Girls Kissing On The Teevee And Other Important Stories

Hello! So many stories and so little time, let’s get started!

THE SECRET LIFE OF THE AMERICAN TEENAGER

ABC Family has officially overtaken Logo as the best place to see girls kiss other girls. This time, it’s on a show I mistakenly believed was about Bristol Palin when it premiered in 2008, The Secret Life of the American Teenager. Last week, the hour-long teen drama, which centers on young Mom Amy Juergens and her impossibly clear-skinned family and friends, aired an entire episode in which gay rumors about various characters were a running situation, and surprisingly they pulled it off with relative aplomb.

For several episodes now, various interested parties have been spreading rumors about Amy’s Mom, Anne (Molly Ringwald, who looks even hotter now than she did in the 80’s), being gay, the root of which seems to be a suggestive facial expression shot in the direction of Amy’s fiancé Ricky’s lesbian Mom, Nora, played by Anne Ramsay.

With the topic hanging heavy in the air, Amy’s friends, sexually adventurous Adrian (Francia Raisa) and Grace (Megan Park) let it slip that they’ve both thought about kissing the other, which eventually leads to this:

I’ll admit that I’d not seen one episode of this show until last week, when I managed to catch up on enough of Season Four to get a handle on where this plotline fits in. Looks like tonight’s episode will raise some interesting questions as well!


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PRETTY LITTLE LIARS

Speaking of ABC Family, AfterEllen chatted with Marlene King about what this season has in store for Emily, our lesbian lover from Pretty Little Liars.

AE: …I’ve heard some speculation that Emily might hook-up with some boys this season. I know she’s bisexual in the books. Is that the direction you’re taking her?
MK: It’s not our intention. I want to choose my words really carefully here, because Emily is going through a period of mourning and loss and confusion, and she may make a decision or two that will take her on a winding road — but she definitely quickly comes back to her understanding of her sexuality.

AE: That’s true to life. Grief can make you do all kinds of things. What can you tell me about potential love interests for Emily going forward. Are Samara and Paige still around?
MK: We haven’t seen Samara yet, but we’re only on episode nine right now. Paige is still a part of the show. She’s not around for the first five episodes, but she does come back into Emily’s life. And they sort of start off a few steps behind where they were in the finale. They’re trying to find a way to be friends.

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THE GLAAD AWARDS

The GLAAD Awards came to San Francisco this week (the New York and Los Angeles awards already happened), hosted by Dianna Agron (with help from Mario Lopez & the amazing Rita Moreno) and featuring special guests including Pretty Little Liars‘ stars Ashley Benson, Ian Harding and Shay Mitchell, lesbian comedian Fortune Feimster and trans advocate & writer Janet Mock.

Awards went to Days of Our Lives, Grey’s Anatomy‘s Shonda Rhimes, Grey’s Anatomy itself, Las Aparicio, The Huffington Post, and Facebook. Mhm. They gave Facebook an award for their role in supporting LGBT user visibility, or something. Hopefully next year they’ll reward Alexander Graham Bell for inventing the telephone, enabling LGBTs to speak to one another out loud.

Dianna Agron: “I’ve kissed girls before, it’s fun.”

At some point, a kiss with Dianna Agron was auctioned off, and many hoped the opportunity would go to a lady, perhaps one of those famed Faberry Shippers. Instead, the grand prize went to… her agent’s boyfriend?

She also had a nice time being adorable with the children of Jennifer Tyrrell:

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GIRLS

Just FYI, two straight girls made out on the HBO comedy Girls last night for a relatively long time, which was a funny surprise. Also I’m into this storyline with Hannah and her boyfriend Adam, who I hate, because it’s really accurate about that part of a relationship (or friendship, even) where you start to wonder if this person you’ve signed up for is not actually just weird or mysterious, but unstable and insane — like you just then realize how many blanks you filled in about them with your own projections/assumptions instead of actual evidence, and who knows what could happen next, or who they really are. You know what I mean?

Last week’s episode introduced a lesbian character who had a hard time opening a beer bottle with her mouth.

 

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Riese

Riese is the 43-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 3272 articles for us.

36 Comments

    • Her agent’s boyfriend? I thought that was…strange, until I found out her agent is dude. I can definitely say I’ve kissed my fair share of gay boys like that. I kind of found it endearing that she just really didn’t want to kiss a random. She’s so cute it hurts. Oh Dianna, the awful awful things I would probably do to have you walk up and kiss me that way…I stopped breathing just watching that.

