All-Girls’ Camp: Playful Exaggeration of Lesbianism in "The L Word"

The third major trope used in The L Word is the idea that lesbians are actively recruiting straight-identified women as sexual partners—in a “Connie Conspiracy,” if you will (“connie” is slang for the term cunnilingus). This is most prominent in Marina’s seduction of Jenny who, despite her engagement to Tim, is wooed by Marina and actively seeks her out for sex. They become lovers and, by the end of the first season, Jenny is equally pursuing relationships with men and women.

The Connie Conspiracy is also furthered by Tina’s coming-out story (she was dating a man until she met Bette), which she tells to Jenny during their trip to the Dinah Shore weekend. Jenny says, “Tina, I didn’t know Bette was your first girlfriend,” and Tina replies, “Yeah, first, last and forever.”

The idea of the Connie Conspiracy especially plays out in Kit’s relationship with Ivan, who courts her with dogged chivalry. Even when she flat-out rejects Ivan’s advances, Ivan keeps trying to persuade Kit:

KIT: I’m a straight woman—a two-months-from-fifty-year lifetime heterosexual woman. If you were a man, you would be the perfect man. [Ivan smiles.] And I know that there are people who could be better for you and just give you what you’re looking for.
IVAN: Do you know what you’re looking for, Kit?
KIT: No. No. Not in the big-picture sense that you mean.
IVAN: Then how do you know I can’t give it to you?

In the culmination of this tension, Ivan sits Kit down on the hood of a car and lip-synchs Leonard Cohen’s “I'm Your Man” to her. Although Ivan’s advances have not yet been fully returned by the so-far straight Kit, spoilers for the second season hint that there may be more to come of their relationship.

Camp vs. the Real World

Prior to the series’ start in early 2004, The L Word was excitedly anticipated as the first show that focused primarily on lesbians. Critics and fans likened it to Showtime’s other gay hit, Queer as Folk, which carved out television space for gay men; they hoped The L Word would do the same for lesbians. Yet since the pilot aired, a slew of reviews pointed to a common viewer complaint that these glammed-up, financially charmed, LA-types aren’t representative of lesbian culture as we know it. They’re too skinny, too cheesy, too femme. Because many lesbians don’t see themselves literally portrayed in the main characters on screen, some lesbians see the show as less valid, as a less important achievement toward lesbian visibility

These critiques, however, set up unrealistic expectations for a television program and also ignore the positive possibilities of camp and drama. For contrast, it might help to briefly compare The L Word to another lesbian program on Showtime this year, Debra A. Wilson’s Butch Mystique.

In this hour-long documentary, Wilson interviews several lesbians who self-identify as “butch” and splices these narratives together to create a broad understanding of the term and its implications. Similarly to The L Word, this documentary is being praised as ground-breaking and gives much-needed visual representation to lesbians in a semi-mainstream media outlet in a way that hasn’t been done in the past. Yet unlike The L Word, Butch Mystique presents a literal representation of a specific group of lesbians, not a fictionalized, intentionally camped-up version of their lives. Thus, in critiquing this documentary, it would be unfair to fault it for neglecting to include characters that were universally representative of lesbians; it is called Butch Mystique, after all.

But why, then, is there a different set of expectations for The L Word? Why can’t the show’s creators amplify and play with lesbian stereotypes in order to achieve universal appeal? While Butch Mystique documents the literal lives of a small group of butch lesbians living in Oakland, California, The L Word presents a much wider scope of representation. Through the highly stylized exaggeration of The L Word, viewers must recognize the show as fiction. Because of camp, they are less likely to read these characters as absolute and more likely to find something with which to identify. The campy, exaggerated nature of The L Word is precisely where the show’s strength lies.

By giving characters on the first major lesbian television series thinner waists, better jobs, and more makeup than most of the community they’re meant to represent, this queer creation is camped up and invokes a long, radical tradition of queer camp. What’s more, by poking fun at lesbian stereotypes, L Word creators play into the campy feel of the show and invite more favorable critiques of the show’s significance. By using camp to reinvestigate classic lesbian tropes, The L Word challenges these stereotypes and creates a healthy, pro-lesbian space in primetime.