Film Lists

The 10 Best Lesbian and Queer Movies of All Time

WLW deserve to see their lives represented on screen.

Photo by Shingi Rice on Unsplash

Unless you're white, cis-gendered, and heterosexual, it can be hard to find films that reflect your lived experience.

If you're anything like me, you suffer through even the worst movies just because some Reddit user said there was one lesbian kiss somewhere in the second hour of the film. Womxn-loving-womxn relationships have long been fetishized, ignored, or poorly represented in movies, but thankfully there are a few hidden gems out there that get it right.

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Trueself

My Southern, Christian Upbringing Still Makes Me Question If I'm "Gay Enough"

Maybe normalization needs to look less like glitter bombs and blasting "Born This Way," and more like simple acceptance, encouragement, and space to question.

Photo by Teddy O on Unsplash

In the wealthy Virginia community where I grew up, being gay wasn't seen as evil by most people.

Instead, it was seen as a subtler kind of wrong. It was disapproved of in the way that privileged liberal people tend to disapprove of things: passively and even compassionately. My parents believed that people were sometimes born gay and that while they wouldn't "wish that harder life" on their children, gay people were a fact of life and we owed them kindness.

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Film Reviews

Yes, Pete Davidson Talks About Ariana Grande in His New Netflix Special

In Pete Davidson: Alive From New York, the SNL cast member handles controversial topics well...for the most part.

Netflix

Since diving into the world of stand-up as a teenager, Pete Davidson's comedy has often hinged on touchy subject matter.

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Photo by Jas Min on Unsplash

It's difficult to overstate the importance that The L Word held for the lesbian community after it originally premiered in 2004.

Never before had there been a show featuring a full cast of lesbian and bisexual characters. In fact, there'd been very few gay women (in this article the word "woman/women" denotes anyone who identifies with the term) on TV at all. In 2004, America had barely become comfortable with the "gay best friend," which, as problematic as that trope is, at least worked to familiarize the public with the concept of homosexuality in men. But female-on-female sex and romantic relationships, though sometimes culturally less maligned than male-on-male relationships, were still firmly taboo, seen as a mere waypoint on the road to settling down with a man or fetishized by the male gaze. Then, at last, The L Word showed a mainstream audience a community of women who loved women without shame. It also helped define a vocabulary of words for LGBTQ+ people. It was important, but it certainly wasn't perfect.



Many of the cast members were notably feminine and played by straight women, which in and of itself isn't necessarily an issue, but it did often serve to make the frequent sex scenes feel absolutely sodden with the male gaze. Between the lacy lingerie, liberally applied makeup, and pornographic noises, a lot of gay women felt that the show didn't reflect the less picturesque realities of lesbian identity and sexuality. Even worse, the endless dramatics of the soap opera-esque show sometimes seemed to imply that lesbians are compulsively promiscuous, prone to extreme drama in their relationships, and even likely to come unhinged (as seen in the truly bonkers storyline of Jenny Shecter). And while we're at it, it's worth mentioning that the characters were almost exclusively upper-middle class, white cis-gendered women (not to mention the deeply problematic portrayal of transgender individuals when they did try to broach that topic). Still, flawed representation is often better than no representation, and despite all the show's faults, a generation of both budding and seasoned gay women watched The L Word with devotion and gratitude.

Now, the beloved show is getting a 2019 style makeover in the form of eight new episodes called The L Word: Generation Q. A lot has changed in the gay community since The L Word's final episode premiered in 2009—perhaps most notably, the language LGBTQ+ people use to describe themselves. While many wonder if this new reboot can atone for the sins of the original series while still capturing its particular magic, one thing is clear after the first two episodes: Things are a lot less black and white than they were in the early aughts of Dana and Alice drama.

Already, the series has introduced two openly transgender characters played by actual trans actors, Leo Sheng as Micah Lee and Brian Michael Smith as Pierce Williams, a refreshing change from the at times downright offensive transgender character of Max from the original. Additionally, while we have a femme gay couple (Dani and Sophia) at the center of the story, we also have Finley, a self-described "traditional lesbian when it comes to tools," complete with an affinity for short sleeve button ups and using the word "dude."

