For ‘Under the Bridge,’ Truth Is Messier Than Fiction — But Fiction Is Definitely Stranger

Turning a true story of the brutal murder of a teenage girl into an entertaining television program is, at best, awkward, and at worst exploitative. Under the Bridge walked the line with relative mastery for its first four episodes. In the fifth, slight cracks in this endeavor begin to show. But first, we do in fact have Rebecca and Cam speaking intimately in a bathroom again. They do not make out, which would be inappropriate, but Cam does tell Rebecca that she looks pretty.

Under The Bridge -- “When The Heat Comes Down” - Episode 105 -- Tensions rise as suspicions surround the teens. Rebecca and Cam hatch a plan — but an unexpected detour leads Rebecca down a strange rabbit hole, resulting in a new bond. Rebecca (Riley Keough) and Cam (Lily Gladstone), shown. (Photo by: Jeff Weddell/Hulu)

(Photo by: Jeff Weddell/Hulu)

There are several elements of the true story that were tweaked for Under the Bridge‘s dramatization, and all of these come to bear in “When The Heat Comes Down,” with mixed results.

The first is traditional in adaptations — the sprawling narrative and its many characters are cleaned up, with more extraneous figures cut entirely to keep big moments in the hands of the primary cast. That primary cast includes the invented character of Cam as well as Rebecca Godfrey herself, who wasn’t actually in Victoria when the murders happened, and therefore must not only be written into this story, but centered. In reality, there was no need for a grown woman to drop acid with a group of Troubled Teenagers in, seemingly, an abandoned warehouse, in order to get some kind of scoop. (Arguably there was also no need for this within the fictionalized narrative too, but I digress!)

It was two teenage sisters, Nadja and Anya, survivors of an “unfortunate” home situation and veterans of the foster care system, who actually got the information the cops apparently needed to start investigating. While Anya had just been placed in a new, posh foster home at the time of the murder, Nadja was living in Seven Oaks. Her new roommate was Josephine, who immediately began bragging about the beating and told Nadja how her best friend had gone back under the bridge, found Reena, beat her up more, and then drowned her.

Nadja told Anya what she’d heard and, despite their warranted mistrust and deep loathing of the police, Anya pressed Nadja to speak up. She did, and that cop thought the story sounded far-fetched. Both sisters were frustrated by the officers’ condescending tones towards them. He did, at least, take the initiative to call his neighboring county to see if there was a missing girl in Saanich, and of course, there was, her mother had reported her missing a week ago and was actively doing her own investigation, calling everyone her daughter knew to ask if they’d seen her.

Thus, a cop questioned Dusty and Josephine at Seven Oaks, who recited identical stories of un-involvement with Reena’s disappearance. While Dusty, Kelly and Josephine began plotting their escape to Mexico, Nadja grew restless, thinking, as Godfrey wrote in her book, If the cops can’t figure out this shit, then me and Anya will. Nadja asked Josephine to show her where it happened. She called Anya, who literally was excused from class to accompany Nadja on this journey. The sisters hyped Josephine up, faking how impressed they were with the tale so she’d keep telling it. They returned to the police station to share their new information, continuing to question why no moves had been made to search the gorge or question Kelly. A cop who was friends with Kelly’s family and closer friends with another friend of Kelly’s, Maya, used her “in” to get a lead from Maya — she’d seen Kelly and Warren walking on the bridge that night.

It was at this point that the cops descended on a party held in a field and arrested everyone. This is where the official questioning began, and where Kelly was immediately given the legal and financial support her peers lacked.

That’s a sprawling narrative, to be sure, introducing new characters and moving pieces around on the timeline. Putting Rebecca into that “investigator” role does give her and Cam a reason to frequently see each other, which I personally appreciate. I appreciate every phone call, every lingering glance, the ways they challenge each other. Although I realize she’s writing a book and needs information, she is at least partially driven by a desire to help Cam, who she has obvious feelings for. But some of Rebecca’s Inspector Gadget efforts begin to seem a bit far-fetched, starting with Becca’s transparent efforts to coerce the girls into handing over evidence or believing that she’ll help them run away to Mexico and continuing with her choice to accept psychedelic drugs from teenagers she’s never met before to prove she’s not a cop. (It’s like…. rule one of psychedelic drugs to only do them in safe situations with people you trust!)

Some valuable character work comes out of this for Rebecca, however, as we see how self-destructive she is as an adult and how she’s literally haunted by memories of her brother’s death and seems to feel somehow responsible for it. One of Under the Bridge‘s most effective themes is one often encountered in conversations around criminal justice reform — that we are more than the worst thing we ever did. By giving grace to these kids, she’s in some way attempting to give that same grace to herself. Rebecca’s instinct is that these kids need is unconditional empathy and compassion. Cam agrees on some level, but her empathy is conditional — she’s here to advocate for Reena first and foremost and feels that these kids need not just compassion, but also guidance, leadership and, as appropriate, discipline. 

Ultimately, it’s Cam’s evolution in this episode that really lands. In the first episode, Cam was defensive when the Virks implied they’d hoped for a bit more solidarity from her than from her white brother. Now, we see her perspective shifting. While she maintains neutrality when Rebecca expresses incredulity over how swiftly Manjit was arrested for abuse without evidence, her agreement is clear later when she challenges her father on that topic and how racism was clearly a factor. She usurps the spotlight from her dad’s lazy platitudes about their “multi-ethnic community” where “everyone is welcome” during a press conference to suggest Reena’s attack may have been racially motivated. After bringing Dusty into the station after Dusty’s failed attempt to move back in with her family, she points out that Kelly’s record is nearly identical to Dusty’s and yet Kelly’s never been subjected to punishment like Dusty has.

Under The Bridge -- “When The Heat Comes Down” - Episode 105 -- Tensions rise as suspicions surround the teens. Rebecca and Cam hatch a plan — but an unexpected detour leads Rebecca down a strange rabbit hole, resulting in a new bond. Cam (Lily Gladstone) and Roy (Matt Craven), shown. (Photo by: Darko Sikman/Hulu)

(Photo by: Darko Sikman/Hulu)

Under the Bridge continues leaning in to the notion of safety, and how efforts to provide safety are often smokescreens for more sinister motives, and rarely occur without collateral damage. (I kept thinking of the title of Roxane Gay’s essay, The Illusion of Safety / The Safety of Illusion.) Dusty’s sister wants to keep her daughter safe from Dusty, but in doing so, Dusty’s own safety is compromised. The state justifies its swift arrest of Manjit as an effort to keep Reena safe, but the result is an innocent man thrown in jail by a racist system and Reena getting more freedom to do “unsafe” things like drink and smoke and develop allegiances with her future killers. He’s let out and then forced to keep himself “safe” from so much as a conversation with his daughter to prevent further criminal charges.

Reena Virk’s choice to accuse her father of sexual molestation to get moved out of her house an into state care did actually happen, although the true story is slightly worse and the logistics have been simplified. For example, Reena’s allegations ramped up over time, and she actually lived with her mother’s parents for several months prior to entering state care, and her grandparents believed her allegations — which obviously broke Manjit’s heart. Still, the jist remains the same.

We’re reminded frequently in Under the Bridge that teenagers have underdeveloped fontal lobes and are making moves with zero thought towards consequences or long-term impact. Reena’s choice is hard to reconcile. We see that she’s lonely and friendless, that she’s teased for having hairy legs, that she spends most of her time in predominately white spaces and, like so many teenagers, feels ashamed about everything that makes her different.

There’s even more context provided in Reena: Her Father’s Story, written by Manjit Virk. He writes of how his daughter had been bullied consistently most of her life and thus hated school. He described her as a “big girl,” often teased for her weight and the tallest human at her graduation, trying desperately to hide behind her peers. She struggled with severe eczema, she had acne, she grew depressed and moody. These elements of Reena’s physicality aren’t captured by actor Vritika Gupta, but Gupta still delivers a commanding performance.

When Reena’s family had moved to Sannich West in 1994, they’d hoped Reena would find a fresh start and make friends, but the one friend she made shunned her after their first, encouraging hangout. When a group of teenagers smoking in a park said hello to her in July of 1996, it was the first time Reena had ever felt seen or desired by anybody. “Because Reena felt no one else would accept her, she wanted to hang out with this group who bragged about freedom from house rules,” he wrote. Essentially: Josephine was the first friends Reena ever had, and as portrayed in Under the Bridge, she was ruthlessly manipulative.

Under The Bridge -- “When The Heat Comes Down” - Episode 105 -- Tensions rise as suspicions surround the teens. Rebecca and Cam hatch a plan — but an unexpected detour leads Rebecca down a strange rabbit hole, resulting in a new bond. Dusty (Aiyana Goodfellow), Kelly (Izzy G.) and Josephine (Chloe Guidry), shown. (Photo by: Darko Sikman/Hulu)

(Photo by: Darko Sikman/Hulu)

I can relate to Reena’s frustration over her parents’ rules, I too felt absolutely oppressed in that self-obsessed bratty teenage way by having the strictest mother of anybody I knew, absolutely stymied by the injustice of my mother prohibiting me from doing things all my peers were allowed to. But reporting a parent for abuse they never committed is so beyond the pale. While many of these kids are acting out due to abuse and neglect from their families, Reena is in many ways a product of the abuse she suffered from her peers — right until the bitter end.

Ironically, it was the system’s abuse of her father, in real life, that sealed her fate. Reena had returned home for a rare overnight visit on the night she was murdered and, as Manjit writes in his book: Under normal circumstances, I would not have allowed her to go out without knowing her friends and the time of her return. But i feared that any firmness on my part now would be mistaken for force and abuse.

Rebecca introduces an idea this episode that we’ll continue to grapple with as the story continues: “I don’t think putting a bunch of teenagers in jail is good for anything.” What can we understand, even if we can’t excuse it? We do know that experiencing abuse never justifies inflicting it on others. We know Kelly Ellard is clearly unsympathetic, a psychopath enabled by her wealthy parents. But what about these other kids? What should happen to them? What about Warren? Josephine? Dusty? What is “justice” and how do we achieve it?

What’s clear already is that none of these questions have easy answers, and some might not have answers at all.

If you like this review, you’d probably love my new TV newsletter, What the Gays Are Watching, which is a perk for AF+ Members! For only $4 a month, you can join AF+ Media and get access to all our premium content, our new TV and Film newsletters — and enjoy an ad-lite (but usually completely ad-free!) reading experience.

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Riese

Riese is the 41-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish and has a cute dog named Carol. Follow her on twitter and instagram.

Riese has written 3192 articles for us.

3 Comments

  1. It’s a credit to Reough that I still am rooting for Rebecca, despite the sometimes obnoxious or hare-brained schemes she devises. One thing I like about her rapport with Cam is that Cam’s groundedness (softened by softness/desire/history towards Rebecca) curtails Rebecca’s hard-edged chain-smoking manic pixie dream investigator energy. Rebecca never seems more like a real –– complex and grieving and in some ways aimless in other ways hyper-focused –– person.

    I think it was in an interview I read that referenced how Godfrey didn’t so much see Gabe in Warren, as herself – all the ways she was vulnerable, miserable, messed up, and susceptible to bad decisions as a teen –– and how her life could easily have been otherwise. That insight made me respond to the acid disclosures with a bit more grace…. but beyond that some of her tactics this episode are bananas. I was almost relieved that Kelly didn’t buy into them (that would have felt so insincere on the part of the show’s plotting). I could see Dusty being eager for being saved, and I actually like how Jo’s naivete – as with the imagined dream of going to New York that was always some fantastical projection – reveals her vulnerabilities that exist not beneath but alongside the tough facade and very real violent and manipulative behavior.

    • ugh, writing too fast – obviously Keough, but also didn’t fully finish this thought:

      Rebecca never seems more like a real –– complex and grieving and in some ways aimless in other ways hyper-focused –– person *than when she shares space with Cam.*

  2. I usually tweet about what I’m watching but this is one of those I chose not too. I didn’t know it was based on true events til the opening credits. It’s especially hard to watch a story around a child’s murder. The actress is playing Reena pretty good.
    When she slightly smiled through the window after her father was arrested, I wondered if that actually happened. I had such mixed emotions. I seem to get that a lot with the show. You’re angry what she did but sad her life was needlesly taken. I did think Rebecca trying to trick them was obvious but I got the feeling the character was trying to set the stage for them to scramble and mess up so Cam could catch them. Kelly going around flashing her privilege, while Josephine and Dusty are mandated to Seven Oaks, make me think of a murder commited by two kids I went to school with in high school during the 90s. One a doctor’s kid, the other a bit of an outsider. It’s a difficult watch for sure.

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Helen Hunt as a Bisexual Pickleball Monster on ‘Hacks’…Yes, Please

Welcome back to your weekly Autostraddle Hacks season three coverage, where I’ll delve into the highlights from the week’s episodes. Today, we’re discussing our favorite parts of episodes three and four: “The Roast of Deborah Vance” and “Join the Club.”

Ava has officially decided to spend her hiatus preparing Deborah for the possibility of taking over a soon-to-be-vacant late night slot, and at every turn, she keeps being reminded she’s an employee not a friend, despite wanting to believe she’s the latter.

“The Roast of Deborah Vance” opens with Deborah barging into her room unannounced to ask her to help her with a punchline. Soon after, Ava is tasked with firing her replacement writers played by Jordan Gavaris and Dylan Gelula (two fantastic actors btw, who don’t get enough screentime, but I also think it speaks to the strength of Hacks casting from top to bottom that the even the smallest bit roles stand out — there isn’t a single character who feels extraneous here). Later, Deborah spits a lozenge straight into Ava’s hand before taking the stage. The message is clear: She’s whatever Deborah needs her to be. A writer, a punching bag, a notebook, a loose napkin to drop a lozenge in.

Ava returned to Deborah’s fold for distinctly emotional reasons. Sure, there are career reasons, too. But in the lead up to Ava coming back, moments that feel most significant include her literally telling Deborah her feelings were hurt by her not answering her texts. There is extremely high emotional investment here, and it tracks that Ava hasn’t fully processed yet just how much Deborah is treating her like an employee — because she is one! She is an employee. Their interpersonal relationship is forever a little doomed by this. Lucky for them, I love a doomed dynamic.

Speaking of top to bottom impeccable casting, we have the triumphant return of Poppy Liu as Kiki! Ava waltzes into a school locker room full of beautiful breasts to find Kiki and other gorgeous women getting glammed up. But this is no Vegas showgirls showcase; it’s a PTA fundraiser for Kiki’s daughter’s school, aimed at the rich men who re/married late in life and have young kids and deep pockets. Now, I only lived in Vegas for about seven months, but this does feel very Vegas! Liu remains outstanding in her line readings. Kiki says to another hot mom in one breath: “Denise! Waist very snatched, ass very fat. Also, I loved Stephanie’s diorama on the Hoover Dam. I learned so much.”

Kiki becomes crucial to helping Ava realize how messed up it is that Deborah blurs lines between the personal and the professional. Yes, it’s a lesson Ava has learned before — multiple times. But it still hasn’t sunk all the way in, and what I love about Hacks is that it doesn’t show its characters making the same mistakes over and over again just as a comedy plot device to lazily construct recurring conflict. It isn’t, dare I say, hack about its approach to problems and obstacles that repeat themselves. Rather, Ava and Deborah’s default to old behaviors is deeply rooted in authentic character development and emotional stakes. Ava is, whether she likes it or not, desperate to please Deborah. (Don’t worry — more explicit mommy issues storylines are coming down the pipeline of season three.) So when Deborah calls from an NA meeting she has been roped into attending by her daughter DJ (the always great Kaitlin Olson, in what might be my favorite role of her career) asking Ava to quickly write her a speech to give in honor of DJ receiving her five-year chip, Ava doesn’t even flinch. Writing a mother’s supportive sobriety speech for a daughter isn’t exactly a part of her job description, but Deborah would argue it is, because Deborah treats all of her staff as being on-call 24/7. Kiki warns her against working on too much personal stuff for Deborah.

Ava blowing a makeup brush on Kiki's ass in Hacks

Deborah also sees it’s Ava’s job to write the NA speech for her, because she genuinely can’t tell the difference between a task like this and writing material for a set. There’s an audience. And when she realizes she has them in the palm of her hand, she smiles, keeps talking. She turns it into a light roast of DJ, completely missing the point of why she’s here. Deborah’s intimacy issues are the size of a Vegas hotel and just as labyrinth. She has to shroud everything in a joke. And the NA meeting performance is one of the worst instances of this yet, made all the worse by the fact that this is how Deborah learns DJ is pregnant. By then, it’s too late for Deborah to patch things over with DJ. The moment — one that should have been joyous — is ruined. Deborah, at least, is smart enough to know this.

When DJ later tells Ava about her pregnancy, it’s a complete contrast. Here is the joyful moment she should have been able to have with her mother. Ava is thrilled (“I’m gonna be an uncle!”), and then later when Ava casually drops to Deborah she knows about DJ’s pregnancy, there’s a bit of unspoken tension. Deborah seems a bit surprised DJ told Ava. But she can’t over-involve Ava in her personal life and then be surprised when she develops her own relationship with her daughter. I’m not convinced Deborah and Ava actually know what they want or need from each other, but isn’t that the way so many relationships go?

The reason Deborah agrees to attend the NA meeting in the first place is self-serving: It’s in exchange for DJ participating in the titular roast. The network, who Deborah is eager to please since she’s gunning for the late night gig, wants there to be a family member included in the roast. They offer her sister Kathy as an option, but that’s never going to happen, so DJ it is.

I keep waiting for people to bomb in this season of Hacks. But so far season three seems more interested in doing something else, in showing people kill it on stage/screen but also not making that the be all end all of success. In the premiere, Deborah kills in front of a massive crowd, but she feels creatively unsatisfied. In the second episode, she kills the late night guest hosting gig, but the victory also highlights just how unfair it was that she has never had the hosting gig she’s dreamed of.

Of course I thought DJ was going to bomb at the roast. The episodes primes us to believe she will. But she not only crushes her set; she even impossibly gets the catchphrase “WHAT A CUNT” to land. It’s thrilling! Even Deborah seems pleased! We get to be happy for DJ for slaying, but then the triumph is slightly dampened by the fact that this has only reiterated her problems with her mother. She says she finally understands why standup comedy is the number one thing in Deborah’s life, which of course is not what a mother wants to hear from their daughter. This season of Hacks is letting its characters creatively thrive while also showing that doesn’t necessarily mean everything is hunk dory. And in certain storylines, a lot has to be sacrificed or compromised for characters to get what they want.

DJ slaying at the roast on Hacks

The episode ends with Ava setting new boundaries with Deborah, including that Deborah no longer insult her, not even for her hands, whose size Deborah has a fondness for mocking. Deborah finds a workaround by texting insults to Josefina to read out loud to Ava, which even Ava has to admit is funny. Even at their worst, these two can usually connect over a good bit. Bits, though, are ephemeral. Soon enough, they’ll be at each other’s throats.

Which brings us to episode four, “Join the Club,” in which Deborah learns the true cost of being admitted to the old boy comedy club.

But first: a hilarious interlude between Hannah Einbinder and Paul Downs in which Jimmy details various open writing assignments Ava might be a good fit for. Every studio wants a procedural adaptation of the game Operation. Market research shows Gen Z thinks the spoon from Beauty and the Beast is hot, so what about a spinoff about his love life? Someone’s making a bisexual version of Gumby (“he bends both ways”) under the working title: Gum-bi. We’re getting 30 Rock-style jokes about the absurdity of Hollywood but in the significantly more grounded world of Hacks, and it works!

