke and drink in my room. Then I walk to a bar by myself in the dark and drink more. I buy a drink for a girl there. A different girl. Maybe she has the same hair as my partner, maybe completely different; I don’t really care. I pretend I’m nice. I pretend I’m a good, secure person. Jackie Onassis. We go back to her place. And in a few moments I’ll have started something that inflicts unimaginable pain onto the partner I love.
Over the summer, I watched “The L Word” with this girl on a first date in her apartment. She was 21 or 22 and watching the series for the first time. She was a baker. She drank Soju. She rented her own apartment in downtown Louisville. She wore these colorful waist beads she believed would fall off when the universe needed them to (and made her Snaps more memorable). Anyway, we picked up at the episode she was on. Lo and behold, it was the episode where Dana Fairbanks fucking dies from breast cancer. I’ve actually always purposely avoided this episode, since I haven’t wanted to watch something so sad. But I thought it would be cool to share the experience with someone else, especially a cute girl whose head was in my lap. It was a pretty good episode.
I wanted to share more moments like this with her, but deep down I knew I wouldn’t. Deep down, I knew she was going to ghost me a week later. I would give her the benefit of the doubt. I would say, “she just lost her job.” But then I would see Snapchat stories of her having fun at the bar. Deep down, as we lay down together and watched the clock on screen count down to Dana’s death, I knew this moment would crumble into dust so rapidly it was like there was no point in watching this episode with her altogether.
For most of my life up to this point, my heart has been whole—not broken, not fractured—but buried beneath a pile of dust such as that. Dust made of first and last dates. Of texting me until you get tired of pretending that you’re interested in me. Of postulating our own definitions of queerness never to explore what they look like in tandem. Of explaining why I love “Community” and you pretending to be a nerd about something, too to hide the fact that you’re going to be a bitch to me. Of saying that we’re “meant to be” on Hinge but not asking me out. Of “forgetting” we had plans. Of sharing why we go to therapy five minutes into meeting each other and never seeing each other again. Of me paying for my own Lyfts home. Of pathetically waiting for you to finish your round of Fortnite before we talk. Of sending me a long paragraph of why I’m special, then not realizing you weren’t stable enough to pursue me until our second kiss, followed by a cinematically teary-eyed Uber home in the night. Of taking another melatonin gummy due to the heart-racing anxiety of fearing I’m going to be flaked on again. Of texting me asking to read over your three-page poem of why you wanna fuck your shitty cowboy Kroger boss that you would play Apple Arcade Games with while I was in bed, right before asking me if we can just be friends. Of constantly annoying my friends about this stuff. Of telling me what songs I remind you of and then giving she/they strippers a bad name at Waffle House. Of teaching another girl why they’re “not ready to date me.” Of being told by the girls that say yes at first that I “deserve better.” Including the ones who asked me out on a Crumbl Cookie box and almost taught me what love was. Of redownloading Tinder. Of giving my energy, my time, my charm, my body, myself, unappreciated.
Can someone please blow all this dust off and give my heart a hug? A hug that lasts? A hug they’ll bury us in?
~
This semester, my “Jane Austen and Film” professor told us, “Remember, literature and film are representations of life, not models of them.” Everyone chuckled, but I knew I sincerely needed that advice. I am learning and relearning that through my English major. When I write notes about Shakespeare or Jane Austen, I am not just marking anaphora or acute characterization, but also—with a 5-subject notebook, a sprained wrist, and a blue pen—breaking and rebuilding my ideas of what life, relationships, and queerness entail.
Then I go home and brush my teeth and see a picture of Shane taped on my mirror with a sticky note that reads “U R HER.”