But even with these more inclusive identities, we get much less anxiety over labeling, which the original series could never escape. Within the first few episodes, the 2004 series made it clear who saw themselves as a butch lesbian, a femme lesbian, a top, a bottom, bisexual, and who was still on their way to one of these concrete identities. Besides Finley's single mention of being a "traditional lesbian," we see less of this need for definition in the new series. Instead, we simply see who each character is attracted to in a given situation, placing them all in a vague space of queerness—which is a much more realistic depiction of fluid sexual identity.

Indeed, regardless of what your feelings about the show are, comparing the reboot with the original is a fascinating study in the changing nature of LGBTQ+ language. We learn that Micah is Dani's ex, making it clear that, despite his amorous connection to a gay man in the first two episodes, he does not exclusively date men. This plot point is never harped on but merely accepted, something that would have been an impossibility in the original series, which spent ample time parsing out the exact nature of each character's sexuality. Even the adjusted title, "Generation Q," obviously denotes this major difference, as today's gay community is composed of people who feel less pressure than their forebearers did to claim a single term to define their sexuality. Instead they reclaim previously derogatory terms like "queer," which Merriam Webster defines as, "Use of the word queer as referring and relating to sexual orientation, and, more recently, to gender identity, has changed dramatically since the 1980s. Formerly used only as a strongly pejorative term, queer is now commonly used by some as a positive self-descriptor. The word is also prominent as a neutral term in academic contexts that deal with gender and sexuality."

But reclaiming previously derogatory words isn't actually new. The reboot highlights the changing nature of the titular "L" word itself. As Lit Hub points out, "Lesbian and tribad and invert and sapphist were all still being used relatively interchangeably at the turn of the twentieth century; in some literature, lesbian was the female equivalent of sodomite, itself a negatively charged legal term." So in the same way that "queer" is no longer a slur, the word "lesbian" was reclaimed by previous generations of women who loved women. As such, the original series took the word to mean women who loved and slept with other women, regardless of the strictness of this preference.

But now, LGBTQ+ individuals have a much larger vocabulary at hand to describe their sexuality. While one might think this means that labeling is becoming even more important for this generation, it actually has the exact opposite effect. In fact, there is so much language available to define one's sexual identity that words are actually becoming less important and more inclusive. Words like "queer," "pansexual," "bisexual," "asexual," "aromantic," and "fluid" all offer a sense of validity to those who may identify with them, but they also offer an openness to interperpretation, which is highlighted by the fact that the new generation of The L Word isn't harping on terminology at all. While characters like Dana, Alice, Shane, and Jenny all clung to "lesbian" as an identifier of their sexual preference and often as a sort of membership card in a counterculture, the new cast of Generation Q exists in a much more amorphous, queer space. It's just understood that the characters are not exclusively attracted to cis-gender people of the opposite gender, and beyond that distinction, they are all comfortable existing in the malleable, ever-changing, identifier of "non-straight," each presumably ascribing to various words within the LGBTQ+ identifier.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that few LGBTQ+ femme individuals who are attracted to other female-identifying individuals use the term "lesbian" anymore. As Christina Cauterucci puts it in Slate, "In other words, we shared a common sexual orientation [with lesbians], but little, if any, cultural affiliation. In the space between "lesbian" and "queer," my friend and I located a world of difference in politics, gender presentation, and cosmopolitanism." In fact, Cauterucci isn't the only one who feels this way, and the use of the word "lesbian" online has decreased notably since 2015, as shown in the graph from Nexis Unis below.

In many ways, the term is becoming antiquated, particularly as our perception of gender changes. And isn't that a good thing? Isn't the ultimate goal of expanding our understanding and acceptance of various sexualities to make specifying language obsolete, leaving people to love who they love, without question or stipulation? For all of the ways The L Word has let us down in the past and may continue to do so in the future, at least it serves as an accurate portrait of the changing language of LGBTQ+ people.

Jenny Lewis (Opening for Harry Styles) - Love On Tour - Atlanta, GA - 10/28/21 - State Farm Arena

If there's one thing that could be said of our modern era, it's that nothing exists in isolation.

One could even say that nothing goes in just one direction anymore—instead, things are moving in multiple directions, operating in loops, often meeting at crossroads. For a long time, at least in the music industry, things appeared to be stratified, separated by genre, linear visions, and arbitrary categories. Rock artists toured with rock artists; indie stars opened for indie stars. Patrician music lovers looked down on pop-lovers, and pop-lovers bullied indieheads. Success could be purchased with a record deal and marked by a position on a top chart. Gender was divided between a man and a woman. Feminism was disconnected from race and class.