Early on in “Join the Club,” Deborah runs into an old pal and comedian Henry (prolific character actor Stephen Tobolowsky!), who waxes poetic on the brilliance of her special and then invites her on a colonoscopy retreat (they literally rent a house and play cards all night while prepping for colonoscopies) with him and fellow comedy old timers Terry and Cliff. Deborah later explains to Ava that when she was coming up in standup, these were the guys. She feels she was never seen as legit by them in the past. Deborah puts up a bad bitch act, but this isn’t the first time we’ve seen her insecurities about coming up as a woman in a man’s world.

Meanwhile, Jimmy and Kayla are trying to get a general meeting with Helen Hunt’s Winnie Landell, the new network exec introduced at the beginning of the season. Kayla gets them a meeting…on a pickleball court. Winnie is extremely competitive on the court and plays for money, and Kayla and Jimmy end up down ten grand, offering a double or nothing hail mary because they need to win Winnie over if they’re going to make Deborah a viable contender for the late night slot, especially now that she’s up against young gun Jack Danby. Winnie Landell is, again, evidence that Hacks makes even its smallest characters hilarious and specific. Hacks never just coasts by on the chemistry and skills of Einbinder and Smart. Everyone is giving 110%, and that’s certainly true for Hunt, who is delicious as a pickleball-playing monster. Beth, her pickleball partner, is hilariously revealed to be her ex-wife. We’ve got an evil queer executive in the house!

Helen Hunt as Winnie Landell in Hacks

In other minor character news, Hacks writer Joe Mande also returns as Ray, the surly Palmetto frontdesk worker who hates Ava’s guts. Ava joins Marcus and his trivia team (his mom and his ex-boyfriend started the team without him but invited him once they realized they needed someone who knows state capitals). Mande as Ray gets some great lines in. Characters like Winnie and Ray make Hacks feel like such a lived-in world.

But the trivia scenes do more than just add some texture to the world of Hacks. We also get the latest plot development between Ava and Ruby. Ava has been slightly monitoring the ongoings at Ruby’s place via their shared Ring light app, and it comes to a head when Ruby catches her doing so during her going away party. Ava steps out of trivia to talk to Ruby, who gives her an ultimatum: Be with her, come with her to Iceland, or don’t bother coming back. Ava wants to see this thing through with Deborah. She wants to choose Deborah.

Over at the colonoscopy slumber party, Deborah is shooting the shit with the guys, playing Uno and drinking disgusting magnesium cocktails. But the camaraderie shifts into something else when one of the guys starts making fun of his 15-year-old niece for being bisexual. The guys all riff back and forth, making fun of bisexuals and pansexuals and, when Deborah interrupts to say there are some people who indeed are attracted to all genders, they think she’s doing a bit, piling on by making fun of the idea of more than two genders.

“You know for comedians, you’re all a little out of touch,” Deborah says before excusing herself.

In the bathroom, she overhears them talking more shit, calling her the PC police and a buzzkill, so she leaves the house and takes all the toilet paper with her, old dudes preparing for their colonoscopies be damned.

A lot of the jokes the guys are cracking are similar to the jokes Deborah has cracked before, often to Ava’s face. But it’s different now. It’s different here. They’re making these out-of-touch punching down jokes in the privacy of this luxury Airbnb. It’s clear they really believe this stuff. And it’s different now because Ava has changed Deborah. She may not have overhauled Deborah’s beliefs and sense of humor entirely, but she has gotten in her head. Even if it’s just in this one small way of making her believe bisexuality as real. It’s enough to make Deborah uncomfortable with the guys. It’s enough to make her leave.

And then Ava and Deborah fight about, well, essentially about feeling too controlled by one another. Ava basically chose to let a relationship end because of Deborah. Deborah rejected her invitation to the old boys club because they were being shitty to bi people, to people like Ava.

“I finally get in good with those guys, and I can’t enjoy it because of you!” Deborah yells. “You got in my head. They said some crap about bisexuals, and I couldn’t let it go.”

Deborah claims she was perfectly content to be a Vegas star until Ava showed up and pushed her to want more for herself. She’s lying through her teeth. Deborah always wanted more for herself. She wanted late night. She wanted to be taken seriously, even though she’s often chasing the approval of people who don’t deserve her, like these men who didn’t invite her to their poop party until she had a hit special.

Ava and Deborah yelling at each other over a kitchen island in Hacks

Ava unloads about the breakup, tells Deborah she lost everything to come back here: Ruby, their mutual friends, their mutual facialist. Deborah tells her she didn’t have to come back. “Yes I did, because I wanted to. I wanted to be here with you, because you’re in my head,” Ava shouts.

They’re in each other’s heads. They both feel changed by each other, and they hate it.

It’s a great fight, but it also lands in a quieter place. This show really is remarkable in its balance of cruelty and care, a true sweet and sour mix. Deborah finally explains in more vulnerable detail to Ava what getting late night means to her. She has always wanted it. Long before her career began, she watched as a kid in a house with few rules. “My dad was a drinker. The later it got, the worse it got,” she explains. “Except when Johnny Carson came on.”

Ava wants Deborah to share these more personal stories with the public. If she really wants late night, she has to say it. But Deborah doesn’t want to say she wants it, let alone why she wants it so badly. She’s afraid of becoming a joke again, of saying she wants it and then not getting it. This whole exchange doesn’t negate or soften any of the fight that precedes it; rather, it just further contextualizes the frustrations that led to the fight in the first place. Deborah and Ava both feel burdened by their wants. Deborah is mortified by the thought of coming out and saying she wants late night. Ava wants to be here with Deborah despite it fucking up her life again, and even she doesn’t seem to know why this want is so all-encompassing.

But Deborah listens to Ava in the end, at least about saying she wants it, even if she doesn’t get as vulnerable as saying why. While hosting the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, she announces she’s ready to be the next host of The Late Show. She pitches herself as the best person for the job, and from there, it’s a full court press on the press. She’s making media appearances she never would have agreed to before like Taxi TV and an airport hologram, doing QVC tie-ins, and doing a Dunkin Donuts collab. It works. Jimmy gets a call from Winnie: Deborah is at least in the mix.

Together, these episodes work to show how Deborah and Ava are good together and how they are not, and it’s often for the same reasons. They’re different; they push each other. They both struggle with genuine emotion and intimacy and often use humor as a shield. Their individually ambitious but also creatively sutured together. They struggle to articulate and rationalize their wants. I keep waiting for characters in Hacks to fuck up on stage, on screen, or in their art this season, but that’s not what this season seems to be about so far. It’s about killing it professionally but still struggling — in interpersonal relationships but also with career goals that still feel out of reach. It’s about feeling stymied by the industry (see: Gum-bi and the agism that keeps Deborah from being in the late night mix initially) even when you are indeed getting some wins.

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Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is the managing editor of Autostraddle and a lesbian writer of essays, short stories, and pop culture criticism living in Orlando. She is the assistant managing editor of TriQuarterly, and her short stories appear or are forthcoming in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Joyland, Catapult, The Offing, and more. Some of her pop culture writing can be found at The A.V. Club, Vulture, The Cut, and others. You can follow her on Twitter or Instagram and learn more about her work on her website.

Kayla has written 827 articles for us.

4 Comments

  1. I adore this season so much, for all the reasons you describe here, Kayla. The specificity of the characters and the jokes, yes, and also how skillfully the tone and cadence of the show can shift and surprise us––revealing the depth of these characters (especially Deborah and Ava) in spite of themselves.

    • it’s SO GOOD. and often, tv shows about the film/tv industry can get a little myopic and, well, hack. but this series is really proving there’s a way to do it with nuance, originality, and realism

  2. So I love this show, and I loved Loved loved the season 2 finale’s “To love someone is to let them go” scene. I cried. However, Deborah did seem to be taking Ava’s autonomy and choices away from her, despite Ava explicitly saying “I want to be where you are, I want to be with you.”

    And now, after Deborah couldn’t keep up with the one “good” thing she’s done (Let Ava go) and asked her back, both Deborah and Ruby, btw, seem to once again be ignoring what Ava wants. She says it again. Ava chose Deb over Iceland because she wants to be here with Deb. And I don’t know why people keep thinking this is a terrible idea for her? Is Deb a toxic boss? Yes, but the toxicity in their relationship (the early on abuse) is pretty much dealt with and is something that can be fixed. It’s been fixed. Ava writing for Deb is not a career killer either – it’s a good resume!

    I’m just saying…. I don’t know why people keep thinking they know what is better for Ava than herself.

  3. I’ve been dragging my feet on starting season 3, but this headline has inspired me to start ASAP!

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15 Thoughts My Dog Has When My Wife and I Have Sex

My dog Stanley is a level 10 clinger. Part of this is by design. He’s a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel/Poodle mix, and Cavaliers are cuddle monsters. I wanted a dog that would be down to lay on the couch and watch TV or curl up at the foot of the bed at night, and my wife wanted a dog that wasn’t going to require a lot of maintenance. I admit our boy is spoiled as hell — it’s my wife’s and my fault. We got him at only 13 weeks. He was barely five pounds, and we were so worried he’d get lost or stuck somewhere in our apartment. Those first few weeks, we took him with us every time we left the house because we were worried that our asshole cats would try to gang up on him while we were gone. I got a sling carrier and carried him around while we ran errands. He was also so small we were worried we’d lose him in the blankets of our queen sized bed, so we encouraged him to sleep up by our pillows.

As he got bigger, we figured he would naturally want his own space. Well, I was fucking wrong about that.

If anything, he gets more clingy as he gets older. If your lap is open, it won’t be for long — there will be a baby dog (yes, he’s almost three but we call him the baby dog) curled up before you can even get comfortable. Again, we know this is a monster of our own making, and he’s so cute we generally don’t mind. Sometimes he decides he wants to sleep among the laundry or on a chair. He still sleeps in our bed. Most of the time, it’s fine, except for when he decides my wife’s pillow is now his pillow or puts his whole very warm body against mine.

Generally, we love having him for snuggles, but there is one time when it’s more than an annoyance — it’s a downright inconvenience. Sex.

My wife and I have as active of a sex life as two women with full-time jobs and a family to take care of can have. So when we do have the time and energy to enjoy each other, we’d like to do it without interruptions. But there’s one little 12 pound hurdle to get past. Since Stanley is used to being the center of attention, he doesn’t always seem to understand that sexy time is momma time. As soon as he realizes we’re in bed and not going to sleep, he has to remind us of his presence. Sometimes he thinks sex is play time, and instead of relaxing, he will romp across our bed, snorting and barking at us to chase him. Other times, he’ll squirm his long body right between ours and roll on his back, daring one of us to give him his favorite belly rubs.

Other times, he decides to be strategic about his approach. He might chill out and lay on one of our pillows and then decide he’s had enough and jump into the action. There’s nothing quite like kissing your wife and having your face licked, or feeling a wet nose against your bare thigh. We don’t get mad; that’s what happens when you don’t create boundaries. And besides, we get a huge kick out of him romping around. If we really want solo time, we will distract him with a rawhide bone, but then we realized how many of them are scattered around our apartment. We counted once, and there were at least five bones in various degrees of chewed. It was hilarious, but we decided to cool it with the bones.

I don’t actually know what goes through his tiny brain while we’re in the middle of the act, but if he actually had thoughts, this is what I imagine it would sound like in his head.

1. “Oooh, is time for snuggies!”
2. “Why we no going to sleep mommas? I ready for night night.”
3. “I’m in my spot, why we no cuddles?”
4. “Oh I know what’s happening, mommas play!”
5. “Can Stanley play? I wanna play!”
6. “Why can’t Stanley do lickies on momma faces but mommas can lick each other’s faces? No fair!”
7. “Momma lickies mean Stanley gets a new bone!”
8. “What you mean no bone? Momma lickies mean bone!”
9. “Maybe I should go lay down somewhere else, dis bed too shaky.”
10. “I back mommies! Did you miss me?”
11. “Can Stanley get a tummy rub? Please? Should I boop your snoot with my snoot?”
12. “Are we done?”
13. “Oh yes, my favorite sniffs.”
14. “Why no Stanley under the blankie? Want cuddles.”
15. “Night night mommies!”

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Sa'iyda Shabazz

Sa'iyda is a writer and mom who lives in LA with her partner, son and 3 adorable, albeit very extra animals. She has yet to meet a chocolate chip cookie she doesn't like, spends her free time (lol) reading as many queer romances as she can, and has spent the better part of her life obsessed with late 90s pop culture.

Sa'iyda has written 121 articles for us.

How ‘The Mummy’ Became a Cornerstone of Bisexual Cinema

I don’t remember where I was when I first watched The Mummy (1999), a movie seemingly made for every teen obsessed with hieroglyphics and checking the sidewalks for stray asps. I might’ve gone to see it at the theater, peering through my hands at the deaths by carnivorous scarab beetles. I might’ve encountered it at a sleepover, doing my best to stay in my sleeping bag as the adrenaline surged. I might’ve just been channel-surfing to find Nick at Nite, only to stumble upon some of the best hair I’d ever seen on film flouncing in the locust-laden wind. Whenever it was, I’m pretty sure I don’t remember the details because I was too busy picking my jaw off the floor at the sight of such hot people searching for treasure in an even hotter desert, too busy pretending like my tiny world wasn’t collapsing in on itself at the speed of a flirty camel race. I might not have known exactly what it was I was feeling, but I at least knew that there was my life before The Mummy, and there was my life after The Mummy, and the latter was a whole lot more compelling in ways I couldn’t quite express.

Early on in the film, when curious librarian Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) meets wayward explorer Rick (Brendan Fraser), they immediately share an unmistakable truth: If they don’t mash faces with the other one as soon as possible, they just might die of thirst. She, faced with a wild-eyed man with a mysterious past, instinctively holds her breath when they make eye contact; he, certain he’s about to die, sees one last opportunity to make out with a heartstoppingly beautiful woman. Rick’s a classic Indiana Jones adventure hero type with the snarky grin to match; Evie, a stubborn academic with a simmering love of the exact kind of danger he represents. Both become supercharged with a desperate lust that surprises them equally, a tension that never once lets up throughout the rest of the movie until the titular mummy is vanquished and they can finally act out their  clear carnal desires.

Looking back at my obsession with The Mummy (and its even more bombastic 2004 sequel The Mummy Returns), its root seems almost too obvious. There I was, teetering on the precipice between childhood and puberty, confronted with the charisma magnets of Rachel Weisz and Brendan Fraser at the height of his ne’er do well scamp powers. My friends also loved the movie, but when we watched it together, I sat there knowing I was watching it somewhat differently. It just took way longer for me to realize that when I saw that first scene of their characters meeting through the bars of Rick’s prison cell, locking eyes and knowing their lives would never be the same, I was relating extremely hard to them both. They wanted each other so badly, so obviously, that it made me realize — years before I ever said it out loud — how badly I wanted them both, too.

Of course, it only took logging on to Tumblr dot com as a late teen for me to realize I was far from alone. All across the world, it seemed, The Mummy had shaken a generation of dormant bisexuals awake. Some waxed poetic about Evie and Rick as separate lust-worthy entities; some focused on their combined heat as a couple; others credited the movie for their sexuality entirely (“The Mummy is why I’m bisexual”). A smaller but no less passionate faction attributed their adolescent yearnings to the coupling of Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo) and Anck-su-namun (Patricia Velasquez), whose ancient Egyptian affair was so forbidden (hot) that it doomed them both to an eternity of suffering (less hot, but very important as the instigating incident for how a human man became The Almighty Mummy). Many of us leaned into that particularly annoying kind of “we were there first” smugness as Weisz, an impossibly charismatic performer in general, seemed to pick more and more roles that aimed her sexual energy squarely at other women. Unto every queer generation, a new inspiration for that “ohhhh that’s why I’m so into this” moment is born, and so me and my siblings in bisexual millennial arms latched onto The Mummy.

Now that we’re 25 years out from its release, though, there’s another crucial reason why this movie in particular activated so many of our imaginations in this way. Weisz and Fraser are obviously good-looking, but that holds true for basically every star of every action movie ever made. It bears noting, for example, that when a 2017 reboot tried to draft off The Mummy’s popularity with Tom Cruise, huge CGI action set-pieces, and no memorable romance to speak of, it flopped hard enough that Universal canceled much of its planned “Monsters” universe altogether. It’s not enough to just cast competent action heroes and expect sparks to fly. Being hot in the most basic of terms is a prerequisite for any film that’ll send its main characters into mortal peril and back again. It’s much rarer — especially now — to see an action movie like The Mummy that prioritizes the electric sexual chemistry of its leads as much as the explosive twists and turns of its plot. “Everyone Is Beautiful and No One is Horny,” as RS Benedict put it so memorably and succinctly, and God forbid if a character feels a frisson of lust while trying to save the world! Increasingly, it just feels like the biggest Hollywood movies are happy enough to present its audience with the veneer of sex but not the tantalizing possibilities that come with foreplay, or the relief of satisfaction when it becomes something more.

That memo, thankfully, came too late for Evie and Rick. Even getting married and having a kid, as portrayed in The Mummy Returns five years later, did nothing to dull their visceral need to throw each other against a wall, a bed, a dusty tomb, whatever works. Without their mutual hunger, The Mummy would’ve been a perfectly fine adventure movie. With it, The Mummy became so much bigger than itself, and a bisexual beacon for the cinematic ages.

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Caroline Darya Framke

Caroline Darya Framke is a writer and critic living with her anxious fox-dog in Brooklyn, NYC. She was previously Chief TV Critic at Variety, where she wrote features, cover stories, and approx. 80 million reviews. Her pop culture writing has also appeared on Vox, The Atlantic, NPR, and more. You can follow her (for now) on Twitter dot com.

Caroline Darya has written 3 articles for us.

5 Comments

  1. god so very much agreed – and i also think that Classic Bi Films have a sort of roguish energy to them; the ones in my canon, at least, tend toward the fun and rompy rather than the Serious Cinema

    • “roguish energy” yes!! I feel like for the micro-generation below me, the “Pirates of the Carribean” franchise v much channeled this same vibe.

  2. The 1999-2005 era gave us so many iconic bisexual adventure movies. In addition to the Mummy, we have Pirates of the Caribbean, Road to El Dorado, Treaure Planet, and the final if somewhat lesser coda on the era, National Treasure.
    Then Casino Royale happened and we went back to very straight action movies.

    • We have very different impressions of Casino Royale. To me it’s very much in the horny bisexual canon just with too much torture for it to also be in the fun sleepover movie genre. I still want a bisexual action adventure comedy romp with Rachel Weisz and Daniel Craig together even though maybe they’ve aged out of broad commercial appeal for that.

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7 Unconventional Ships Only We Love

Nothing brings a fandom together — or pulls them apart — like a ship. People love love and it’s only natural we get obsessed with our favorite on-screen couples.

But what about the couples we’re obsessed with that aren’t beloved by a fandom? What about those couples that most may hate — or not even think about — that we still remember?

These ships deserve love too! Here are seven unconventional ships only we love… or maybe someone out there agrees with our obsessions?

Shane and Jenny aka Shenny (The L Word)

Riese

Kate Moennig and Mia Kirshner smile at each other in bed.

I mean, anybody could’ve called this, I think, we did after all turn the entire website into a Shenny Fansite for April Fools Day 2018, aka the best day of my life, I talked about it when I was on the Pants podcast and not a week goes by that I do not somehow squeeze Shenny into conversation. But basically the thing is that I think Shane understood Jenny in a way that nobody else did, and Jenny was uniquely capable of seeing Shane’s entire self and loving her not despite that, but because of that — everything she’d been through and how she came out the other side. They’re also both very self-destructive in different ways and I think that makes them really in a good spot to get healthier together. I also think Jenny would be more accepting of Shane being poly than other partners which seems to me to be the best relationship structure for Shane, just saying! This is all very clear in my magnum opus of fan fiction, This is What I Want!