      • Me too. I just have this awful crush on her. I messaged a girl on okcupid because she looked sort of like Dianna Agron. I didn’t tell that to the girl.

    • I didn’t even mean to make that a reply to another comment. good thing it was still relevant! :)

  1. So what I gather from Marlene King’s careful wording in her interview with AE is that she doesn’t want to say that Emily will be bisexual necessarily but she probably will be hooking up with a guy this season though it might not last long. Lots of fans are aleady speculating this is the case due to book Emily hooking up a guy and getting pregnant. God, I hope the TV storyline isn’t going in THAT direction.

    • That’s what I got from it too, then add Shay Mitchell’s recent interview about the show and her character. I hope it doesn’t follow the book route of Emily cause, I will have to stop watching. First they kill Maya, then if this happens on top of that……I’m done with the show.

      • The only thing I’m really excited about this season is watching Marlene King try to do damage control on Twitter and in interviews when fandom explodes over this. It’s going to be a shit-storm! I don’t know why these tv/movie people think this type of storyline is so progressive and something lesbian fans are going to eat up. It never goes over well when they do this to an established character. Look what happened with US Skins and I know Grey’s fans who are still pissed at Callie over Sofia-gate.

        • Yes, that will be exciting to watch. Watching her try to backpedal from killing Maya was interesting to watch. She still hasn’t recovered from that one. I agree it will be a shit-storm if Emily hooks up with a guy, especially if she sleeps with one. Callie sleeping with Mark didn’t bother me because she’s bisexual, but I see how it made some fans upset. If the upset fans sent her Emaya pens, I wonder what kind of pens they will send her after this season.

          • I get the same thing from the interview that you all are getting. Emily is going to end up making out with a guy and potentially having sex with him. This has Bryan Elsley written all over it. What is jawdropping is that Marlene King, a lesbian, is the one using the biggest trope out there. Of course she will state loudly for all to hear that Emily is still a lesbian character just as Elsley did. The only questions now are will Emily become pregnant and how quickly, if straight shippers turn on the pressure which they will, will Emily end up back with the boy later on.

            There are 4 lead female characters on the show. The 3 straight ones don’t enter brief romances with women and their romances are given a ton of screentime. Their boyfriends are regulars this season. Then there is the lesbian who end up fluid, possibly pregnant and whose girlfriends are rarely seen (when they aren’t killed off).

            Apparently the most important message of Pretty Little Liars is all women want a guy. Well 2nd most important since it’s most important one is there is nothing wrong with adult males having sex with 16 year old women.

          • The tumblr spoiler PLL sites are abuzz about an Emily pregnancy storyline, sadly, so it looks it’s going to happen. Boooooooo!

  2. “it’s really accurate about that part of a relationship (or friendship, even) where you start to wonder if this person you’ve signed up for is not actually just weird or mysterious, but unstable and insane — like you just then realize how many blanks you filled in about them with your own projections/assumptions instead of actual evidence”

    I’m glad you said “or friendship, even” because I totally had a friendship just like this in high school/early college – he was the “wild” and “adventurous” one in the fairly prudish group of friends I had then, and then he started to show some signs of perhaps being a little too “wild” in all the wrong ways.

    Anyway, I totally would pay for a kiss with Dianna Agron.

  3. Seriously? Diana Agron was here auctioning off a kiss? THE GAYEST CITY ON THE WEST COAST AND A GUY WON THE BID?

    I call shenanigans.

    • I kinda wonder if they don’t manipulate that a bit – like she didn’t line up the dude and front the money so she could have a bit of control. Not that I blame her for that; I’d consider that. It’s a good thing I wasn’t invited, because I probably would have considered running the bidding up at least. My wife would kill me, but…

  4. Dianna Agron: “I’ve kissed girls before, it’s fun.”

    And then paper0flowers physically exploded.

    • She is probably still recovering from those nice things Dianna said about Faberry, and I don’t blame her!

      • So I just woke up from my 3-week coma, courtesy of my future wife, Dianna.

        I just…oh god.

  5. Riese, while Marnie was quick to declare she was not gay, I would be hesitant to say both Jessa and Marnie are straight. Would not be surprised to see this handled more in depth and Dunham herself said next season has a lesbian storyline. If so I think it may surprisingly involve Marnie and not Jessa.