Times are changing. Pop, like fashion, has become fluid and multidimensional. Elton John can collaborate with Young Thug. Lady Gaga can ricochet from electronica to folk and back. Harry Styles has become a bisexual icon and a truly great songwriter, capable of drawing from multiple genres to create nuanced and political pop music.

And now he's going on tour with Jenny Lewis, Koffee, and King Princess. They'll all be opening for him on different stops on his 2020 "Love on Tour" tour, which will begin in April.


A little background: Jenny Lewis is an iconic songwriter who fronted the band Rilo Kiley before creating a body of intensely powerful solo work. Koffee is a singer-songwriter, rapper, and musician from Jamaica who's generated a huge amount of buzz in a short time by putting a fresh and experimental spin on reggae. King Princess is a dream pop star who may or may not be capitalizing on queer aesthetics but still embodies an inspiringly out and proud image.

Styles' choice of openers is brilliant because it brings together so many different devoted and passionate fan-bases. Queer fans will relish the chance to dance along to King Princess, while indie traditionalists and older millennials will come for Jenny Lewis, and Gen-Z fans of cutting-edge music will show up for Koffee. All these musicians are bound together by one common thread: Their music is really, really good. And isn't that what matters in the end?

Rilo Kiley - A Better Son/Daughterwww.youtube.com


King Princess - 1950www.youtube.com


Koffee - Toast (Official Video)www.youtube.com

Unfortunately, the existing tickets sold out with stunning speed and cost an exorbitant amount of money, sadly prohibiting many of Styles' fans from enjoying the experience. (Many of them feel scammed). If Styles were to truly embrace the ethos of his commitment to breaking down all genres and boundaries, he'd make his concerts free, but alas, one can only dream... Until then, let us keep listening to our descriptively titled crossover Spotify playlists (shoutout to "Creamy" and "Pollen"), saying "okay" to Boomers who insist that there are only two genders, checking Co-Star for evidence of discernible meaning, and praying for the day when everything and everyone will truly be free.

Harry Styles - Sign of the Times (Video)www.youtube.com

MUSIC

King Princess's "Cheap Queen" Is Performative Queerness

Mikaela Straus's debut LP raises questions about the boundary between using queerness as a brand and using one's power to create an inclusive community.

King Princess is a different kind of gay icon.

While many stars have indoctrinated themeslves into the gay community by becoming beloved by mostly gay men, it's rare to see a star become beloved specifically by the lesbian and bisexual/pansexual femme community.

King Princess (whose real name is Mikaela Straus) burst onto the scene at a cultural moment that seemed overripe for a queer femme-focused star. She was preceded by Hayley Kiyoko, whose openly queer music earned her the moniker "Lesbian Jesus," and she's very far from the only queer femme musician around. But other than Kiyoko, she's one of the few to build a successful pop career off of a specifically lesbian-oriented aesthetic. She's garnered quite a following, and her shows have become safe spaces for queer women looking to express themselves openly and loudly.

Strangely, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Straus implied that she's not well-versed in the queer female community that loves her so much. "My shows are [filled with] very queer females, which is interesting because I cannot tell you a community that I have been less apart of in my life than that," she said. "It makes me interested in what's happening with them." Presumably, Straus is saying that as she identifies more with drag and nonbinary communities than the queer female sphere, but it's still a confounding statement, delivered without context in an article called "The Unapologetic Queerness of King Princess."

This raises the question: Could all this be an act, a well-timed and excellently executed branding technique? In all likelihood, it probably is, at least in part. King Princess's authenticity (a generally meaningless term) has been criticized extensively, and for good reason—she grew up in the music industry, as her father was a recording engineer and owned Mission Sound Studios, and her great-great-grandfather was a co-owner of Macy's. All of this meant she was offered a record deal at age 11 (which she turned down), but it allowed her to release an extremely successful EP in 2017; "1950" rests at a cool 300 million streams on Spotify.

Probably at least a thousand of those streams are this writer's, as "1950" is a gem of a song. Fortunately, her debut LP Cheap Queen continues in that song's vein, keeping with the lush harmonies, hefty beats, and glossy 80s pop and rock influences that made that song such a standout.