Arizona and Doctor Peyton Lauren aka Laurizona? (Grey’s Anatomy)

Valerie Anne

Lauren in focus in the background looks at Arizona out of focus in the foreground

This was very hard, because a lot of the “unconventional” ships I have are just sapphic crackships that most other queer viewers are on board for (e.g. Mulan and Aurora from Once Upon a Time.) Or ships that split the fandom but I definitely wasn’t alone in (#Emaya Forever.) Or ships that are just silly because one of them is a canon queer character with a string of very lovely girlfriends and the other is the presumably straight star of the show (Bess and Nancy, Nancy Drew). But the ship that has perhaps gotten me yelled at by my friends, peers, and coworkers the most is probably Arizona and Doctor Peyton. I loved Lauren Boswell. I know it’s deeply rooted in my decades-long love of Hilarie Burton, but that doesn’t make the on-call room thunderstorm makeout session any less sexy. I know it was a bad idea. I also ship Calzona and knew they were endgame. But, like Airzona, I couldn’t resist Lauren’s effortless charm! Arizona was one of my favorite characters in the history of Grey’s, and watching someone smirk at her until she was a human puddle??? Electric. Lauren was a relentless flirt, Arizona was happily married, I should have been mad at this whole situation, but sorry not sorry, I loved every second of it. Dr. Lauren’s stay at Seattle Grace Mercy West Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital for the Disaster-Prone and Critically Horny may have been short-lived, but the sound of that on-call room door locking will echo in my heart forever.

Santana and Dani aka Dantana (Glee)

Drew Burnett Gregory

Santana kisses Dani in matching red waitress outfits.

My hottest ship take is that Joey and Rachel were better together than Ross and Rachel, but since we’re specifically doing gay ships I’ll save that argument for another day. And yet my official answer also breaks up another beloved endgame. I understand why Gleeks everywhere shipped Santana and Brittany — I did too during the high school seasons! But Ryan Murphy’s obsession with pairing off gay high school sweethearts into early marriage like some sort of assimilationist mad scientist is one of many reasons “the college years” of Glee fell so flat.

There are real-world exceptions, of course, but I think one of the greatest things about our high school loves is they help us develop into ourselves and then those relationships… end. And there’s a brief moment where Glee went this route and it led to the most interesting late-season moments: Santana breaking up with Brittany singing “Mine,” Blaine’s sad “Teenage Dream” reprise, and, of course, Santana singing “Here Comes the Sun” with her hot coworker Dani played by Demi Lovato. Unfortunately, this is a brief moment. Soon enough, Santana and all the main characters are being pulled back into the orbit of their high school and Dani is written off with little fanfare. But this moment and this chemistry promised an alternate late-season Glee — one more committed to growth and new connections than empty happy endings.

Kate and Juliet aka Jate (I’m borrowing this from the Jack/Kate shippers, sorry bout it)(Lost)

Nic

Kate and Juliet covered in mud handcuffed together.

There was a time when Lost was my entire personality. Next to the WWE, it was one of the first properties I actively sought out online content about, but there never seemed to be a huge queer fandom associated with the show. Which tracks, I suppose, since they started sowing the seeds of the Jack/Kate/Sawyer love triangle in the literal pilot.

So when Juliet showed up in season three, I knew I found my crackship. Everyone was busy taking sides in the great Kate vs. Juliet fight for Jack’s heart (BORING!), meanwhile I just wanted the two of them to keep snarking at each other while staring deeply into the other’s (lol iykyk) eyes. The chemistry between those two?! Whew! Now that I think about it, this might be where my “Fight! Fight! Fight! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” affinity was born. The two of them have been handcuffed together, pointed guns at one another, and even mud wrestled/fought during the aforementioned handcuffing! If that’s not the makings of a perfect crackship, I don’t know what is. In fact, Juliet is the one who handcuffed herself to Kate because she hoped that maybe, just maybe, if Kate thought it was the two of them against the world that Juliet wouldn’t get left behind by yet another person she cares about. And I truly believe they both cared for each other; what most people saw as competition over a man, I saw as two women fighting against what was expected of them. And look, if there’s one thing ya girl is going to do, it’s ship a blonde and a brunette on a show that refuses to acknowledge the chemistry between them (lookin’ at you Criminal Minds…).

Raven and Abby aka Doctor Mechanic (The 100)

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya

Abby and Raven stand side by side with the wind blowing their hair back and a manicured bush behind them.

It honestly has been so long since I watched The 100 that I have no idea if this ship holds up, but I remember being positively feral for it back in the day, despite the fact that it’s so niche that even some fans of The 100 don’t know it? To be FAIR it is not exactly a romantic ship canonically (non-canon ships tend to be my favs) and in fact, if you look at the official The 100 wiki, it lists their relationship as “close friends” and even “surrogate mother and daughter.” Furthermore, during the events of seasons one through four, Raven is apparently 19 and Abby is 40. No comment! There’s chemistry there! Let me live!!!!!!

Tammy Gregorio and Eva Azarova AKA Teva? (NCIS: New Orleans)

Natalie

Tammy and Eva stand across from one another talking in a garden.

Before Kate and Lucy stole our hearts on NCIS: Hawai’i, there was Tammy Gregorio: the New York transplant with enviable lesbian swagger who made her way to New Orleans to investigate and then join the NCIS team. She seems almost impenetrable at first — a consequence of being blindsided by her lying ex-husband — but, eventually, she starts to soften and finds a chosen family. What she doesn’t find, though, is a girlfriend…or, at least not one that’s afforded the screentime to make their relationship feel like something substantive.

But there is Eva Azarova, a Russian sleeper agent who Gregorio first encounters during an undercover assignment. Eva’s history with the NCIS team predates her meeting with Tammy. The team that’s listening to their encounter knows exactly who Eva is and exactly what she’s capable of, but something about Gregorio undoes the typically unflappable sleeper agent. Their chemistry is electric from the start and what is supposed to be a tense undercover investigation ends up sounding very much like a first date.

“Hey, Gregorio, you think you might bring up the Playbook anytime soon, or is that like a second date type of question?” her co-worker quips. “Honestly…how long are we gonna go on with the foreplay?”

They head upstairs to Eva’s place and the mood shifts. Eva knows that Tammy isn’t who she’s pretending to be and a fight breaks out…and even that is hella sexy. It feels less like “we’re trying to hurt each other” and more like an extension of the sexual tension that’s been building between them. It’s like a mini Out of Sight but gay. I love it so much.

It’s the start of just two episodes that Eva and Tammy share and, yet, it lives in my head rent free for the rest of the series. Everytime the show introduces someone who’s supposed to be Tammy’s love interest, I find myself comparing them to the dynamic between Tammy and Eva…and they always come up short.

Ida B. and Hattie aka Hattie B. (Twenties)

Carmen

Sophina Brown as Ida B. holds Jonica T. Gibbs as Hattie's face as they make eye contact.

Recently, Autostraddle published a list (that you should read!) of 12 Pretty Good Lesbian Shows We’re Pretty Sure You Haven’t Seen Yet and while coming up with television shows to include, I once again suggested Lena Waithe’s Twenties. Promptly I was reminded that it’s less that Autostraddle readers “didn’t know about Twenties” — after all, in addition to its inclusion on multiple TV lists, it also had full recaps for the second season, and a feature length interview with Lena Waithe herself — it’s that, for whatever the reason may be, they were not interested. And maybe that’s a fair point! Maybe I will always be one of a small group of the half-hour comedy’s fan club. Maybe most of the other members of this fan club are my fellow Autostraddle writers who I have bullied into submission. Who is to say?? But I am here once again to beat my drum.

It would have been impossible for me not to love Hattie (Jonica T. Gibbs), Twenties’ protagonist, because she’s cut from the same cloth of pretty much every woman I’ve ever loved and every mistake I’ve ever made. Smart, creative, proud of her Blackness, fine as all hell but also — indecisive, impulsive, immature. Undoubtedly, Hattie’s constant screw ups are what give Twenties its plot of the week. But it’s her former boss, Ida B. (Sophina Brown) who really elevated this messy ass, problematic, uneven power dynamic, workplace romance into the secret guilty pleasure of my heart. If Hattie is every woman I fell for (ironically in my twenties), then Ida B. was every woman I’ve grown up to erotically fear. An ice queen who wears red lipstick like its the blood of her enemies and high heels like they are a dagger. Ida B. is the kind of woman who makes you shiver and then apologize for it. And sure, I could take my attraction to that particular archetype to my therapist, but I’d rather watch her make out with Hattie instead.

Hattie and Ida B. are a Black lesbian couple who, for their many other faults, were never boring. That is rare on television, where the fleetingly few times that Black women are in relationships with each other — they are most often relegated to being side characters or the writers behind them are so scared of “bad representation” that they write time into cardboard cutouts instead. I’ve suffered through both horrors too may times to count. Perhaps no one watched Twenties, perhaps I am standing alone in this ship, but I do not care because I will pick Black women who know how to be both messy and still melt the camera every time.

Honorable Mentions: Bette and Pippa from The L Word: Generation Q, who I almost went with for a lot of the same reasons I selected Hattie and Ida B.! Bette being the frigid ice queen in this scenario, and Pippa being the Black artist with dimples that don’t quit. But they felt just a smidge too popular for me to be alone in the ship.

What are your favorite unconventional ships?

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The Autostraddle TV Team is made up of Riese Bernard, Carmen Phillips, Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya, Valerie Anne, Natalie, Drew Burnett Gregory, and Nic. Follow them on Twitter!

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9 Comments

  1. I crunched the numbers from AO3, clearly the arbiter of such things. With only 6 fics in 10,000 Grey’s Anatomy fics, Arizona/Laura is by far the most cracked these.
    Coming in second is Dantana. It’s 133 fics are a drop in the bucket of the 44,000 fic powerhouse that is Glee.
    Alas, Twenties has no fics at all on AO3, so someone can get on that and forever be the first.
    With 21 fics out of the 909 for OG L Word, Shenny is practically mainstream.

  2. Wait I thought I was the only Santana/Dani shipper on Planet Earth!! Thank you Drew for helping me feel seen!!

    Literally I had the opposite trajectory most have, whereas Brittana made me not want to be gay bc I was like “I don’t want a relationship like this,” but then Santana/Dani made me go actually being a lesbian is maybe fun and hot and beautiful?

    • I love this!! Yeah like high school first love (especially first queer love in 2010) is kind of inherently going to be a little not great. But move to a big city, coworker queer love?? Great!

  3. I watched (and loved) Twenties, Carmen! It’s the only show I’ve seen on this list apart from The L Word. Although I ship Hattie with Idina more so than with Ida B. Thinking about it, this might also be a rare ship given the masc4masc-ness of it all.

    I know there’s a lot of love for Barbara x Melissa on Abbott, but I am probably in a minority of one in shipping Janine and Ava.

  4. I always like Dantana, but my true alternative Glee ship is Quinn and Brittany. I just see them being so balancing for one another. I wrote a couple of tics about them, one high school and then one as adults where they are married and fostering Brittany’s cousins children and Santana is still in their life, dating Dani but once in a while having some feelings about all of it. I really think Quitt could have had an interesting future.

  5. i agree with true, but my true Glee ship is Quintana. they will never make me hate you Quintana.

    also, i LOVED Twenties, so you’re not alone Carmen! Ida B. is the right choice for Hattie at the season of life she’s in. Adena wants something Hattie can’t give her. in this essay i will…

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Inside Columbia’s Encampments for Palestine, Students Know Exactly What They’re Fighting For

Three Wednesdays ago, on April 17, I reached the Columbia University campus hours before my scheduled class at the journalism school. The sky was overcast, but the sun shone through, and a spectacle had emerged on the campus lawn. Students had set up dozens of tents in front of Butler Library, a landmark in the university’s urban campus. They labeled the installation the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” and gathered together among the tents, singing and chanting.

The students were armed with clear demands and a plan: They were going to camp out on the lawn and refuse to leave until the university divested from companies and institutions that profit from Israel’s actions in Palestine, which human rights organizations have termed as apartheid and genocide.

A library set up inside a tent in the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” at Columbia University. Photo by Mukta Joshi

A library set up inside a tent in the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” at Columbia University. Photo by Mukta Joshi.

Since October last year, as the death toll in Gaza reached tens of thousands, Columbia University’s students have seen a familiar pattern of policing and arbitrary restrictions in response to protests on campus. These restrictions came to a head on April 30, when hundreds of NYPD officers in riot gear entered the campus and arrested 109 students. The previous night, students had broken into and occupied an academic building, christening it “Hind’s Hall” after a six-year-old girl whose body was found riddled with Israeli bullets 12 days after she had made a distress call to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.

A student looks on at “Hind’s Hall” – what the occupied Hamilton Hall had been named. Photo by Mukta Joshi/Hyperallergic.

A student looks on at “Hind’s Hall,” what the occupied Hamilton Hall had been named. Photo by Mukta Joshi/Hyperallergic.

This marked the second time Columbia President Minouche Shafik had authorized the NYPD to enter campus and arrest her own students within a span of two weeks.

Harrowing visuals emerged from Columbia and made international headlines during the first round of arrests on April 19. Far from ignoring the student protests, Columbia suspended every single student participating in the encampment, rendering them trespassers. Over 110 students were arrested and escorted away from campus. Most of these students were undergraduates. Many of them are teenagers.

An NYPD drone hovers in the air as a student protestor waves the Palestinian flag. Photo by Mukta Joshi.

An NYPD drone hovers in the air as a student protestor waves the Palestinian flag. Photo by Mukta Joshi.

In a rare display of restraint, the NYPD clarified that the students arrested were “peaceful, and offered no resistance whatsoever.”

Everyone saw the photos. Concerned friends and relatives around the world messaged my classmates asking about the arrests. Even a Gazan journalist I’ve been in touch with sent me videos — from my own university campus — over WhatsApp.

I don’t think Shafik realized, in that moment, what she had done for the Palestinian cause.

A protestor is arrested on the night of April 30, outside Columbia’s gates on Amsterdam Avenue. Photo by Mukta Joshi.

A protestor is arrested on the night of April 30, outside Columbia’s gates on Amsterdam Avenue. Photo by Mukta Joshi.

After the first round of arrests, the protests took on a life of their own. Hundreds of protestors showed up to Columbia, every day, outside its gates. Students across the city and country set up encampments of their own on their college campuses. South Asian student groups performed raas, bhangra, and bharatanatyam at the encampment, wearing keffiyehs in solidarity.

The protests took a life of their own in other ways, too, causing a chaotic media frenzy. The American media has been hyper focused on “antisemitism” on campus protests. But what I witnessed was quite the opposite. I watched as dozens of students — many of them Jewish — gathered together to observe a Seder for Passover. The food served at the encampment even had the option of kosher meals.

Jewish students were protesting the war on Gaza with a clear message: not in our name.

South Asian students perform bharatanatyam, a classical Indian dance, in solidarity with protesting students in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment. Photo by Mukta Joshi.

South Asian students perform bharatanatyam, a classical Indian dance, in solidarity with protesting students in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment. Photo by Mukta Joshi.

But soon after, I read the Wall Street Journal refer to the movement as “Israel-Hamas” protests, completely discrediting the students’ clear and nuanced demands. I read, aghast, as the White House condemned “blatant antisemitism” on college campuses.

This was a familiar pattern. I had seen it during the student protests that rocked India in 2019, against a discriminatory citizenship law that would grant fast-track citizenship to refugees from India’s neighboring countries, except Muslims.

It seems impossible for the establishment to imagine that the thinking youth could be fighting a battle on moral grounds. Students who participate are labeled mobs, fringe groups, even terrorists. Instead of ignoring them, the media works overtime to delegitimize them, and enables the police to violently crack down on the protests.

This is possibly the most momentum the pro-Palestine movement in the United States has gained in decades, and the movement is being led by teenagers who cared not about suspension or arrest, but a cause larger than them.

Students show up to support the hundreds of faculty members who “walked out” to protest the arrest and suspensions of students in the encampment. Photo by Mukta Joshi.

Students show up to support the hundreds of faculty members who “walked out” to protest the arrest and suspensions of students in the encampment. Photo by Mukta Joshi.

Israel has now begun its ground invasion of Rafah, the southernmost tip of the Gaza strip into which over a million Palestinians have been pushed, with nowhere else to go. Nearly 35,000 Gazans have been killed in less than seven months. More than 75,000 have been wounded. Many of them are children.

The students have not forgotten what they were fighting for.

On May 1, the night after the second round of arrests, protestors projected light and text from the street onto the outside of Hamilton Hall, the building that had been occupied by students. “No rest till Columbia divests,” the text said. “Hind’s Hall Forever.”

On May 6, Columbia and Barnard students painstakingly stitched a quilt together with the handwritten names of thousands of people who have been killed in Gaza. The undergraduate students who still had access to Columbia’s locked-down campus silently laid this quilt in front of the iconic alma mater statue.

“We will honor all our martyrs,” the quilt spelled out.

Having cleansed its campus of protestors, Columbia has now canceled its commencement ceremony, too. But it has failed to cleanse its campus of protest.

Two students embrace as they sit on a ledge overlooking the encampment. Photo by Mukta Joshi.

Two students embrace as they sit on a ledge overlooking the encampment. Photo by Mukta Joshi.

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Mukta Joshi is a lawyer trained in India, a photojournalist, and a fellow at the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia Journalism School. You can follow her on Twitteror Instagram.

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9 Comments

  1. The movement made a mistake by not pushing the nutjobs out of the encampments, some of these people were pushing for all Israelis to leave Israel, which is unhelpful. Israel has really messed up this war, they had so much sympathy after the terrorist attack but than wrecked it by killing fifteen thousand children. Unfortunately now, these protestors have given ammo to the conservatives. So many of the loud protestors are Ideologues not looking for practical solutions, just wanting to feel and look righteous. What we need is a simple message, ceasefire now, release the hostages, end the war. I of course have great sympathy for the majority of most of the protestors who just want the killing to end.

  2. thank you for sharing your photos, words, and experiences with us Mukta!!

  3. Thank you to Autostraddle for your continued excellent coverage and being the place to which I can turn to stay informed; thank you specifically to Mukta for both the excellent writing and photographs.

    (My mum, who has marched for Palestine longer than I’ve been alive, but is straight, has even learned who you are through the superlative nature of your coverage.)

  4. thank you for this excellent firsthand account Mukta! it’s so important to listen to the voices on the ground.

  5. Question, what was the thing that happened in October that started the war? It’s certainly a choice to omit a vital detail.

    I really can’t understand why Netanyahu is not called about our by name in articles like this. He needs the war to continue to stay in power. That’s why there’s a lot of protests going on in Israel that are also against the war. Why are those never mentioned?

    It’s really difficult to want to be part of something I agree with, but whose antisemitism is ignored. You don’t get to decide whether you’re being antisemitic or not. That’s what listening to a minority is about.

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10 Things We Learned From Brittney Griner’s Very Gay, Cathartic Press Tour

Brittney Griner’s memoir Coming Home came out this week and in anticipation of its drop, Griner has been doing a lot of press with legendary queer journalists and athletes — including last week’s 20/20 interview with Robin Roberts, a profile in The New York Times by J Wortham and then, on Monday, a cover story for The Cut in which she is interviewed by esteemed lesbian soccer player Megan Rapinoe. (At the end of the interview, Griner, Rapinoe and Sue Bird all make plans to hang.) Here are some of the many things we’ve learned about Brittney Griner’s life and her detainment in Russia from this emotional and remarkable press tour.

Brittney Griner Overslept and Packed Quickly, Thus Forgetting About Her Doctor-Prescribed Marijuana Oil Cartridges

In the aftermath of Griner’s arrest, I was shocked by how many people spoke harshly of Griner’s alleged carelessness bringing CBD oil into Russia — and not only ’cause I’ve also accidentally done the same pre-legalization, although luckily I did it in Indiana, not Russia. But when you’re in a routine of traveling abroad as often as BG was, you go through the motions, you know?