    • That would be really cool, actually, and would make sense. I think we’d assume Jessa is the gayer one because she’s supposed to be sexually free-wheeling or whatever, but it would be way more compelling as Marnie. I hope she goes into it too.

    • And this would make a lot of sense w/r/t Charlie. Jessa is quickly becoming my favorite character so I wouldn’t be too sad either way.

    • did she? I LOVE Girls so much in all its heterosexualness, I think it could be pretty cool if she tried a lesbian storyline

    • Yeah… Jessa seems pretty label-less to me. And Marnie is the super “socially” straight girl, who… could be easily written as an unknowing lezzy.

      Either she doesn’t know how to emotionally connect with men (crazy generalization on my part since we’re only talking one boyfriend and she did seem in to the assholenotreally artist) but connects super well with women (again generalization because so far Hannah is her only friend in the world!).

    • I thought that I caught that Marnie was quick to say “I’m not gay” and then didn’t Jessa repeat “she’s not gay”? Like, “yeah, *she’s* not gay….”

      I need to watch that part again. Clearly.

  6. I played the drama drinking game with Secret Life last week.
    Nearly died of wine because they said gay so many times.

  7. Probably the second season of Girls should involve more of them making out. I feel comfortable no longer watching Glee hoping for some sort of Brittana mouth on mouth situation because why would I do that when I can just rewatch this episode.

    • You should join movement. Millions of people have already joined this movement I mentioned in previous sentence. To join, please utilize the following hashtag, which will encourage important people to ensure that the making out business you speak of in your commenting happens every times and such: #JustFollowYourInstinctsBrooke

      Much thanking.

      • (My previous comment is dangerous disinformation, comrades. I’m currently somewhat sleep deprived, and that apparently makes me think writing like a misleading bot is a hilarious thing to do with my life. Plenty apologies.)

  8. I don’t know how relevant this is, but my friend (who is straight) was talking about pll with me when she goes, “it kind of ruins it for me that Emily’s gay.” (She doesn’t know that I am, obviously). When I oh-so-casually inquired why this was, she said, “I don’t know… It’s just the show’s called PRETTY little liars, but she’s a lesbian!” This whole thing about Emily being bisexual made me wonder how many straight viewers- the majority of which are teenage girls- felt similarly.

    • Your friend’s rationale makes no sense. She must live in a constant state of confusion.

      I’d like to think that Marlene King, who is a lesbian herself, would not compromise her integrity to pander to a bunch of ignorant homophobes by going back on Emily’s sexuality. Especially after they have spent so much time on her coming out process. It’s one of the best I have ever seen on tv and they are fucking it up by taking us all the way through a storyline where Emily comes out, becomes comfortable with being out and having girlfriends, and her mother doing a complete 180 on the subject only to turn around and have her presumably start self-destructively fucking boys because Maya died. And as others have pointed out, this never happens the other way around. If we are going to get gay Emily experimenting with boys then it’s only fair that the other 3 girls going to start fucking girls this season. Jesus, must every tv and movie lesbian have sex with guys. I’d be more forgiving if this only happened every once in a while but every damn time. Really, Papi?

      All I know is I’m going to pull up a chair and pop some popcorn once these episodes air because the fan wars over this are sure to be epic.

    • smh your friend makes me sad. especially since she will not be the only one that thinks that way. I’d say most straight teens feel the same way she does to some extent. The people on this Earth annoy me.

  9. I stopped watching Secret Life a long time ago because it got way too ridiculous, but I totally called a Grace/Adrian makeout from the beginning. I obviously need to start watching again.

  10. I think I get Adam (from Girls). I hated him for an episode. But oddly enough, he actually makes sense to me.

    • I hated him, but I actually liked him in this episode. Like he was just waiting around for Hannah to actually say what she wanted, and when she did, he was into it. He’s growing on me, but like Riese says – is he really deep, or is he unstable? I can’t tell, but now I’m intrigued.

      • And that’s saying something, because I rarely pay that much attention to boys. Even fictional ones on my teevee set. Because there are way too many girls to pay attention to instead.

  11. Is Girls something I should watch? I was visiting my sister and she said “Oh, let’s watch this show called Girls, it’s good.” In my mind, I said, “This show’s title sounds extraordinarily relevant to my interests.” And then I watched one episode, and there was no homoawesome moments, so I didn’t watch again. But yeah, worth watching?

    • it is worth watching even if there’s not homoawesome moments. It’s just a great show (in my opinion!)

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