In contrast to that song and much of her earlier work, Cheap Queen moves away from explicit references to queer culture and focuses on the dissolution of a relationship; take a step back, and it's largely about performance, curation, and fame. The songs are confident and forthcoming, buoyed by modern beats and rich, warm mixes. In some ways, the album's glistening, glittery finish is anti-DIY, totally committed to its own poshness and self-seriousness.

King Princess - King Princess: Deep Inside Cheap Queenwww.youtube.com

In that way, you could see it either as the product of someone born with a silver spoon who's successfully capitalized on queer aesthetics and popular music's most familiar and trustworthy sounds and images—or you could view it as the passion project of someone who truly understands the meaning of drag and camp, and who is, as the Entertainment Weekly article states, "queering queerness, whether she knows it or not."

Ironically, in terms of its subject matter, Cheap Queen actually isn't that explicitly queer. It's more of a discussion of relationships, free from gender and sexuality; its lyrics are pure pop, cut through with a thread of Gen-Z angst but without becoming brooding. Sonically, it's relatively subdued and mellow, avoiding controversy or extremes, perfect for chill playlists or summer nights (perhaps it should've been released in June instead of October).

Cheap Queen is at its most out and proud when Straus sings about drag. The cover photo features King Princess clad in light drag makeup, armpit hair showing, casting a disdainful glare at the camera. King Princess identifies as genderqueer, still uses she/her pronouns, and drag has been a huge influence on her life and work. "Drag for me is just such an extension of my queerness because it was how I learned to become comfortable with myself," she told Entertainment Weekly. "I feel so grateful to drag because…RuPaul and everything that has made drag mainstreamed it in a way where a girl from Brooklyn, who didn't feel like a girl, saw drag, and learned how to become a woman."

King Princess - Playboy School Of Popwww.youtube.com

Drag, of course, began as a way for queer people to express themselves and their sexuality in a creative and liberating medium. Like its aesthetic sibling, camp, it originated largely in black queer communities, working as a subversive form of expression that existed outside of and in opposition to established hierarchies.

Women and lesbians have always dressed as men in drag, but of late, increasing numbers of women and nonbinary femmes have been using drag as a way to subvert expectations of femininity. In an article from The Guardian, Rebecca Nicholson writes, "It's a deliciously complicated web to untangle: these are women, performing as what would have been (historically, at least) a man performing as a woman. These female queens are traversing gender boundaries as well as putting on outrageously entertaining performances, often in the face of prejudice and misogyny, even within queer culture."

The fact that cis women have begun performing femme drag has been met with some discomfort and accusations of cultural appropriation and fetishization, though these arguments have also been criticized. In Dazed, Jake Hall writes, "The irony is that drag is designed to disrupt gender norms – anyone can bind, stuff, pad and 'perform' gender to an exaggerated extent." Many have also argued that criticizing female drag performers places too much emphasis on genitalia and bodies themselves, when drag is supposed to be an inclusive space, one dedicated to the deconstruction of gender and exclusivity, and one that can be liberating for nonbinary people or anyone struggling to come to terms with their gender identity. Plus, queer women and nonbinary people have always been around, and trans women like Silvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson were at the forefront of early battles for LGBTQ+ rights.

In the midst of this sacred tradition enters King Princess, who has largely avoided mainstream controversy thus far. Most publications have branded her as a victorious new kind of queer icon. It's hard to say how her legacy will hold up, but for now, she seems to have hit a sweet spot between ingenious branding and a genuinely meaningful message.

Whatever you think of King Princess and the way she uses queerness, she is creating an inclusive space where queer people can congregate and celebrate their identities, with all their inherent fluidity, confusion, and contradictions. And in a way, wasn't that always the point of queer activities like drag, which are inherently, beautifully performative? Aren't they supposed to be about the presentation, the artifice, and the show, highlighting the cracks in the idea that anyone has a fixed gender identity and shattering the idea that anyone is exempt from performing their gender, style, and selfhood all the time?

Maybe King Princess should have the final word on this. "Growing up, I thought it was much more simple," she told Vice. "I was just like, 'I'm gay.' But now that I have the words to describe how I've always felt, it makes it complicated." She's quick to clarify that this is a good thing. "I like that complication, because we are all walking dichotomies of some sort. We are all just walking contradictions. I don't think any of these identities are mutually exclusive."