Usually, her wife Cherelle packed for her trips, but Griner overslept that morning and packed her own carry-on in a hurry, nearly missing her flight. BG told Robin Roberts that her “whole heart fell out of [her] body” the minute she pulled the pen out of her bag. “My life is over right here,” she remembered feeling. Griner had been prescribed marijuana for the chronic pain she experiences as a 6 foot 9 basketball player who played year-round for years and has endured injuries including a cracked ankle and a lack of cartilage in the knees.

Still, even knowing deeply in her bones that she’d made an innocent mistake, she was plagued by guilt. When Roberts asked how Griner got through the guilt she was feeling about her arrest, Brittney teared up. “I don’t think I’ve gotten through it, all the way. I let down everybody in my family and I think I’m still trying to get through that part. Still, to this day.”

Brittney Griner Became a Political Pawn For Putin, Had To Write Him for Forgiveness and Participate in Staged Photoshoots

Griner plead guilty in hopes that “an American humbling herself before Putin would get her home faster.” She wrote a letter to Biden, begging him not to forget her.

Joy Reid said on MSNBC that she thinks “the Putin regime understood that they had not just a Black celebrity, but a Black queer celebrity, somebody who could be used internally as a pawn, somebody who they could sort of internally mock and hold hostage, knowing the trauma it would cause back home.” Putin knew that however Brittney’s release was negotiated, it would be politically controversial.

In order to secure her release and the prisoner swap, she actually had to write a letter to Putin directly asking for forgiveness and then participate in a propaganda photoshoot, showing Griner eating in the cafeteria and making her bed to show that she was “reformed” and “the system worked.”

She Barely Made It Through Her First Few Weeks In Prison

With Robin Roberts and J Wortham, BG recalled the filthy prison cells where she was detained, where she was too big for her bed, and her mattress was bloody. Their toothpaste had expired 15 years ago and was more often used to kill black mold. Their daily recess, between 15 minutes and two hours a day, often occurred in freezing, blizzard conditions. She shared that she considered suicide multiple times, but feared Russia wouldn’t release her body to her family if she died there. At the penal colony, a notorious work camp, she shared a room with 50 other women, where there was no hot water and they shared one toilet.

While in Russian Prison, BG Made a Few Friends

Griner told Rapinoe that she made friends with three different English-speaking inmates; Alena, Ann and Kate. “I wouldn’t have made it without them,” she explained. She recalled that Alena, her bunkmate, “put me on game to a lot in the prison world, how it works, how it works in Russia, which guards are okay, which guards are not okay, the inmates, who did what.”

In November of 2022, she was moved to “a repurposed Soviet-era gulag in Mordovia,” a journey that took eight days of traveling in cages in the dark. She was separated from Alena and other English-speaking prisoners. That began the process that eventually led to her finally going home. “I found out that I had made $10 out of all that time working in the penal colony,” she told Rapinoe. She signed her $10 over to Alena and got the fuck out of there.

Growing Up, Brittney Griner Was Bullied For Her Deep Voice and Size and Used Writing To Cope

In her interview with Robin Roberts, Griner talks about her childhood and Wortham wrote that BG has “always relied on writing for her sanity,” starting in middle school when she endured so much bullying. She was teased for her size, her deep voice and her undeveloped chest. In fact, her parents took her to doctors to see if she had a tumor on her pituitary gland, but eventually, Griner put a stop to it — “I felt like a lab rat a little bit.” She’s very used to being mistaken for male. “You’re the biggest person in the room,” she remembers. “But you’re also the loneliest.” But in basketball, she could be herself — “big and different.”

Griner’s More Famous Now Than Ever — Which Has Its Downsides

“It is crazy with some of the stuff I get in the mail now from people with their little bully fingers, their little bully thumbs,” Griner told Rapinoe. She’s recognized way more now. Her home address was leaked and she had to move into a safe house. She was exposed to massive amounts of vitrol on social media and elsewhere, and was even accosted in the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. But she also had so much support. Megan Rapinoe told her, “Everybody who knows you just loves you. So many people rocked so hard and used whatever lever they could pull to keep your name in the news, writing you letters and wearing your jersey all around.”

Griner Struggled When Returning to WNBA Game Play

Diana Taurasi #3 (L) talks with Brittney Griner #42 of the Phoenix Mercury (R) before the first half against the Phoenix Mercury at Barclays Center on June 18, 2023

(Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images)

While in custody, Griner started smoking up to a pack a day, and loss muscle mass while gaining weight from “comissary staples” like noodles, muffins, salami and condensed milk. She struggled to do sit-ups, or play ball without getting winded. Wortham writes about how Griner put herself to work upon returning to the U.S., mapping out a 100-day conditioning plan, but her “lifelong struggles with body image resurfaced.” She felt disoriented as the season began, and the repeated video commemorations of her release were triggering. She realized she was suffering from PTSD.

But this season, Wortham wrote, “Griner is grateful to return to the game she loves.”

Cherelle and Brittney Are Expecting a Son

One of the most joyous elements of Griner’s interview with Rapinoe happens when Griner talks about the baby on the way, who they’ve already named “Bash Raymond Griner.”

“Screw the championships and all the trophies and all that; that’s going to be the highest peak of my life right there,” BG said of Bash’s impending birth. She can’t wait to take Bash fishing and off-roading and to teach him everything her Dad taught her. And, of course, she hopes he plays basketball.

Griner’s First Move Upon Landing In the U.S. Was Grabbing Her Wife’ s Ass

Upon arriving in the United States, she was firstly worried that Cherelle was gonna “bust her ass” running to meet her getting off the plane. Luckily that did not occur and Griner found time for a little squeeze, she told Rapinoe: “We were embracing, whispering back and forth to each other. I was like, “You’re going to kill me, but I don’t care. It’s been months,” and I got a little slight booty grab. [Laughs.] She was like, “Oh, my God, stop.” I was like, “All right, all right, all right.” That sums up our whole relationship. She’s like, “Stop, stop, stop. No, not in public.” I’m like, “Nah, whatever.” Squeeze squeeze!”

She’s Grateful to Black Women Who Advocated For Her Return

Los Angeles, CA - July 12: Guard Lexie Brown #4 of the Los Angeles Sparks where a t-shirt in honor of WNBA basketball player Brittney Griner who is in jail in Russia prior to a WNBA basketball game between the Los Angeles Sparks and the Washington Mystics at Crypto.com in Los Angeles on Tuesday, July 12, 2022. (Photo by Keith Birmingham/MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images)

(Photo by Keith Birmingham/MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images)

Robin Roberts interviewed Griner’s wife, Cherelle, in May of 2022, and Gayle King interviewed Cherelle that July. Cherelle crafted the hashtag #WeAReBG with BG’s agent to galvanize support. “I remember my lawyer showing me the photo of Steph Curry, Nneka Ogwumike, and Skylar Diggins-Smith at the ESPYs and the “We are BG” on the court, the patches, and it was amazing,” Griner told Rapinoe. “But my brain was all over the place. I was just like, Yo, normally you’d only see that on a court or a patch when someone is dead.”

Wortham writes that Griner’s “most devoted and persistent advocates were Black women, many of them arguing online that the government’s response felt muted, a continuation of the culture of neglect that fails to adequately protect them and gender-nonconforming people.” Wortham cites Roxane Gay and Kerry Washington as examples, just two of the many high-profile Black women who turned up for Brittney Griner while numerous Black writers kept her name in the press. In the acknowledgments of her book, Griner thanks Black women in the press for keeping her name alive throughout her detainment.

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Riese is the 41-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish and has a cute dog named Carol. Follow her on twitter and instagram.

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‘How it Works Out’ Imagines Many Madcap Alternate Universes of Queer Love

The first thing I noticed when I got a galley of Myriam Lacroix’s debut book (novel?) How It Works Out was that one of the protagonists was named after her. The second thing was that the other protagonist, Allison, was also the person named in the dedication, which read: “To Allison, I figured it out. I know how it works out.”

So this is a work of fiction, only kind of. The names are all the same. The dedication features a pretty direct confession of the fact that this is a story about real lovers. The story blurs the lines between story and reality through a series of short stories that all link together in some ways, their slates wiped clean in others. Some of the stories are third person, others are first person, switching off between Allison’s point of view and Myriam’s. A lot of it feels like an experimental journal of Myriam’s ideas of their relationship. It feels apt, if not totally obvious, to compare it to Everything, Everywhere, All At Once. It’s not so explicit that they are trying to solve their relationship questions in every universe as it is in the film, but once you fall into the cadence of the absurdity and the surrealism, you don’t need to question the physics of the story so much. Yes of course, Myriam is a cannibal of Allison’s flesh, and yes of course, she secretly drinks the breast milk Allison pumps to feed their baby, then fills it with water and formula like a curious teenager. Why should I question that when, just a chapter ago, they found that baby in an alley and then had to hide from said baby’s homophobic birth mom when she came knocking? And, well, now that we’re accepting cannibalism, can’t we accept anything? Lesbian co-authors of a gay self-help bestseller throwing a wedding where in attendance were Tegan and Sara, but also a reporter from Autostraddle?

But within the set changes were pieces of a full story. In one story, the two of them, fresh off of a fight, get roped into running a couple’s half marathon with another lesbian couple named Meg and Megan, one of whom is Myriam’s ex. In another story, Allison feels burdened by Myriam’s intense food obsession, until Myriam dies in the hospital from a reaction to something she ate, and, her side of the street now clean, Allison falls in love with the doctor. It so clearly feels like a fantasy that Lacroix suggests her partner having of her death. Some of these portraits feel so intimate, especially because of the autobiography of it all, that I feel like I shouldn’t be reading it. And yet I am. I can’t stop reading it. I am rooting for them to leave each other, and I am rooting for them to figure it out.

The prose is brilliant. It’s sophisticated and smart, and at the same time, it melts on the tongue like candy and is quick to digest. I was half sad this was a debut because I wanted there to be more. I will say, because the reader is keeping track of the details of a dozen realities at once, there are undeniably details I will pick up on the re-read. And that, to me, is not a bug, but a feature. The book manages to be very covertly dense in material, while tugging the reader along by the sleeve. Lacroix did her MFA at Syracuse. One of her professors, George Saunders, wrote a blurb for the book. While I, myself, have never been a student at Syracuse, I have read Saunders’ newsletter, as well as his book on craft, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, and I found it interesting to try to identify some of his public writing lessons in her text. That’s probably really annoying of me.

By the way, I alluded to this earlier, but I’m not actually sure if this counts as a novel. I tried to look through the marketing materials, and it is called “fiction” in some places, but mostly, it’s called a “debut.” It’s kind of a short story collection, it’s kind of a series of personal essays. I couldn’t find anywhere where Myriam Lacroix was called a novelist, or her book a novel. I wondered if this was on purpose because I actually find this to be one of the most fascinating things about the book. It feels like an invite for the reader to assume. To guess which parts are real and which parts are imagined. It’s a gorgeous, speculative exercise in romance that’s as bound together as it is fragmented. I predict her style of writing will inspire imitations of this surreal, broken, sewn together tapestry of a story, told deliberately and nonsensically.

How It Works Out by Myriam Lacroix is out now.

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Aamina Inayat Khan is a culture writer in Brooklyn, NY. You can find their other work at Teen Vogue, Vogue, the Cut, W Mag, The New York Times, and on Substack. Follow on Instagram and Twitter at @aaminasdfghjkl

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Netflix’s ‘Beautiful Rebel’ Proves Italians Can Make Bad Lesbian Movies Too

The first time I left the U.S. I learned a harsh truth: Not all “foreign films” were like the fascinating works of art I’d spent my adolescence hungrily consuming. Countries all around the world have their own film and TV industries where they make work as empty and mediocre as Hollywood — just with significantly less money.

Most of these films are not exported to the U.S. or far beyond their own countries. If someone wants to watch bad acting and worse writing while scrolling on their phone, they’re unlikely to want to read subtitles. But with the advent of streaming, many of these works have become more widely available. A service like Netflix doesn’t have quality control — they release content and it’s up to us to determine if, say, their new Italian movie about a queer rockstar is a hidden gem or a should be re-hidden slog.

The bad news is Beautiful Rebel, which dropped on Netflix last week, is very squarely the latter. The good news is I sat through it so now you don’t have to.

Based on the life of real-life pansexual rockstar Gianna Nannini, Cinzia TH Torrini’s film follows Gianna from childhood to international stardom. This is a very standard music biopic, hitting all the tropes. We have the overbearing father who wants Gianna to do tennis instead of music. We have the first tastes of success, the disappointments, the moments when Gianna decides she has to take her own approach instead of following the demands of the music industry. We also have the drugs, the spiraling, the emotional outbursts in the recording studio. None of these beats are inherently bad — after all, they happen in real life — but, when not done with any specificity or inventiveness, they become tiresome.

Beautiful Rebel isn’t just unoriginal — it’s also, at times, baffling in its over-the-top choices. This is a movie where a character will say, “I’m a junkie. I’m a prostitute,” with the cadence of the Disney Channel. And then that character will die! I’ll put up with a lot of mediocrity to watch two women kiss, but it’s no fun when the movie approaches itself with the seriousness of a much better drama.

The film also invents the device of a man named Marc, a photographer who seduces Gianna into many drug-related bad decisions. It’s not uncommon for a biopic to consolidate characters or invent ones altogether, but — spoiler alert! — Marc isn’t real. Like not even in the world of the movie itself. The film has a twist a la A Beautiful Mind where Marc was a manifestation of Gianna’s bad thoughts and remaining daddy issues. I almost admire this choice since everything else about the movie is so dull and expected, but I’m not sure the average music biopic wants audiences googling “was Gianna Nannini schizophrenic” if, you know, she wasn’t.

This could have been a movie about Gianna’s relationship with her real-life partner of decades named Carla. Their scenes are the highlight of the film — even if somewhat ruined by corny music. Instead, like so many biopics, in trying to tell every part of a life story, there doesn’t end up being much story at all.

With the release of the supposedly atrocious new Amy Winehouse biopic, people are asking what’s missing from the music biopic genre. Often when a genre feels lifeless, the answer is to look beyond Hollywood — but not always. Beautiful Rebel is just as unwatchable as any of its English-language counterparts. If you want to learn more about Gianna Nannini, read her Wikipedia page. If you want to watch a movie about queer women, there are plenty of better options.

Beautiful Rebel is now streaming on Netflix.

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Drew is a Brooklyn-based writer, filmmaker, and theatremaker. She is a Senior Editor at Autostraddle with a focus in film and television, sex and dating, and politics. Her writing can also be found at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cosmopolitan UK, Refinery29, Into, them, and Knock LA. She was a 2022 Outfest Screenwriting Lab Notable Writer and a 2023 Lambda Literary Screenwriting Fellow. She is currently working on a million film and TV projects mostly about queer trans women. Find her on Twitter and Instagram.

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No Filter: The Hottest Place To Get Gay-Engaged This Summer Is Apparently the Girl in Red Tour

feature image photo of girl in red on stage via girl in red’s instagram

Hello and welcome back to No Filter! This is the place where I tell you all about the gay celebrity goings on over on Instagram! Let’s get into it!

Well I don’t know, I just thought this would be a nice to start the week! (I know that it is Wednesday.)

Ohooo this is going high on my NEEDED coats list!

Don’t know about you, but I am still banging this here banger by Kehlani!

My needed coats list is getting too high! Though, perhaps we could call this a robe? Thoughts?

Honestly, my favorite part of big events is the bts stuff everyone posts after. I love seeing a look this magnificent in a random hallway!

Nice The Devil Wears Prada reference there, but I must insist that this photo is, indeed, groundbreaking!

It’s also wild that they then get DRESSED AGAIN in an after party look after the Met gala!

I am coming out as PRO the…side veil? Is that what we call that?

When you think about it, it is wild that I used to know Cardi for going viral on…Vine? And now she reliably crushes the MET Gala???

Fine, I admit it, I am a sucker for a GRWM!

WE SHOULD TALK ABOUT THIS LOOK MORE IT ROCKS

In non MET Gala news, Niecy is in a Meghan…Trainor video? Hmmm, wrong Meg I think!

Tessa did, in fact, go to the MET, but simply will not post about it until SHE is ready okay!

Fletcher sure is globe-trotting on this tour.

Speaking of gay pop tours, queer couples apparently keep getting engaged at girl in red concerts?!

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How I Listen to True Crime After Knowing a Murderer

In 2015, I took a language class with someone. The next year, he murdered a local man. I followed that case to its painful conclusion while I reflected on what it meant to have known a murderer and how it affected our community.

Then, I began listening to true crime podcasts with my girlfriend.

We met in a culture and languages course. I took it to make up a credit, and he had a keen interest in the arts. We met a mix of vibrant people in the class and took to the material with care and enthusiasm. During undergrad, I was that person who always answered questions and participated. I was just glad to find someone who did the same.

I didn’t know much about his background, but he seemed to care greatly for his work. During a section on oral tradition, he brought up his experience as imbongi, a Xhosa praise singer and storyteller. The professor called on him to give a small performance, which he did with the artform’s characteristic verve and intensity. Otherwise, he diligently took notes on a laptop and participated in discussions. When the course ended, we said goodbye and parted ways.

I wish that was the last I’d hear of him. So much would be better if that was the end of it.

The first few times my girlfriend played true crime podcasts in my presence, I tuned in. They left me a little disconcerted. It wasn’t the gruesomeness that got to me. The stuff that made me tense up was more mundane. The uncertainty. Living in fear of victimization. Recovering from trauma as a secondary survivor.

Most of all, I wondered why she’d want to play that in our home.

We’re both South Africans. Our home country is dysfunctional on a good day and kind of a catastrophe on a bad one. We averaged about 80 homicides per day by the end of 2023. Which is a lot higher than the US’s estimated 50 per day. It’s several times higher per capita, since our population is over five times smaller than the US. Every single South African is a victim of stranger crime or has a personal near-miss story.

My girlfriend’s family has faced several break-ins — quiet ones, thankfully. When she was 10, she suffered an armed mugging. A grown-ass man came after her phone. Even so, he wasn’t confident in his ability to defeat a 10 year-old unarmed and brought a tree branch for emotional support. He was caught, and he got hit with a much worse charge for being armed. She told me the judge didn’t care whether the weapon was a tree branch or something more purposeful. All she knew was this particular judge held a very dim view of crimes against children and dropped a proverbial piano on her attacker’s head.

Meanwhile when I was 10, I slept through an incident where a relative was held at gunpoint while a car was stolen from our garage. By age 13, my family was held at gunpoint while we were relieved of our valuables. I’ve been a pretty staunch atheist most of my life, but that night was exceptional. With my face planted in the living room carpet and our attackers counted heads with pistol barrels, I began praying.

South Africa’s a strange country. Our crime fiction authors make up murders in sleepy towns for their English readership while their children are held at gunpoint and friends are murdered right at home. That’s what made up the dissonance I felt when I first listened to true crime over my girlfriend’s shoulder.

Why listen to fourth-hand stories about these awful things? 

We have true crime at home. It’s worse.

Following a murder you’re close to isn’t completely unlike listening to a podcast. It’s still a narrative of human suffering and loss. It just plays out much more slowly and there’s no entertainment value. There’s only the mounting horror of learning what people close to you are capable of.

Just like a true crime podcast episode, it began with a body floating in a dam. A succession of suspects were arrested, including my old classmate. It swiftly became clear that the crime was not only cruel, but also incompetent. Mountains of evidence and witnesses were located. The accused turned on each other or changed their statements almost at random. Our town followed the case closely. Homicides happen, but coordinated torture-murders are rare.

I want to say it’s also rare for students from my university to kill, but that’s not totally true. We had a murder in 2003. There was a murder-suicide in 2014. My freshman year began the next year in 2015. When I arrived, people were already trying to forget that it happened. I don’t think anybody wanted to dwell on who our fellow students could be in the dark.

My classmate turned out to be the ringleader of this crime. He and three accomplices (some who were relatives) kidnapped and tortured a man to death. The victim was a local man named Thembelani Qwakanisa. The perpetrators claimed he’d stolen my classmate’s laptop — a huge asset to an impoverished student — so they kidnapped him to locate it. There is no evidence that Thembelani stole that laptop, but the callousness and cruelty of his death became well-established during the trial.

Local and regional newspapers reported regularly on the court proceedings. It never made national news though. This case didn’t matter enough. 80 homicides per day, remember? A murder has to be really special to make national headlines in South Africa.

But it mattered to the victim. Thembelani was working at a game reserve and had a steady partner. It mattered to his family who depended on him to keep them above the breadline. His life was a solid feat in a country with a 32% unemployment rate. It mattered to the community who lost one person to murder and four others to prison. All because my classmate claimed he was a victim of theft and he wanted to resolve it extrajudicially.

Media makes it convenient to think of murder as an act that starts with a body and ends with a verdict. Murder is a crime with a long tail. I’ve mentioned the primary victim, but said nothing of the secondary victims affected.

My classmate was the only member of his family who made it to university. One judge noted that he was the family’s hope of escaping poverty. He was studying full-time while also supporting a grandmother and two younger sisters. His fellow perpetrators included a cousin who earned $105 per month working informally and had a three-year-old child to support. His other cousin, also convicted, was supporting a child on $73 a month. The child’s mother was completing her high school diploma and was unemployed. This wasn’t ‘just’ a murder. This was the annihilation of several families.

The long tail of murder reaches people who didn’t go to a single court hearing or meet the victim’s family. It devastates a community’s already lackluster sense of security. It reaches random people like me who once met a passionate classmate taking notes on a laptop.

And I just can’t get that tail of destruction out of my mind when I consume true crime content.

I never had the benefit of distancing myself from the material presented in true crime. My life was at risk during those childhood home invasions, and I laughed with a killer before I knew what he was. Still, neither experience destroyed me. In some ways, I care even more. True crime content is harder to listen to but much more impactful when I do tune in. I have to listen with care.

Listening with care means examining my limits and respecting them. A lot of people can’t handle crimes involving children but can sit through a grisly torture story. My experience is inverted. I was the victim of crimes as a child, and that’s just part of my life’s tapestry. But I can’t listen to protracted torture narratives without thinking of the man my classmate killed. Rather than binge-listening, I sit down after episodes and ask myself: How do I feel after hearing that?

It’s a chance to learn about my comfort zone. A chance to respect it in the future.

Psychologist Niloufar Esmaeilpour says there are signs that distressing media is becoming more harmful than helpful. She says, “These are worsening anxiety or fear that persists well after the film has been watched. Another indicator is if intrusive thoughts or flashbacks related to past traumatic experiences have been triggered by the media.”

But strong emotions alone are not an indicator of something going amiss. It’s quite rational to feel strongly about these stories, saying that, “It may not, however, be a cause for concern in case changes in mood such as persistent sadness, anger, or detachment that coincide with consumption of the media can suggest that it is impacting one’s mental health negatively. But, more times than not, the responses might be subtle at first, only to get stronger later on, prompting the person to be self-aware and pay close attention to the changes.”

Listening with care also means paying attention to secondary victims. The people in these stories aren’t just victimized by crime. ‘Victim’ and ‘perpetrator’ are not always clear-cut categories, and people often suffer due to circumstances beyond their control. Ironically, the crime is often the least important part of a story. Violent crime is often the conclusion to a story that began far away, and it pays to hear it from start to finish.

Lastly, listening with care also means hearing the story of the perpetrators. It can be convenient to explore outliers. The Dahmers, Geins, and Bundys of the world make for tremendous spectacle. But leaning into exceptional cases reinforces a stereotype that murder is exceptional and irrelevant to us. In reality, most murders happen for very relatable reasons: money, anger, jealousy, belonging. We’ve all experienced those. Some people just take that experience to its most violent conclusion. Even the most callous predators share something with me and my former classmate. They cared about someone. They found humor somewhere. They had aspirations.

Then, they took everything from themselves and others alike.

The burden of engaging more productively with true crime doesn’t just fall to the audiences. True crime creators get to control and produce their content, and should bear most responsibility for what they say and how they say it.

Niloufar says that there are green flags to look for in productions that reflect respect for the material. These include, “clear and specific trigger warnings before presenting potentially distressing content, so that viewers could be prepared or opt not to watch if they are vulnerable. Another positive signal could be providing support resources at the end of such episodes, such as helpline numbers or links to counseling services. Contextual to the true crime media, this also benefits when the narration is humane in a detailed manner, and the sensitivity and respect for the victims and their families are brought out through fact-based reporting without sensationalism.”

Thinking about the violence I’ve seen has understandably left me with a lot of feelings. There’s much to be said about seeing so much violence in your short life that you become desensitized. It’s background noise until something truly awful happens nearby and it all comes crashing back.

When I’m not surrounded by violence, I expose myself to it in media and entertainment. I think Niloufar is right when she says that, “There is an intricate relationship between trauma victims and their consumption of media that portrays similar traumatic events. One reason people might be attracted to such content is an unconscious reach toward gaining some form of resolution or understanding in their own experiences.”

She calls it a ‘managed environment whereby an individual can try to make some kind of sense out of the senseless by exploring feelings of fear or distress within safe limits.’

Yet there’s hope. It’s not uncommon to consume distressing media to the point it becomes digital self-harm. But there’s also space to listen because there’s hope — that’s what I still try to do. Each conviction spreads hope for a working justice system. Each unsolved case showcases hope for better techniques. Each botched investigation highlights hope for reform and improvement.

My reasons for listening to true crime remain personal and complex. I just know that I try to do it with care for myself and the society around me.

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Summer Tao

Summer Tao is a South Africa based writer. She has a fondness for queer relationships, sexuality and news. Her love for plush cats, and video games is only exceeded by the joy of being her bright, transgender self

Summer has written 28 articles for us.

5 Comments

  1. There’s a lot of care and food for thought in this article – can’t really articulate it yet beyond the excellence of your work, Summer! Thank you for sharing this

    • It’s wonderful to hear that from you, Katie :). Thank you so much for reading.

  2. Thank you so much for this in depth text.
    I react to true crime and its consumption in a similar way as you. For a signicant period of time, i was also exposed to actual violence such as murder, shooting etc in my direct environment. While i was not directly affected, and old enough to not be traumatised, for me it led to a total deinterest in true crime.
    What i didn’t handle so well was when i saw that mainly friends of mine who grew up very sheltered and “boring”, consume true crime in large quantities.
    It made me low key angry at them, also because i couldn’t make then understand why i reacted in that way. This only got better when i talked to a gay friend from a very violent country, who also has zero interest in true crime or other violent media, and geeks in a similar way.
    So thank you for sharing your thoughts, it is very reassuring.

    • I hard relate to what you just wrote. There are countless different kinds of people who engage with true crime media. As with any media, there definitely are people who live completely unrelated lives who consume it for entertainment.

      I still bear some resentment to people who live away from violent crime and consume it as entertainment. I have an especially low opinion of presenters who bill themselves as comedians. The quickest way to lose me as a listener is to talk about a ‘live special’ at a comedy theatre or have a fat giggle while hawking merchandise. I strongly dislike making violent crime a profitable comedic venture. And this exact pattern is followed by many of the more successful presenters. Shows like ‘My Favorite Murder’ (whose title alone just turns me off), and Morbid lost me once I began engaging with the material presented more critically. Because they are at their hearts, a comedic venture first and any educational value is only incidental.

      Another glaring red flag for me in any true crime presentation is when shows (usually comedy shows) veer into ghost stories and ‘spooky’ content. They know their audiences well: young women in developed countries who have a passing interest in pop culture paranormal stuff. And they will lean into it with ‘theories’ about ghosts and haunting as it pertains to criminal cases. Or just start showcasing ‘hauntings’ and other ‘spooky’ stories to keep their audiences. Especially since there is a limited roster of true crime cases they can engage with at their level of expertise (usually shock-jockey high profile cases that EVERYONE covers sooner or later). I firmly believe that pseudosciences like ‘hauntings’ and ‘ghosts’ have no place alongside the reality of intensely violent crime and its social consequences. I’m perfectly fine with that sort of thing being presented elsewhere. But in my mind, presenting ghost stories alongside real crime is highly degrading to the crime. Especially since in true crime (unlike many history podcasts), people affected by the cases are often still alive. Relatives of victims and perpetrators, actual survivors, etc., are often still alive and surrounded by coverage that is inaccurate or worse, served as comedic entertainment. There is seldom a mechanism for journalistic ethics in these presentations. True crime ‘comedians’ use their position as entertainers and comedians to shield themselves from the responsibility of managing victim/survivor safety or the burden of accuracy. But they happily leverage violent crime for comedy entertainment.

      As to listening to true crime content that doesn’t fall into these trappings, I’ve worked out an approach that works for me. And I tend to evaluate new podcasts/presenters/videos based on certain criteria:

      0. The first rule is that no presenter is ever above critique. Because it is fundamentally the creators’ responsibility to produce, manage, maintain content and communities that showcase a net good when handling distressing content.

      1. I strongly favour an expertise-led approach. My current listening roster has a lot of Killer Psyche (Candice DeLong), Women and Crime (Drs. Sacks & Shlosberg) and Buried Bones (Dawson & Holes). All of these shows feature experts in their field (retired law enforcement, specialist journalists, academics). They also present their content with the support of relevant theory or expert practice. It’s not enough that a show’s presenters merely have history in the field. To me, they should use their field and expertise as a vehicle for education.

      2. I avoid anything that bills itself as comedy or develops comedic procedures. Things like specials at comedy clubs, classifying themselves as comedy, aggressive merch advertising are all major red flags to me for profiteering from violent crime while diminishing educational value.

      3. No pseudoscience. Anything to do with astrology, ghosts, hauntings, ‘spooky’ is right out of my listening roster. In my mind, it doesn’t have a place alongside serious and violent crime and it should be presented separately. Preferably where I can’t hear it at all.

      4. An awareness of the socio-political conditions of crime. This one takes time to get into, but an easy tell for a lack of expertise in presenters is low engagement with the contexts of crime. Presenters who fixate on the ‘psychopathy’ and shock-violence of individuals but only give basic lip service to systemic racism, childhood abuse, medical conditions are a bad sign. They’re often doing it to elicit shock and emotional reactions while not discussing the ‘boring’ reality of sociological and psychological theory. Often because they lack that expertise. As an example, Women and Crime explicitly avoids describing crimes in graphic detail: no. of stab wounds, the exact processing of sexual assault, etc. Because unless it’s intensely relevant to the presentation, it has no purpose except to shock and terrify.

      I’ve written enough but… this is my long, long opinion on the topic as a true crime consumer, a psych grad, and a victim of violent crime.

Comments are closed.

Mini Crossword Does Enjoy Oranges Though

Or so I choose to believe while editing these crosswords in my puzzle lair. –crossword ed.

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Emet Ozar

Emet is a queer and genderqueer program manager, crossword constructor, and married parent to four children.

Emet has written 30 articles for us.

2 Comments

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Queen Latifah Walked the Met Carpet With Her Partner Eboni Nichols, It Matters

Feature image of Queen Latifah and Eboni Nichols at the 2024 Met Gala by Aliah Anderson/Getty Images

It was small, minor even. In all of the pageantry, hoopla, stunts and shows that come with the annual Met Gala — celebrities decked in haute couture, multiple costume changes, group chats and social media timelines rushing to outdo one another for jokes. But in the middle of all that, Queen Latifah walked the 2024 Met Gala Carpet with her longtime partner Eboni Nichols.

When I first saw it, well… I screamed a little. Ok, maybe I screamed more than a little. It’s not that we haven’t seen Queen and Eboni walk a red carpet together before, they walked the Oscars carpet together in 2022 and more recently they walked a different red carpet together for an AmFAR benefit in 2023. Queen first publicly acknowledged Eboni, and their son Rebel, from a BET stage by thanking them both as her “love” while accepting her Lifetime Achievement Award. But if you’re a queer person, and especially a Black queer person, who has been a part of this community at any point in the last 30 years, I also know that you get it.

This is the queen. And after rooting for her journey for so long, after she was a queer awakening for so many of us across so many years, every step forward feels lucky for us to even witness. Each one feels like a breath of fresh air.

I immediately posted my all caps emotions to Twitter because for better or for worse, I am chronically online. I thought it would do maybe a few hundred likes, a sign of love from some few other mutual fans. Again, on some level I intellectually know… we have been here before. But somehow still, the Met felt different. Walking the world’s most famous carpet, with every camera trained on you and your partner in matching black & white gowns, felt different. It ended up with over 45 thousand likes in a day. And that’s when I knew — I wasn’t alone.

I do not believe that Queen Latifah owes us Dana Owens. In 2008, after being arguably the most famous woman rapper for nearly two decades and an Oscar-nominated actress, Queen told The New York Times that when it came to her romantic life, “You don’t get that part of me. Sorry. We’re not discussing it… Nobody gets that.” And she’s absolutely correct. We are not owed hers (or anyone’s) coming out. We are not owed anything beyond what she’s left for us on stage and screen.

But it’s also hard not to feel this as a homecoming. And I hope that if Queen sees this joy spreading across the internet as pictures of her and Eboni go viral, that she knows it’s meant with pride in her, and gratitude for all that she already gave us. Everything else is a mere bonus.

I have loved Queen Latifah since I was eight years old. I’ve loved her longer than I’ve known I was gay. In so many ways, she taught me a lot about strength, and independence, and loving other Black women, not taking any shit, and womanhood. So it’s impossible, now, for me not to gush when Emma Chamberlin interviewed Queen and Eboni together on the carpet and asked, “Is this a date night?”

Queen takes a breath and smiles before teasingly calling Eboni “Eb.” Eboni fills in their banter and says that she playfully threatened Queen that this was the year they were doing the Met, and she better make it happen. Like an old married couple who’s been here a thousand times before, Queen Latifah picks up the story from there, saying that she wanted to be “the hero of my household.” And so now, here they are.

This is Queen Latifah… being flirtatious and chivalrous to her partner, live and in front of cameras? I am on my knees. We used to dream for days like this!!

(No, literally. Do you know many times I have wished I could be silly and thirsty and overdramatic on the internet for this particular love story??? To even be able make a joke like “I’m on my knees” in same that’s usually reserved for an umpteenth number of white skinny lesbians in their 20s and 30s. To borrow from even more internet speak: I cry 😭)

I think a lot about what it means to be Black and a lesbian or bisexual or queer and a woman over a certain age. In part, I think about it because of this job (writing about gay people on the internet), but also it’s because of this job that I know so many of the queer icons I grew up loving — for whatever their reason, they’ve never felt like they could come out. Not fully. Not in such a way that we can openly write about them and proclaim them out loud.

There are a lot of days where, to be honest, that it doesn’t matter. Everyone, celebrities included, is entitled to their own life story. It’s truly, really, probably none of our business. But Queen Latifah did an interview with her longtime partner and now I get to all caps yell SHUT UP YALL, THEY ARE SO CUTE and they are and it’s perfect. Sometimes, that matters too.

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Carmen Phillips

Carmen is Autostraddle's Editor-in-Chief and a Black Puerto Rican femme/inist writer. She claims many past homes, but left the largest parts of her heart in Detroit, Brooklyn, and Buffalo, NY. There were several years in her early 20s when she earnestly slept with a copy of James Baldwin’s “Fire Next Time” under her pillow. You can find her on twitter, @carmencitaloves.

Carmen has written 705 articles for us.

9 Comments

  1. Carmen, i love the way you write about our Queen. i can only hope that one day she and her team see the way that you publicly love her and you get to love her face to face (and maybe write about it!)

      • All hail the Queen!
        Never thought I would get to see a day like this! I can’t stop beaming!

        Thank you for this.

  3. everything about this is wonderful and also makes me want to pick up the equalizer again because from what i can remember QL was extremely hot in that

  4. Carmen, I am so touched. This is the very heart of Pride. What seemed to me an awkward and a bit stilted interview transformed into a soft moment of Black Pride and immense thankfulness for the courage that have brought us here. I’m making this article my family’s Pride Theme for this June. I am seriously so touched. Thank you again.

  5. I love how intentional she is about sharing the mic and the spotlight with Eboni. <3 My gay heart is warm!

  6. Being from an older generation, i hear you!! Also, they look AMAZING in their gowns!!!

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How To Dress in Gay Tenniscore After Seeing ‘Challengers’

I saw Challengers last week, and I have been CHANGED by it. The film has infiltrated my group chat, my dreams, and yes, my closet. Tenniscore was already trending before the movie came out, and thankfully, I already had a lot of pieces in my closet that fit the look. If you just saw Challengers and are ready to live your Tashi Duncan Era (which, I argue, could easily be embodied under any gender expression), I’ve rounded up some Tenniscore basics to add to your wardrobe.

But first, some general notes: There are many ways to Tenniscore. If you’ve been obsessively following Zendaya’s press tour for the film, you’ll note she’s doing a high-end version of the trend that looks absolutely stunning on her. Her stylist is evoking some of the hallmarks of Tenniscore — preppy-formal, tailored looks — via a designer and couture lens. Again, stunning. But perhaps not the most accessible approach to Tenniscore for those of us who are, sadly, not Zendaya. There are a lot of brands that make clothes that are Tenniscore or Tenniscore-adjacent. Think: J.Crew, Banana Republic, etc. These are pieces that are not literal athleticwear but have a I’m Sipping a Cocktail Courtside vibe to them. But to me, the most versatile, accessible, and fun approach to Tenniscore is to mix actual athleticwear with other pieces. Throw a linen blazer over a pair of mesh athletic shorts. Wear a literal tennis/golf dress with tons of chunky gold jewelry. Wear a cropped polo over soft sweatshorts. I also like slutty versions of preppy staples, like see-through or mesh polos or a blazer with nothing underneath. The goal is to look like you could seamlessly transition from being courtside to being at the gay club/party.

I’ve executed two successful Challengers-inspired looks recently: one for my first viewing of the film and one for just a casual Sunday brunch in my neighborhood. Here’s the first:

These were all things I already owned, which is my favorite way to approach personal styling — use what you’ve already got!!!! We’ve got a slightly oversized patterned blazer with shoulder pads that I’ve owned since I was like 24. The dress is a slip from the 90s I bought from a vintage reseller in Orlando where I live. It’s completely see-through, which for some events can be a vibe, but hence the blazer for some subtle nipple coverage. Black and white “athletic socks” (quotes because they are too thin to actually be worn for sports but the stripes make them default athletic socks aesthetically I think), white platform sneakers, and my new watermelon jelly purse I bought while thrifting in Savannah (I can’t find an exact match online, but I did find a cute slightly different version) round out the fit. For jewelry, I kept it simple with a thin gold chain necklace, chunky gold chain bracelet, and my (FAKE!!!) tennis bracelet. I was definitely going for the slutty-preppy Tenniscore vibe here.

And then for Sunday brunch:

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya in Tenniscore

The top is an actual athletic top, and in fact is a vintage Wimbledon-branded cropped tank that I wore to be Billie Jean King one year for Halloween (gay). But here’s a perfect example of what I mean about combining actual athleticwear with tailored, preppy pieces. The shorts are mariner/sailor-style shorts with decorative buttons at the hips. Then I simply tied a navy lightweight sweater around my neck and brought back out the platform sneakers, watermelon bag, and tennis bracelet. And yes, the white wine is part of the look, too.

Okay! Hopefully those give you a bit of an idea of how to style different Tenniscore elements. Now, let’s get into some specific products. You’ll definitely see some patterns emerge — namely, color. A lot of dark greens and navy blues with white accents. Some of the basics can definitely be paired with more colorful pieces, but Tenniscore tends to be more about minimalism and solids than patterns and excess. You can shop for the items below or use them as inspiration to see what you might already own that fits the bill or thrift similar pieces. 🎾

Tenniscore Tanks

1. Champion Jersey Tank Top ($35, sizes XS-XXXL)2. Sleeveless Baby Tee ($28-34, sizes XXS-XL) 3. Green Polo Tank ($45, sizes XXS-XXL) 4. Striped Jersey Tank ($58, sizes XXS-XL) 5. Cropped Polo Tank ($14, sizes XS-4XL and also available in tall and petite sizing)

1. Champion Jersey Tank Top ($35, sizes XS-XXXL)
2. Sleeveless Baby Tee ($28-34, sizes XXS-XL)
3. Green Polo Tank ($45, sizes XXS-XXL)
4. Striped Jersey Tank ($58, sizes XXS-XL)
5. Cropped Polo Tank ($14, sizes XS-4XL and also available in tall and petite sizing)

Starting with the true basics here: Let’s get those arms out this summer! Tenniscore tanks are easy to style. Throw a blazer over one, and it’s suddenly a going out look. The thing about athleticwear is that it’s genuinely designed for comfort, so don’t feel weird shopping activewear brands when the only activity you intend to do in them is look hot! The black and white tank (#2) also comes in several colors, including some cute stripe options and Tenniscore green. Also, I truly need that Champion cropped tank (#1) which I think could work well in both a more masc or more femme look, depending on the styling!

Tenniscore Polos

1. Pride Polo ($45, sizes XS-XXXL)2. Cropped Polo ($12, sizes XS-XL) 3. Pickleball Polo ($25, sizes S-XXL) 4. Knit Polo ($36, sizes XS-XXL) 5. Nike Cropped Long-Sleeved Polo ($48, sizes XS-XXL) 6. Mesh Polo Shirt ($59, sizes XS-XXL)

1. Pride Polo ($45, sizes XS-XXXL)
2. Cropped Polo ($12, sizes XS-XL)
3. Pickleball Polo ($25, sizes S-XXL)
4. Knit Polo ($36, sizes XS-XXL)
5. Nike Cropped Long-Sleeved Polo ($48, sizes XS-XXL)
6. Mesh Polo Shirt ($59, sizes XS-XXL)

I cheated by sneaking some polo tanks into the tanktop section, but when it comes to Tenniscore it truly doesn’t get more essential than a polo! I even found a subtly gay one (#1, which I actually like despite not being the biggest fan of wearing the rainbow, but this has such a fun retro look to it). Again, we have a mix here of actual activewear and more fashion-forward pieces, like the #6 mesh shirt (I’m not even bisexual, but I’d love to see both the Challengers men in that one) and the #2 super cute cropped and fitted femme polo. With a polo that unbuttons all the way like #1 and #4, you can also experiment with wearing it unbuttoned over a crop top or bralette — or let your binder show.

Tenniscore Shorts

1. Khaki Mesh Short ($55, sizes S-XL)2. Khaki Green Sweatshorts ($10, sizes XXS-4XL) 3. Striped Track Shorts ($35, sizes XS-XXXL) 4. Striped Mesh Shorts ($40, sizes XXS-XXL) 5. Champion Jogging Short ($50, sizes XS-XXXL) 6. Linen Shorts ($25, sizes 0-20)

1. Khaki Mesh Short ($55, sizes S-XL)
2. Khaki Green Sweatshorts ($10, sizes XXS-4XL)
3. Striped Track Shorts ($35, sizes XS-XXXL)
4. Striped Mesh Shorts ($40, sizes XXS-XXL)
5. Champion Jogging Short ($50, sizes XS-XXXL)
6. Linen Shorts ($25, sizes 0-20)

I decided to prioritize comfort with these picks, though of course you can go with a more structured and dressy short option when doing Tenniscore. But why not be comfy?! There are so many ways to style what are essentially gym shorts and still accomplish a really sleek, courtside-ready look. Pair them with a crisp buttondown or a crop top + blazer. If you do want less of a gym-ready option, linen blend shorts (#6) are a perfect Tenniscore option. Those come in several colors, including a sharp navy.

Tenniscore Dresses

1. White Active Polo Dress ($50, sizes XXS-XXXL)2. Wilson Retro Tennis Dress ($88, sizes XS-XL) 3. Racerback Dress ($25, sizes XS-4XL) 4. Adidas Raglan Dress ($50, sizes XXS-XXL)

1. White Active Polo Dress ($50, sizes XXS-XXXL)
2. Wilson Retro Tennis Dress ($88, sizes XS-XL)
3. Racerback Dress ($25, sizes XS-4XL)
4. Adidas Raglan Dress ($50, sizes XXS-XXL)

The tennis dress is a classic, and there are a lot of brands making tennis dress-esque actual dresses, but I say just go straight for the real deal. It’s going to be more comfortable, breathable, and probably even more affordable to go the activewear route versus getting a higher fashion dress made to look like a tennis dress. I’ve seen more and more of these cropping up on resale sites, too! This is another great moment for an oversized blazer.

Tenniscore Skirts/Skorts

1. Satin Pleated Skort ($38, sizes XXS-XL)2. Red Skort ($58, sizes XS-XL) 3. Pleated Mini Skirt ($35, sizes 0-18) 4. Green Pleated Skort ($45, sizes XXS-XXL)

1. Satin Pleated Skort ($38, sizes XXS-XL)
2. Red Skort ($58, sizes XS-XL)
3. Pleated Mini Skirt ($35, sizes 0-18)
4. Green Pleated Skort ($45, sizes XXS-XXL)

Tenniscore is all about the pleats, baby! Whether you go skirt or skort, make sure you go pleated. I’ve been burned by some really uncomfortable pleated skirts in the past that have like NO STRETCH to them though, so this is another instance where you might want to buy the actual activewear. The super cute Aerie pleated skort (#4) also comes in other colors, including pink in case you wanna combine Tenniscore and Barbiecore.

Tenniscore Outer Layers

1. Linen Vest ($57, sizes 00-24)2. Double Breasted Blazer ($41, sizes XS-XXL) 3. Striped Polo Fleece ($49, sizes XS-XXL) 4. Oversized Blazer ($38, sizes XXS-4XL) 5. Linen Striped Jacket ($99, sizes 34R-52R)

1. Linen Vest ($57, sizes 00-24)
2. Double Breasted Blazer ($41, sizes XS-XXL)
3. Striped Polo Fleece ($49, sizes XS-XXL)
4. Oversized Blazer ($38, sizes XXS-4XL)
5. Linen Striped Jacket ($99, sizes 34R-52R)

As I’ve suggested many times throughout this post, layering is crucial to Tenniscore. Blazers, yes. But also vests, crewneck sweatshirts, and cardigans. And you don’t even need to wear a sweater or sweatshirt to make it part of your look. Try it out tied around your shoulders or even your waist. This works out especially well for me in Florida where it’s hot as hell outside but then anywhere indoors is air conditioned to hell. I can wear a crewneck sweatshirt on my shoulders for fashion outside and then pull it on inside. Tenniscore is practical!!!

Tenniscore Shoes, Hats, Accessories

1. Faux Tennis Bracelet ($17)2. FILA Sneaker ($70, sizes 5-11) 3. Visor ($42) 4. Watch ($180) 5. Striped Tube Socks ($14)

1. Faux Tennis Bracelet ($17)
2. FILA Sneaker ($70, sizes 5-11)
3. Visor ($42)
4. Watch ($180)
5. Striped Tube Socks ($14)

Here’s where we can get a little less practical and little more fashion. Unless you actually play tennis, there isn’t a point in buying actual court-ready tennis shoes. I’m partial to a platform white sneaker when it comes to my Tenniscore looks, and FILA makes some really cute ones. They go with just about everything! You’re gonna wanna luxe it up with the accessories, too. Nothing too gaudy but definitely shiny, elegant pieces. Think: a gold band watch, layering necklaces, and several rings. Slap a visor on top if you’re wanting a side of sun protection with your look.

Look at you! You’re ready to head to a Challengers screening or to find the chaotic summer throuple of your wildest dreams.

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

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Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is the managing editor of Autostraddle and a lesbian writer of essays, short stories, and pop culture criticism living in Orlando. She is the assistant managing editor of TriQuarterly, and her short stories appear or are forthcoming in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Joyland, Catapult, The Offing, and more. Some of her pop culture writing can be found at The A.V. Club, Vulture, The Cut, and others. You can follow her on Twitter or Instagram and learn more about her work on her website.

Kayla has written 827 articles for us.

1 Comment

  1. Please promise no throuple from u and artnett also it’s not a throuple it’s a love triangle

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Met Gala 2024: Who’s All Gay Here? The Best in This Year’s Queer Fashion

HELLO and Welcome to the First Tuesday in May, an annual tradition of my own making wherein I hunt and scavenge every corner of the internet to collect all of the best gay fashion from the Met Gala (which is, as anyone who’s seen as many Anne Hathaway movies as I have can tell you, always the First Monday in May).

First, a brief rundown: the Met Gala is an annual fundraiser for the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, hosted by Anna Wintour and Vogue magazine. Each year’s gala has a specific theme to celebrate — and this year it’s “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion.” On display right now at the Met is an exhibit featuring roughly 15 pieces that are too fragile to even be worn, including an Elizabethan bodice and a 1887 silk ball gown! It’s all very Bridgerton. Imagine “The Met Gala: as sponsored by Shonda Rhimes and Netflix.”

Immediately when I heard that this year’s theme was “Sleeping Beauties,” I assumed we’d be serving fairy tale haute couture. It turns out that the Costume Institute had something much darker in mind. This year’s dress code, dubbed “The Garden of Time,” is inspired by a short story of the same name, written by J.G. Ballard in 1962. The story involves a count and countess living in a beautiful rural villa, but “with each passing hour, an angry mob slowly begins to encroach their home, with the only way to fend them off involving the count plucking the petals of a time-reversing flower.” The count must cut a flower from his garden to keep the angry mob from taking over his estate. Each cut moves the mob further away, but slowly he ends up cutting all his flowers to make this happen, and therefore all the flowers die.

The irony speaks for itself, because last night as celebrities and the wealthiest among us wined and dined, protests against the war in Gaza and in support of a free Palestine swelled outside of the museum. Three different groups of protestors circled the Met, weaving through Central Park and looking to maneuver around police as the protestors made their way to the famed carpet. Ultimately, they got within a block of the museum before the police started arresting them (because of course, the pageantry of the Met carpet must be protected 🙄) and instead the protests began marching south down Park avenue. While this was happening, in the Palestinian city of Rafah, Israel increased their attacks, releasing bombs overnight. On the carpet itself, there was no mention of Palestine and no celebrity (to my knowledge) called for as much as a Ceasefire in their interviews — or even wore a pin in support.

I cannot imagine a clearer example of cutting off your flowers to keep the “angry mob” of reality away. A crystal clear and immaculately manicured gilded cage.

Look! I have a lot of complicated feelings about the Met! We all do, and if you’re going to read a complimentary piece to this otherwise silly fashion round up I deeply recommend these reflections from yesterday written by our Senior Editor Drew Burnett Gregory. As Drew notes, “The best thing someone can do with exorbitant wealth is give it away. The second best thing they can do is make art, make their home into art, or make themself into art. The Met Gala is a celebration of this second best thing — if only second best didn’t feel so sinister.”

The truth is that I love art, in a serious way. And I believe that craftwork and design of fashion is art. There are few celebrations of that craft like the Met Gala, and so here I am: with a pounding migraine, a nasty head cold, high on cold meds, in a shirt that is now two days old, and about to make my little jokey jokes on this website. I hope it gives you a little reprieve, joy, or comfort in your day. I hope we all celebrate the Condé Nast Union getting a tentative agreement (including a new floor minimum for salaries for the working class creatives who make magazines like Vogue come alive).

It’s the Met! And you know what that means! It’s time to look upon hot queers, poke a some fun at celebrity culture, and give flowers the designers, culture workers, and glam teams that make this topsy-turvy fashion world go ’round.

Let’s go go gadget!

All of the Best LGBT Fashion at the 2024 Met Gala

Ayo Edebiri in Loewe

It’s Ayo’s first Met carpet! Give it up for the Princess of Ireland! Green has always been her color 😉

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 06: Ayo Edebiri attends The 2024 Met Gala Celebrating "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City.

(Photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images)

Colman Domingo in Willy Chavarria

What I love about Colman Domingo is that it’s become a meme at this point that there isn’t a red carpet that he won’t be the Best Dressed of. And I love it, because it is correct.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 06: Colman Domingo attends The 2024 Met Gala Celebrating "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City.

(Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)

And while we’re here, listen to him talk about the importance of Black culture and its influence on fashion:

Rita Ora in Tom Ford

Every year, someone at the Met is going to do a “naked dress” and sure, that’s predictable, probably even veering towards boring. And sure, I wish if she’s going to go for the naked look of the night, that Rita Ora had found a better fitting body suit (it looks great in these photos, but in other angles you can see where it stretches away from her and wrinkles, losing the effect its supposed to have). BUT! The story behind these beads?? Call me galaxy brained, but I, for one, am into it!

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 06: Rita Ora attends The 2024 Met Gala Celebrating "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City.

(Photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images)

Daniel Levy

Traditionally when I cover the Met for Autostraddle, I don’t include cis gay men’s fashion because it’s covered extensively everywhere else on the web! And also — there’s only so many interesting takes about a plain black suit that girl can have.

But increasingly, the cis men are eating tf dowwwwnnnn at these here Mets! I’ve had to amend my own rubric. The fadaway on Dan Levy’s suit from black into flowers?? Like the impending doom of death??? (whoops is that just me who sees it?)

C’mon!!!

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 06: Dan Levy attends The 2024 Met Gala Celebrating "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Jamie

McCarthy/Getty Images)

J. Harrison Ghee

J. Harrison Ghee made history as one of the two nonbinary performers who won best acting awards at last year’s Tony Awards, but they’re also winning a whole other award last night — Princess Tinkerbell Fairy Godmother of my dreams!

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 06: J. Harrison Ghee attends The 2024 Met Gala Celebrating "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City.

(Photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images)

Cole Escola in Thom Browne

And speaking of theatre gays, I love what cabaret artist Cole Escola did here. They went for a British Mary Poppins-esque vibe (if I’m wrong, don’t tell me! That’s what I think of when I think of wicker and a Dachshund puppy!), and it’s working.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 06: Cole Escola attends The 2024 Met Gala Celebrating "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City.

(Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue)

Lena Waithe in Etro

While it’s true Lena’s giving a bit of an Ed Hardy 00s tuxedo (complimentary!) — what I really want to point out here is the craftsmanship on the embroidery in that leather. Can you imagine how much time that took?

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 06: Lena Waithe attends The 2024 Met Gala Celebrating "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City.

(Photo by Aliah Anderson/Getty Images)

Demi Lovato in Prabal Gurung

Demi said, tonight we are serving face! We are serving body!

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 06: Demi Lovato attends The 2024 Met Gala Celebrating "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City.

(Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue)

Dove Cameron

I just love Dove Cameron. She’s my third favorite (after Raven, Miley) grown-up gay Disney kid! And don’t you just love that there’s enough of them now that we can even rank them?

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 06: Dove Cameron attends The 2024 Met Gala Celebrating "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City.

(Photo by Marleen Moise/Getty Images)

Harris Reed

This is embarrassing to admit as the person you’ve entrusted to do your fashion round up, but I had… never heard of Harris Reed until last night?!? Which is unfortunate, because he walked away with my vote for Best Dressed on the whole carpet, Zendaya be damned!!

AND he got to walk it with his muse, 90s gay icon Demi Moore?!? WHAT!?

Harris Reed at the 2024 Met Gala: "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 6, 2024 in New York City.

(Photo by Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images)

Jordan Roth in Valentino

I have no idea who Jordan Roth is. I tried to google Jordan Roth, and still, I feel unclear. But look! at! that! outfit! That’s how you do a fucking garden, hunny.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 06: Jordan Roth attends The 2024 Met Gala Celebrating "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City.

(Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)

Cynthia Erivo in Thom Browne

Cynthia looked great, Cynthia’s nails looked great, Cynthia used this moment to once again remind everyone that she will soon be starring as Elphaba in Wicked. None of that is new. But I implore you to scroll through and look at the bedazzled dragonfly that is somehow attached to the back of her head, because whew. 

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 06: Cynthia Erivo attends The 2024 Met Gala Celebrating "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City.

(Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)

Lil Nas X in Luar

Speaking of Black queer people and our love of nails!! Wait until you see the claws that Lil Nas X was working with!

Also not to be messy on main, but is that his boyfriend? 👀

I missed the memo, let a girl know!

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 06: Lil Nas X attends the 2024 Met Gala Celebrating "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City.

(Photo by Gilbert Carrasquillo/GC Images)

Lily Gladstone in Gabriela Hearst

Ok so! At first glance, I wasn’t won over by Lily Gladstone’s outfit last night. But then I started reading more about Gabriela Hearst’s details? Including that each teeny tiny individual star was hand-crafted from recycled silver and glass beads, before then being hand-embroidered in place! Can you imagine!! It’s meant to replicate a Great Plains night sky, and respect for the expansive outdoors that means so much in Indigenous traditions. I get it. And I’m humbled by what I didn’t know.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 06: Lily Gladstone attends The 2024 Met Gala Celebrating "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City.

(Photo by John Shearer/WireImage)

You can also hear Lily speak directly on these themes in the interview below:

Quannah Chasinghorse in H&M

Quannah Chiasinghorse (featured here in a FRIENDSHIP photo with Lily Gladstone, just wanted to clarify, since we’re all gay here!) adorned an otherwise pretty traditional H&M ball gown with Indigenous jewelry and accents, and… I just think they are so gorgeous ok? Like they could have came in nothing but an Off the Rack little black dress and I still would have moved them to the top of the list.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 06: (L-R) Lily Gladstone and Quannah Chasinghorse attend The 2024 Met Gala Celebrating "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City.

(Photo by Arturo Holmes/MG24/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue)

Sarah Paulson in Prada

I enjoy that whenever cameras capture Sarah Paulson, it always looks as if she’s one second away from making a screaming face in one of those American Horror Stories.

Living life on the edge, you know?

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 06: Sarah Paulson attends The 2024 Met Gala Celebrating "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City.

(Photo by Marleen Moise/Getty Images)

Willow Smith in Dior

You get two behind-the-scenes videos and photo carousels on Willow’s hair, because I am obsesssssssssed

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 06: Willow Smith attends The 2024 Met Gala Celebrating "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City.

(Photo by John Shearer/WireImage)

Cardi B in Giambattista Valli

Over the past seven (!!) years, Cardi has become something of a queen of the Met carpet. And I love that she knows it. Even in a simple black tulle, this was easily one of the best gowns of the night. The circumference on that skirt alone?!

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 06: Cardi B attends The 2024 Met Gala Celebrating "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City.

(Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic)

Janelle Monáe in Vera Wang

Last night, a friend said to me: “I like Janelle’s look, I just can’t tell if they are on theme…”

I responded, “The theme is that they are hot. What’s not to get?”

And I was right.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 06: Janelle Monáe attends The 2024 Met Gala Celebrating "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City.

(Photo by John Shearer/WireImage)

Tessa Thompson

(I swear to you — I didn’t put Tessa Thompson underneath Janelle to stir the pot, it just happened like that!)

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 06: Tessa Thompson attends The 2024 Met Gala Celebrating "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City.

(Photo by John Shearer/WireImage)

Emily Ratajkowski in Versace

I always forget that Emily Ratajkowski is bisexual, and maybe she isn’t? But she sure does own a velvet green couch. And so, based on the bylaws of Overly-Online Queer Culture,TM  here we are.

TOPSHOT - US model Emily Ratajkowski arrives for the 2024 Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 6, 2024, in New York. The Gala raises money for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute. The Gala's 2024 theme is "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion."

(Photo by Angela WEISS / AFP) (Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images)

Rosalía in Dior

Just your bimonthly reminder that Rosalía dated Hunter Schafer for months and none of us knew about it.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 06: Rosalía attends The 2024 Met Gala Celebrating "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City. (

(Photo by Kevin Mazur/MG24/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue)

Cara Delevingne in Stella McCartney

Surprisingly this is subdued for Cara? I don’t hate it. But it’s also no Peg the Patriarchy shirt. (And yes, sadly, that shirt is a thing that once happened. On this very carpet, no less.)

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 06: Cara Delevingne attends the 2024 Costume Institute Benefit for "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City.

(Photo by Taylor Hill/Getty Images)

Hari Nef in H&M

BARBIE!!!

Hari Nef at the 2024 Met Gala: "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 6, 2024 in New York City.

(Photo by Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images)

Keke Palmer

At first I thought Keke Palmer was Rapunzel, but now I’m thinking — plot twist — she might be Rapunzel’s tower? And that’s so much better.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 06: Keke Palmer attends the 2024 Costume Institute Benefit for "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City.

(Photo by Taylor Hill/Getty Images)

Queen Latifah & Eboni Nichols, Both in Thom Browne

QUEEN LATIFAH WALKED THE CARPET WITH HER PARTNER AND ALSO DID AN INTERVIEW ABOUT THEIR KID AND WHEN I TELL YOU THAT I UNABASHEDLY TEARED UP OVER THESE DEVELOPMENTS!!!!!!! aflaskdfaldfkasdfjlafkaldfakdfalfkaflakfafadsfsldfksaflsakdf

Dana fucking Owens. The woman that you are. The journey you have been on. I love you, and I hope you had the best possible night.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 06: (L-R) Eboni Nichols and Queen Latifah attends The 2024 Met Gala Celebrating "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2024 in New York City.

(Photo by Aliah Anderson/Getty Images)

And in conclusion, Free Palestine. Just so you don’t forget.

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!
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Carmen Phillips

Carmen is Autostraddle's Editor-in-Chief and a Black Puerto Rican femme/inist writer. She claims many past homes, but left the largest parts of her heart in Detroit, Brooklyn, and Buffalo, NY. There were several years in her early 20s when she earnestly slept with a copy of James Baldwin’s “Fire Next Time” under her pillow. You can find her on twitter, @carmencitaloves.

Carmen has written 705 articles for us.

2 Comments

  1. DANA OWENS THE WOMAN THAT YOU ARE! also, that is the most mom of a little boy thing i’ve ever heard

  2. I had the EXACT same first though about Dan Levy’s outfit. It’s like okay someone read the short story!*

    *and unforch only engaged with the symbolism rather than the themes but it’s not like he’s alone in that, as you say!

Comments are closed.

Very Special Gay Episode: The One Where I Write About the ‘Friends’ Lesbian Wedding

Welcome to Very Special Gay Episode, a fun little series where we recap standalone lesbian episodes from classic TV shows that are not otherwise necessarily gay. In this installment, we will discuss Friends season two, episode eleven: “The One with the Lesbian Wedding”

I honestly don’t remember much of it.

I mean, I know the basics. The show was a bona fide phenomenon, a powerhouse that aired to nearly 25 million viewers per week. In 1996, the year I turned sixteen, girls at my high school had asked their stylists to give them The Rachel, a questionable shag-adjacent haircut that looked good on almost no one aside from Jennifer Aniston. People carved time out of their busy schedules every Thursday night to watch Rachel, Ross, Monica, Chandler, Phoebe, and Joey cavort for a half-hour of laugh-track fueled comedy. Romance! Slapstick! A theme song where people clapped! Friends had it all. But this particular episode, “The One With the Lesbian Wedding,” focused on something a little different from the usual fare: Two women were getting gay married.

Well, not legally. But still! There was going to be a wedding!

In the promo, the lesbians in question wore fussy Victorian clothing that looked more like furniture upholstery than wedding finery. Some very weird hats were involved. One of them was shaped like a mushroom cap. Both hats looked as if someone had mistakenly sat on them, leaving them lopsided and crumpled from the weight of a person’s ass. Yes, the clothes were weird, even by 90’s standards.

But these were lesbians! I’d never seen any in real life before. Perhaps, I thought, this was how all gay women dressed; as if they were in an old timey vaudeville act. At any moment, you thought someone might show up with a hook and yank one of them offstage.

It was Must See TV in its heyday. And hey, these were lesbians.

I wanted to watch the episode because everyone was watching it; there had been a lot of buzz about the gay wedding prior to airdate. Candace Gingrich was going to officiate the wedding! (I had no clue who that was, but people were talking about it.) Many conservatives, including my parents, were outraged. Two affiliates censored the episode. Some viewers made a point of boycotting that week, as if tuning out one time was going to really stick it to the network. But no matter! We were going to Sit This One Out, a phrase utilized by my mother whenever we wouldn’t be participating in something due to the fact that it went against our Christian values.

But I didn’t want to sit this one out. Everyone would be talking about it at school the next day. Missing it would make me feel like even more of an outsider than I already was: a gangly, dorky, church kid. I was closeted and didn’t even know it (though I think it’s possible that some small part of me did). Talking about Friends made me feel normal. In that regard, I was just like everyone else.

The night the episode aired, I was home alone. My dad was out of town and my mom had taken my brother and sister to some now unremembered event. This in and of itself was a kind of miracle. Our house was small and there were five of us that lived there, which meant that you were lucky if you didn’t have to stand in line to use the bathroom. I shared a bedroom with my much younger sister. We had bunkbeds. Time to myself wasn’t just a rare occurrence; it felt like a luxury.

Before my mother left that day, she’d warned me not to watch Friends. We’d argued about it for the past week and I’d hoped she’d budge, but she’d stuck firm in her beliefs. Absolutely not, she said. Though I know you really want to. This particular phrase has stuck with me – though most of the episode itself has not – because yes, I did want to see those lesbians get married very, very badly. And for whatever reason, my mother seemed to understood that fact better than I did.

At 8PM EST on the night of January 18th, 1996, I tuned in to Friends along with the rest of America. My mother said she’d be home well before 9PM. I wouldn’t be able to watch all of it, but I could see some. The theme song played, the Friends splashed fully-clothed in their fountain, and then–

My brain blanks. I don’t remember anything that happened.

I know they got married. Ross might have walked his ex-wife down the aisle, but I’m just guessing here. The lesbians stood there in their strange wedding clothes and those misshapen hats and they held hands. I remember that they kiss. Do I even remember that? Was it on the cheek or was it a peck on the lips? I’d have to look it up online to really know for sure.

What I do remember is feeling so scared that I thought I’d puke. I was worried someone would come home. I knew I’d be in trouble for disobeying my mother, and that was part of my worry, but the bigger part of me was afraid that someone would ask me why I wanted to watch so badly.

Why do you want to see two women get married?
Why do you care about lesbians?
What, are you gay?

At the time, queerness was a thing so bright that when I looked too closely at it, it felt like someone had aimed a high-powered flashlight directly into my eyes. It hurt.

I didn’t want to think about any of it. I stood less than a foot from the television screen and hardly watched the show I’d begged to see. My eyes glazed over. Sweat drenched my back and armpits. I waited there like a stressed-out Jeopardy contestant, white knuckling the remote control, prepared to change the channel to something less gay if my mom suddenly burst through the front door.

When she finally pulled into the driveway, I turned off the TV and casually sat down on the couch with a book. I was cool, calm, and collected. And by that, I mean I was hyperventilating and looked like I’d just barely outrun a murderer. As the door opened and my family walked inside, I peered up from my book, attempting an “oh, I didn’t notice you there” vibe.

Of course, my mom knew what I’d done. Of course, I got into trouble.

Sensing that I was going to watch the forbidden show even though she’d specifically told me not to, my mom had parked up the street and sent my brother to spy on me. He’d watched me through the back window as I watched (or tried to watch) my first gay wedding. Then he went back to the car and tattled on me.

Was I punished? Probably. I can’t remember that, either. It wouldn’t have really mattered. I was never allowed to do much, anyway – Christian kid with an early curfew and very few friends who never drank or smoked, a choir girl who’d never attended a real party (and wouldn’t go to one until well after high school ended). My mom probably yelled at me for a while and sent me to bed early and that was the end of it. No big deal.

It had felt like a big deal, though. And even now, in my early forties, it still feels life-changing. The way that people talked about that episode leading up to it had made the moment feel historic and significant. When the episode was over and Friends continued, sans gay weddings, it almost felt like it had never happened at all. People stopped talking about it. No one mentioned it to me again, including my parents.

The thing about the gay wedding episode of Friends is that even though I don’t remember much of the storyline in particular, the fact that it happened at all was important. And maybe that’s because it was the first time someone showed me – even for a weird, ill-dressed moment – that a union between two women was a possibility. It could happen in real life, couldn’t it? It had happened on Friends and everyone loved Friends. And if something happened there – say, a very bad haircut that everyone coveted – then maybe I could watch those women get married and think: that could be me someday, too.

So, no. I don’t remember much from the episode. Not really. But I got married a few months ago, and when I picked out my suit I thought about those misshapen hats and those maidenly Victorian clothes. I remembered them with affection. I smiled.

I’ll never look up what actually happened during the episode, because I don’t think it matters.

I won’t forget the important parts.

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

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Kristen Arnett

Kristen Arnett is the queer author of With Teeth: A Novel (Riverhead Books, 2021) which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in fiction and the New York Times bestselling debut novel Mostly Dead Things (Tin House, 2019) which was also a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in fiction and was shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. She was awarded a Shearing Fellowship at Black Mountain Institute, has held residencies at Ragdale Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, the Millay Colony, and the Key West Literary Seminar (upcoming 2024), and was longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize recognizing mid-career writers of fiction. Her work has appeared at The New York Times, TIME, The Cut, Oprah Magazine, Guernica, Buzzfeed, McSweeneys, PBS Newshour, The Guardian, Salon, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. Her next novel, CLOWN, will be published by Riverhead Books (Penguin Random House), followed by the publication of an untitled collection of short stories. She has a Masters in Library and Information Science from Florida State University and lives in Orlando, Florida. You can find her on Twitter here: @Kristen_Arnett

Kristen has written 3 articles for us.

5 Comments

  1. This is an absolutely beautiful piece! Thank you for sharing it with us.

    I remember my favourite episode was the one where Winona Ryder guest stars and has been repressing dreams of Rachel since college and I had no idea. none! why it meant so much to me and why i felt so sad for her.

  2. this was so lovely! i think this was important to a lot of us, even though we didn’t know why

  3. AHHH NOOOOOOO I thought their wedding dresses were so cute! :(

    I remember being obsessed with this episode (and Carol and Susan) as a kid; of course I know why now, hehe.

Comments are closed.

I Finally Met Someone Cute IRL — Now What Do I Do?

Q:

For years I’ve been wishing I could meet someone organically, off the apps, and now that that’s happened I have no idea what I’m doing! I recently met this amazing queer woman through a queer hiking meetup and we’ve hit it off — she’s incredibly talented and creative and kind, and we have some inside jokes going and have expressed we look forward to seeing each other on the hikes. We’re going to be hanging out one on one soon (I asked if she’d want to hang out, so not a date), and I want to take things slow so as to not freak her out and also, like, get to know her…but I also want her to get the the hint that I would like my face on her face.

My dating experience is pretty far and few between. I’m 27, and the longest relationship I’ve had lasted two months (we met on Hinge) and otherwise I’ve just pined after friends or been lead on in situationships that end abruptly once I express a desire to define things. How can I approach this new situation differently? I’m so excited, and either way will be happy to have made a new friend, but ugh I really don’t want to have to go back on the apps to find love!!

A:

Congrats on putting yourself out there and meeting someone you’ve hit it off with! “Queer hiking meetup” is exactly the kind of thing I recommend to people who are looking to meet people organically rather than the apps. You did it! Yay!

Now, I’m going to give you a little bit of tough love. Some of the things you say are kind of at odds with each other! You asked her to “hang out” rather than on a date so as not to freak her out, but you also want her to get the hint that you wanna kiss! I think you should be more upfront about what you want here. Asking someone just to hang out rather than asking them on a date when really what you want is to kiss could send mixed signals. On top of that, it might not even be clear to her that asking to hang out is different than asking her out on a date. It’s possible these things are distinct in your mind but less distinct in hers. This is what can often lead to the Am I On A Date conundrum some queer folks experience, a conundrum I think is best to avoid in instances where you’re genuinely interested in someone!

I know you say you’d be fine with friendship, but asking her out on a date or being more explicit about your intentions of getting to know her in a romantic way doesn’t make that possibility dead in the water. I think you might be striving for casual but instead landing on confusing. Not intentionally, of course! And there’s nothing bad about your approach, but you might set yourself up for success more if you are more clear in what you want here.

I do think there’s a clear explanation for your behavior here: your history of past situationships that end once you want to define things. But the thing is: You did nothing wrong or bad by expressing a desire to define things. That isn’t actually why the situationships ended. The situationships ended because the other person didn’t want the same thing, not because you asked for it. I know this can be a difficult one to ingest. But if you had held that desire in instead of expressing it, it only would have made you miserable and also prolonged the inevitable. You actually did the brave and healthy thing for yourself by saying what you wanted, even if it didn’t inevitably result in what you wanted.

You know you want to kiss her. You want her take the hint that you want to kiss her. So why beat around the bush with these hazy distinctions between “hanging out” and “going on a date”? You don’t have to be afraid of this ruining the possibility of just a friendship with her. I know so many people who have built really solid friendships with people where one person asked the other on a date and the other person said no or also when two people have even gone on a date or two before deciding to be friends. Being more explicit about asking her on a date doesn’t kill all other options for connection.

You get along! You have inside jokes! You look forward to seeing each other! You’re both queer! I don’t think you’re going to freak her out by asking her out. As for some brief flirting tips: simple compliments go a long way, but so does just listening to someone, asking them questions about themselves, and making eye contact. I mean, if you’ve already got inside jokes, flirting with her should be a smooth next step. Good luck, and have fun!

You can chime in with your advice in the comments and submit your own questions any time.

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

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Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is the managing editor of Autostraddle and a lesbian writer of essays, short stories, and pop culture criticism living in Orlando. She is the assistant managing editor of TriQuarterly, and her short stories appear or are forthcoming in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Joyland, Catapult, The Offing, and more. Some of her pop culture writing can be found at The A.V. Club, Vulture, The Cut, and others. You can follow her on Twitter or Instagram and learn more about her work on her website.

Kayla has written 827 articles for us.

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What Drag Has Taught Me

Gabbie in drag as a priest

Photo by Manuel Frayre

I want to be very clear from the get-go: I am not good at drag. I have only performed in a loose interpretation of “drag” about six times since August 2023, all at open mics or small venues. I would balk at the idea of calling myself a drag performer alongside others I know who are truly putting their heads, hearts, and body parts into the artform. That said, every time I have gotten the opportunity to do mediocre drag as a beginner, I have had some of the most fun a person can have.

It’d been a bucket list item of mine for awhile to perform drag, just once. Thankfully here in Austin, Texas, there are ample opportunities for beginning drag artists: from RAIN’s BYOT hosted by Basura, to Cheer Up Charlie’s Big Tits Bigger Dreams hosted by Brigitte Bandit, there are several ways for newbies to get a sense of this artform for themselves. In August 2023, I ripped off my self-adhered bandage and dove into drag with a performance of Harry Styles’ “Only Angel” as a priest. I tore pages out of a Bible I may or may not have stolen from a Boston hotel, and fed unblessed communion wafers to folks in the audience. Needless to say, sexualizing a queer’s religious trauma makes for a great tipping strategy.

While I’ve only performed a handful of times since then (most recently in a star-spangled duo number to Big & Rich’s “Save A Horse, Ride A Cowboy”), I have had an invaluable amount of fun and self-realization that I am excited to share with you here.

LESSON 1: Masculinity/Femininity Don’t Have To Be Cages; They Can Instead Be The Key That Unlocks Them

I self-describe as a “masc lesbian.” I wear button-downs and baggy pants far more often than makeup and skirts, but the full reality of my gender expression is more nuanced.

Growing up in the Missouri suburbs, gender was less a playground than a confined set of rules one need not break. I attended an all-girls Catholic school (yes, mark that off on my dyke bingo card), and before that co-ed Catholic education. I wore a skirt to school every day for 12 grades straight, and it was only when I reached college at 18 that I was thrown into figuring out my personal style all at once. I was more feminine in college, but it was a stocky, clumsy femininity: skirts with baggy leggings underneath, ugly hats, dresses that made me look like a four-year-old on Easter. It wasn’t until the latter half of college, and graduate school, that I played more with masculine styles, and began to feel much more at home. Finally I felt desirable, sexy even, not just for others but for myself.

And yet, even in that, I have still struggled with an internalized shame. I have often fought against the word “butch,” making sure people know while I may dress masculinely, I’m not “like that.” I am ashamed to have thought that way — to in some ways, without catching myself, still think that way — the voice of relatives and conservatives echoing in my mind, reminding me that “just because I’m a lesbian, doesn’t mean I have to be that kind of lesbian.” Despite viewing butches and masc lesbians as pioneers, despite getting emotional when I see pictures of old butches in black-and-white suit and ties, I still carry a shame that has disallowed me from accessing that same freedom. And similarly, I have remained uncomfortable in presentations of femininity. Dresses don’t feel like me, and most representations of femininity feel less like a choice than a compromise with what is expected of me from others.

When I started drag, though, I had an obvious but revelatory shift happen within me. While, again, my drag is not up to par with realer performers, even just drawing on a fake mustache, strapping on a fake member, and gyrating to a Harry Styles song lent me a particular power. I felt good. I felt attractive, powerful, engaged. I loved the attention (of course I did, I’m a Leo Moon), but more than that, I loved how I felt. The performance of gender that drag brings made it fun again: not just masculine performance, but the idea of feminine performance as well. In drag, gender doesn’t feel like a choice, but a gift: a gift you can play with, return, box, and unbox at will.

I was never interested in makeup or dresses or things associated with a feminine presentation — until drag. How funny is that? It wasn’t until I could turn femininity subversive that I wanted her back. More so than performing in drag (which I have only done a handful of times), watching others toe the lines between feminine and masculine, seeing what these folks look like in their everyday lives versus as their drag personas, made me excited at the thought of engaging with my feminine side without a sense of lacking control, or engaging with my masculine side without a sense of shame. Drag reminds me, reminds many of us, I’m sure, that gender is meant to be fun — gender is meant to be a toy we play with. Gender is not a requirement; it’s a hobby, and we should play with it however we want.

I do like makeup, I do like skirts and doing my hair and parlaying generally with femininity. I just want to do it on my terms. And masculinity too — I don’t have to be ashamed of it, because it is what makes me happy and makes me feel good and sexy and like a person, not a gender. And that’s what we should all feel like.

LESSON 2: Drag Comes In Many Shapes

RuPaul’s Drag Race would have many folks who otherwise don’t engage with local drag scenes believe there’s only one, maybe one and a half, ways to do drag. While in more recent seasons Drag Race has opened up the competition to openly trans women, and an increase in more androgynous presentation, the series still displays a very narrow scope of what drag can be.

When I started engaging more with drag in the Austin community, of course I found stellar queens whose sharp, curated femininity was enchanting to watch. But, both through booked shows and drag open mics like the ones I’ve participated in, I’ve been able to witness so much more. I’ve seen Austin’s fierce community of drag kings, comprising cis women and trans men alike, as well as drag performers who either do not pick between masculine or feminine presentation or forego a particular categorized “gender play” altogether for something more monstrous or amorphous. The “drag thing” versus king or queen is a figure I’ve seen in the Austin drag scene more than once, and each time I see a performance rooted in the weird, the ugly, the creaturely, I fall more in love with the act of drag.

Of course before doing drag for the first time myself, I knew drag was not the box Drag Race may have one believe. Dragula, another popular drag competition show (and one with not one but two Austin queens on Season 3, Louisianna Purchase and Evah Destruction), prides itself on having “filth, horror, glamor” as its pillars. (It also had a drag king, Landon Cider, winning Season 3, while in 16 American seasons and over 20 international iterations, Drag Race has not even cast one.) But it’s one thing to know an artform exists, and another to get to experience it, sitting in the hot squelch of Texas summer flinging damp dollar bills at a hot drag cowboy with prominent top surgery scars, or a sort of amorphous radioactive Rugrat-adjacent androgyny. The commitment to seeing more drag by participating in it, introduced me to all the ways one can do drag, express it, have fun with it. Which leads me to my next point:

LESSON 3: You Can Still Have Fun When You’re Bad At Something

When my editor saw my fledgling drag Instagram, she asked that I write about my experience. But like I said earlier, I don’t consider myself a drag performer so much as a person who has done drag a handful of times with a poorly drawn-on mustache and a willingness to look stupid in front of drunk strangers. So a part of me feels false writing this article — I would never say I am good enough at drag to write this. But then, does one have to be an expert on something to talk about it? Better yet, does one have to be an expert on something to find joy in it?

The first time I did drag, I had planned an elaborate routine to “Only Angel” by Harry Styles. I would dress as a priest, rip pages out of a bible, and hand out communion wafers. I had each lyric detailed with a move, planning to be as sexy as possible. I’d practiced countless times in the shower and my small, oblong-shaped living room. And then within the first few seconds of the number, I tripped over a fan and fell flat on my face. Thankfully, the adrenaline of performance was enough to push me past it — everyone was laughing, thinking the clumsiness was part of a high-camp act, so I went with it. Most of my choreography went out the window, some of it because of this fumble, but mostly because the heart-beating energy of the performance just threw the script out of my brain. Instead, I ended up gyrating, jumping, throwing my body against the stage. It was ridiculous, and I thought I would feel embarrassed for an imperfect performance, but instead I did the simplest yet most evocative thing: I had fun.

As someone who suffers from the affliction of “if I can’t do it perfectly on the first try, I don’t want to do it at all,” being forced into a position where from the jump I couldn’t make it perfect was terrifying and electrifying. And is that not, in many ways, the point of drag? The latest seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race, rife with couture and designer dresses, may fool us, but the root of drag is in its scrappiness, its imperfections, it’s artistry borne from a need for expression, not for a lust for fame or a mainstream popularity. Drag at its core is a communal, DIY artform, where the purity of its language is in expression and just plain joy. Even doing it poorly, even doing it just every once in a while with a bad mustache and hastily applied eyeshadow, gets to the root of it, which is that it’s about expressing and sharing queer joy.

LESSON 4: Community is Yours, If You Choose To Engage With It

I’ve lived in Austin for almost five years now. I moved here pre-COVID to get my MFA in Poetry (lesbian bingo card filling up fast), and with intentionality to make new friends in a new city I could call my own. Of course, after COVID joined our lives, that made an already complicated effort even more difficult. I had had queer friends before — most of my high school and undergrad friends were either gay when I befriended them, or came out shortly thereafter. However, I had yet to live as an adult in a city of my own where I could truly engage in a queer community. I was in the GSA at my undergrad (forgive me), but a college club is not the same as engaging with your neighbors in queerness at bars, community events, in the grocery store line. I wasn’t sure how to navigate this as an adult. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to.

And of course, with the strain of schoolwork, COVID precautions, and more than a few indulgent heartbreaks, I didn’t have as much time or access to that engagement. After being vaccinated and with COVID restrictions lifted, I was able to go out (masked) with friends from my program, but I still kept my circle small. I pretty much didn’t meet anyone new outside of the graduate school social circle unless I was going on a date with them, and the two outcomes to that were often limited to a one-night stand or ferocious toxic entanglement (don’t worry, I have a therapist now).

It wasn’t until this past summer, when I gave drag a shot, that I found what it felt like to truly engage with the community at large. Anyone can get a couple cherry vodka sours at their local gay bar, throw a couple dollars at the drag performers, and go home, but what does it look like to be a part of something bigger than yourself? To know what it means not just to take but to give to a space — beyond just a few dollars for drinks. By performing, I got to access the social world of the other performers: some with more experience, others also starting drag for the first time, unsure whether it would be a calling or just a fun one-night stand. Folks I would’ve never met or had the courage to talk to otherwise were ones I ended up spending the remainder of that night with, swapping cigarettes and bad date stories. Since then, whether I’ve gone to perform at the bars, or just gone for a drink, it’s a guarantee I will know at least one person in attendance. And by knowing just one person, I’ve become privy to other events and places in Austin I would’ve never guessed existed if I hadn’t been brave enough to meet new people. Now I don’t even have to go to the bar: I go to an artists’ market and buy a print from a queen who did a slick sexy number to Nelly Furtado’s “Maneater,” or buy a coffee from the place around the corner and run into a performer who, last I saw, was wearing nothing but leather chaps and a whole can of whipped cream.

It may seem small and inconsequential, but the manner in which the city opened up to me changed the way I interacted not only with it, but with myself. I began to recognize I wasn’t as alone as I felt, that there is a huge world of amazing people to know. I just had to be brave enough to go look for them.

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

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Gabrielle Grace Hogan

Gabrielle Grace Hogan (she/her) received her MFA from the University of Texas at Austin. Her poetry has been published by TriQuarterly, CutBank, Salt Hill, and others, and has been supported by the James A. Michener Fellowship and the Ragdale Foundation. In the past, she has served as Poetry Editor of Bat City Review, and as Co-Founder/Co-Editor of You Flower / You Feast, an anthology of work inspired by Harry Styles. She lives in Austin, Texas. You can find her on Instagram @gabriellegracehogan, her website www.gabriellegracehogan.com, or wandering a gay bar looking lost.

Gabrielle has written 8 articles for us.

4 Comments

  1. Fascinating write-up, thank you. Your voice is very clear and clever, I love it. Setting aside my own complicated unresolved feelings about drag as a trans woman, I just have to ask: why did you apologize for being in your undergrad gsa? I’m so confused, I thought I was finally starting to be “in the loop”… 🤣

    (I was the president of mine, despite not being out as anything, but generally assumed to be just kind of a queer guy…)

    • Thanks for reading! I think for me I’ve found a lot of queer people around my age (I’m 27) find being in a GSA a bit cringey? lol I think it comes from an idea that sometimes GSAs can be a bit neoliberal in their politics. Of course this doesn’t apply to all GSAs — there’s clear nuance!

      • Ah, that makes sense. I’m about a decade older than you (oh I’m so old), and I wouldn’t really call ours neoliberal, we were doing pretty basic stuff like “reading queer news sites” and “safe space training with really 101 level content” because we were at a Catholic college 😅. Thanks for the clarification!

    • Drag thing is a new one. In my area the term is a drag monarch and I admit I like that better than drag thing. Thing is too dehumanizing for me personally. Interesting read! It’s been a while since I have been able to perform as a drag king because of grad school, but it would be nice to return to it someday. I’m glad you’re having fun with it.

Comments are closed.

Praise for Buck’s Bisexuality Keeps Erasing 9-1-1’s Black Lesbians (Who’ve Been There THE WHOLE TIME)

9-1-1 Praise for Not Queerbaiting Needs to Stop Erasing Hen and Her Wife from the Narrative

9-1-1: Hen and Karen smile, Hen with her hand on her wife's knee

🎶”Don’t you forget about me.”🎶 (Photo: Disney/Chris Willard)

The first thing I want to say before I get on my soap box and go on a little rant is this: I am SO excited that 9-1-1′s Buck is bisexual. I do think it’s a huge deal that the show took their womanizer male character, saw the internet commenting on his chemistry with his best guy friend Eddy, and gave him a boyfriend and a coming out arc. I’m also thrilled about how many people, on and off screen, are using the word “bisexual” to describe it. I’m glad that this news has brought a lot of new fans into the fold for a show that was cast aside by one network only to be embraced by a brand new one. I am a notorious misandrist, but I have genuinely loved Buck for quite a few seasons now and I am genuinely happy for him.

THAT SAID. I have a huge problem with how a lot of fans and, more importantly, mainstream media outlets are framing it. Take this Rolling Stone article that came out today, for example.

First, the is the article’s definition of “queerbaiting” — which is almost correct. They say, “Queerbaiting is a term for when shows use queer relationships to draw viewers in, but never actualize them. It gained widespread use in online fandoms in the 2000s, with television series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural, Rizzoli and Isles, and Teen Wolf, which all included peripheral gay characters but never committed to allowing their main character to be queer.” The first sentence is a true definition of queerbaiting, but the last line misses the point.

Queerbaiting is not about allowing a main character to be queer, as much as it is portraying a couple as queer in external media to tease viewers and get them to watch the TV show, while not actually committing to said queerness it on screen. Rizzoli and Isles is indeed a perfect example of that, as their posters and billboards often showed the duo in very romantic-looking positions (lying on a picnic blanket together, for example) and would sometimes give them flirty lines but never actually went there. Queerbaiting is an intentional thing shows do. Like giving two female characters a scene that almost shot-for-shot matches a heterosexual romantic pairing in the comic book the show is based, on but then swearing up and down the women are just friends. Not following characters’ chemistry isn’t always queerbaiting. This Rolling Stone piece was written by a nonbinary culture writer, which makes me think we (queer journalists and fandoms) have been failing to define “queerbaiting” correctly publicly for far too long.

In my opinion, 9-1-1 was never intentionally queerbaiting. It sounds like, according to the quotes in that article, that the showrunner and actors were on board with bisexual Buck for a few seasons now, but Fox higher-ups said no, which is why it took them moving to ABC before it could be greenlit.

Now on to my second, bigger problem with this discourse: In praising 9-1-1 for making one of their main (white, male) characters bisexual, not once in this entire article did they mention Hen, who has had AN ENTIRE WIFE since Season 1. And this is not just about this one article, this is reflective of a lot of conversations that have happened online since Buck’s coming out. Hen was gay and married long before the show started, and Tracie Thoms showed up playing her wife as early as the fifth episode of the series, and has been back in various capacities every season since. To not even mention the Black lesbians in your article once in an entire piece about queerness on 9-1-1 is absolutely absurd. And again, I’m not harping specifically on this one Rolling Stones article, because as egregious as it is, it isn’t the first article to do so, just the most recent. I’ve seen a slew of articles, tweets, and TikToks praising 9-1-1 for “finally” being queer, when it’s been gay literally the entire time.

And it’s not even just Hen and Karen! The series starts with Athena’s husband (who is also Black) leaving her because he realized he’s gay. Jennifer Love Hewitt’s character’s coworker Josh has been out and gay and has even had gay-specific storylines. Even though those are recurring characters and not main characters, they’re other examples of why some of the conversation about 9-1-1 recently has put a bad taste in my mouth.

It’s frustrating to have to write so negatively about this whole situation, when I should be celebrating alongside everyone else. If the conversation was about adding another queer character to a show that already has some queer characters, that’s an interesting conversation to have, because a lot of shows seem to think there’s a quota they have to fill, and don’t like having more than two queer people in a cast at a time. If the conversation was about having a character that was previously a bit of a womanizer not only be bisexual but come to terms with it relatively quickly and excitedly, that’s also an interesting conversation, because I have genuinely really enjoyed watching Buck’s journey. But to accuse the show of queerbaiting, or celebrate it “finally” having a queer main character is disingenuous at best, misogynistic and/or racist at worst.

End rant.

Hose Off with Some Less Enraging News

+ Bisexual actress and former Pretty Little Liar Shay Mitchell has an upcoming travel show about beverages around the world

+ Saturday Night Live did a JoJo Siwa skit, which JoJo herself found amusing; my favorite part was when she exclaimed, “I’m the first gay girl in the world!”

+ Devery Jacobs is going to star in a queer cheerleading movie called Backspot alongside Evan Rachel Wood Bisexual, which is firmly up my alley

+ Janelle Monáe is going to be in a musical movie from Pharrell, said to be a coming-of-age story set during the summer of 1977

+ Madonna answered the call to “come to Brazil” amassed 1.6 million people at her free concert

+ We Are Lady Parts dropped an official trailer

+ Mara Wilson joined her former costars for a Mrs. Doubtfire reunion

+ Queer horror author Kalynn Bayron has short stories in two upcoming anthologies, We Mostly Come Out at Night and The White Guy Dies First and these anthologies could have other queer authors in them I just know I added them to my wishlist SO FAST when I saw Kalynn’s name because she’s one of my favorite authors ever

+ To celebrate this year’s Tony nominations, please enjoy this breakdown of the queerness of this season’s Broadway shows

+ Fear Street: Prom Queen is in production; let’s hope it’s as queer as the last batch of Fear Street films

+ The P.Valley team has kicked off production on Season 3

+ Khloe Kardashian is not opposed to the idea of being a lesbian someday

+ Kylie Minogue’s sister Dannii, who is the host of upcoming queer British reality show I Kissed a Girl is not queer at all despite sort of saying she was and also hosting a queer reality show

+ It looks like Rosie O’Donnell will be joining the cast of And Just Like That as a love interest for Miranda – to quote Drew in our TV Team Slack, “L Word/A League of Their Own/Sex and the City is a wild trifecta for Rosie I love it”

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!
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Valerie Anne

Just a TV-loving, Twitter-addicted nerd who loves reading, watching, and writing about stories. One part Kara Danvers, two parts Waverly Earp, a dash of Cosima and an extra helping of my own brand of weirdo.

Valerie has written 554 articles for us.

Should You Delete Your Ex?

Getting rid of the physical remnants of a relationship in the wake of a bad breakup can be challenging enough, but what about the digital debris? All those photos, posts, and messages. What do we do with them once the relationship ends, especially if it ended badly? Turns out, based on my highly scientific process of asking my various group chats, there are a lot of different approaches and philosophies here. Let’s take a look at them to see what might be the best fit for you.

Should You Delete All Your Photos of an Ex After a Breakup?

The most extreme option, deleting all digital evidence of a past partner is perhaps reserved for the worst types of breakups — ones where you imagine you’ll be No Contact forever or for a very long time and ones where you prefer not to preserve any evidence of memories with the other person. Perhaps you’ve already blocked your ex and are ready to wipe the slate clean entirely. There are still some different options within this extreme approach to digital cleanup though: You can hard-delete all grid posts or you can archive everything.

You should think twice before hard-deleting. In the intense and immediate aftermath of a bad breakup, it might be tempting to do a swift full wipe, but it could lead to losing photos you’ll later wish you had access to. Instagram doesn’t have a trash folder — once they’re gone, they’re gone. As for photos deleted from your phone, they’ll live in the trash folder for thirty days before disappearing permanently. Once they’re gone forever, you again might find yourself wishing down the road that you still had them — not to revisit the relationship per se but rather to revisit a specific time of your life. Even in instances of bad breakups (unless we’re talking about abuse), I think we should normalize being able to look back on failed relationships as still meaningful, formative, and supplemental to our lives rather than just “wastes of time.” If I deleted every single photo of my ex from my phone, I’d lose whole important chunks of memories, including a lot of international trips, concerts, and big life events.

No matter what your breakup situation is, it’s best to delete nudes right away, unless you have an explicitly stated nudes protocol that doesn’t require deletion in the event of a breakup. For the most part though, few people would enjoy the idea of their nudes existing on an ex’s phone. Those gotta go.

Should I Remove My Ex From My Instagram Grid?

A slightly less extreme alternative to hard-deleting the social media remnants of your relationship, archiving posts and photos is sort of like the digital equivalent of shoving all the letters, mementos, and ephemera from your ex into a box and putting it in storage. Archiving posts on Instagram takes them off of your grid without altogether deleting them. You’ll still have access to them, and you can choose to unarchive them at any point (say, if you get back together). If you have the urge to hard-delete posts, maybe try archiving first and seeing how you feel after you’ve cooled down a bit. If you still want to delete, you can! Or you can leave them in the archive or unarchive them.

How Can I Hide Photos of My Ex on My Phone?

When it comes to the photos on your phone, you can add them to your hidden folder as a way of archiving. Click the three dots at the top of a photo in your library and select Hide. This puts photos into a locked album only accessible by your passcode/fingerprint/face ID. It prevents those photos from showing up in those little automated slideshows our phones LOVE to make and specifically LOVE to make about people who are no longer in our lives? Nothing an iPhone loves more than to push a slideshow of your dead pet or worst ex on you!!!!!!! Hide the photos, and they won’t pop up unannounced again. You’ll only be able to see the photos if you really want to.

If you, like me, often run into the issue of not having enough storage on your phone, it may be tempting to start hard-deleting photos of an ex as an easy way to free up some space. That’s fine to do if you really want to! But if you want an archival option that doesn’t take up space on your phone, get a hard drive and stash all the pics there or upload them to a free service, like Google Photos.

Other Options for Digital Cleanup After a Breakup

My group chat had a few different thoughts and ideas about this topic, including one friend who said she archives about half of the posts with another person after they breakup so that the relationship isn’t taking up too much real estate on her grid but hasn’t been erased altogether. The same friend said she tends to leave photos up of exes when they aren’t straight-on photos and when faces are obscured. She also leaves up carousel posts that feature the ex in swipe-throughs but not the lead image.

Another friend said she waits about a year before archiving and often does it piecemeal, starting with things like birthday posts dedicated to the ex, rather than archiving everything at once.

A lot of people expressed that it depends on whether they’re jumping right back into the dating pool or not. If not, there’s less pressure to clean up social media. But when jumping back into dating, some people prefer to remove their ex from their grid, at least when it comes to recent pictures. There’s also the option to untag photos, which will make it so potential dates can’t creep on your ex and also will take your own photos out of your ex’s tagged photos tab so no one can creep on you from their end.

All these approaches are, of course, optional! I started dating shortly after my last breakup, and I didn’t remove any photos of my ex. Even now that I’m fully married, it doesn’t take much scrolling to get to photos of my ex in my grid. I’ve only started deleting photos from my cameral roll of my main ex now, several years after our breakup, due to aforementioned storage woes. I never felt weird about dating people who could see all my photos with her, and I still don’t feel weird now even though we haven’t had any contact since 2019. The pictures that are hardest for me to see are the ones of the cat we shared, though my emotional response to those has gone way down through the years, so I’m glad I didn’t impulsively remove all of them.

But listen, if you need to figuratively burn it all down, I get it. Go for the full phone cleanse if that’s what you really need to work through your breakup!

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Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is the managing editor of Autostraddle and a lesbian writer of essays, short stories, and pop culture criticism living in Orlando. She is the assistant managing editor of TriQuarterly, and her short stories appear or are forthcoming in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Joyland, Catapult, The Offing, and more. Some of her pop culture writing can be found at The A.V. Club, Vulture, The Cut, and others. You can follow her on Twitter or Instagram and learn more about her work on her website.

Kayla has written 827 articles for us.

3 Comments

  1. This is a nice one. Really happens to me. I just smile everytime the picture comes by and delete it from the phone and cloud.

  2. This really should go without saying. Make sure you understand the blog post you’re going to comment on, All and that you fully comprehend the author’s intent. Of course, if you have questions, then those are perfectly acceptable to include in your comment on the post. They may even start a conversation with the blog author.

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