32-year-old Leisha Hailey is one of the more intriguing
actors on Showtime’s new drama The
L Word, both because Hailey is the only openly gay member
of the cast, and because the character she plays, Alice Pieszecki,
is explicitly bisexual.
Born
in small-town Bellevue, Nebraska, Hailey came out in her teens and
moved to New York to attend the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
She and classmate Heather Grody then formed the pop-punk duo The
Murmurs (now known as Gush), which released two albums and toured
with the Lilith Fair.
Hailey
went on to play lesbian punk rocker grrrl Lucy in the teen movie
All Over Me (1997),
and dated kd lang for several years in the late 1990s. (Which just
goes to show that the lesbian dating pool really is as
interconnected as it's portrayed in The L Word: Leisha
Hailey dated kd lang, who had an affair with Julie Cypher, who was
in a long-term relationship with Melissa Etheridge, who is now married
to Tammy Lynn Michaels, who will also be appearing on The L
Word this season. I’m sure Guinevere
Turner fits in there somehow too.)
When
Hailey heard about The L Word from a friend, she actively
pursued a role on the show. “I wanted to do something important,
and I feel like being on the first lesbian series on TV is big,”
Hailey told PlanetOut.com earlier this month. “I would have
been kicking myself if I wasn't a part of it.”
Hailey
also understands the significance of playing a bisexual
woman. “I actually had to get used to doing it [on the show]
with boys, which is interesting for me,” she told PlanetOut.
“I've learned a lot about [being bisexual]. It's not something
that happens to you on the way from being straight to gay, or anything
you dabble in. There are very real bisexuals in the world, and that's
fun to explore and portray. I hope I'm doing it correctly.”
Alice
is not only the only explicitly bisexual character on the show,
she's the only explicitly bisexual character on primetime television,
period (not counting bisexual straight
women like Karen on Will and Grace). There have been
a few explicitly bisexual characters on primetime TV in the past
(like Sophie on That 80's Show, or Jane on Coupling)
but they have tended to be short-lived characters, and their bisexuality
has primarily been used as a tool for attracting men.
Alice
is groundbreaking simply because she embraces the “B”
word with integrity and doesn't play it for laughs.
Early
episodes of The L Word portray her as primarily
dating women, and it will be interesting to see how the show’s
writers work in a few good men for her as well--because being bisexual
doesn’t necessarily mean switching sides at random, depending
on who is the hottest person in the room. Being bisexual can also
mean identifying primarily as gay for long periods of time, or identifying
primarily as straight for long periods of time.
Being
bisexual also does not mean that you can’t make up your mind
about what you want, which is why I am a bit concerned about how
Hailey’s character Alice is being perceived. In their recent
reviews of The L Word, The Village Voice described Alice
as the "flaky bisexual friend who can't keep it together with
anyone of either sex,” and New York Magazine described her
as “a flaky bisexual journalist as eager to make herself known
as an equal-opportunity lover as she is to brainstorm ten-best lists
for Los Angeles magazine.”
Those
two quotes neatly sum up two of the most damaging stereotypes long
associated with bisexuals: that they’re sex-crazed and indecisive
(i.e. not to be trusted). Although many lesbians have had fulfilling
relationships with men at some point in their lives, identifying
as bisexual carries a particular stigma among lesbians: the fear
that you could “switch sides” at any point, thus abandoning
your lesbian lover for The Man. Consequently, bisexual women often
feel unwelcome in both heterosexual and lesbian communities.
As
a lesbian, Leisha Hailey understands the fear of being
misrepresented in popular culture. “My fear--and what I've
read and heard--is that lesbians feel like [The L Word
cast] all have long hair and everyone is too pretty,” Hailey
told PlanetOut. “There's so much pressure on this one show,
the first of its kind, to represent every dyke or lesbian in the
world. But [lesbian viewers] are not going to be disappointed, because
by the end of the first season [there are] a lot of diverse characters.”
Let’s
hope that bisexual viewers won’t be disappointed, either.
While it seems unlikely that the character of Alice will become
a psycho killer in the grand tradition of evil bisexual women on
film, hopefully as the series develops, Alice will develop, too,
and move quickly beyond the “flaky bisexual” stereotype.
Alice cannot do the work of representing all bisexual women in the
world, but she can be one bisexual character who challenges stereotypes
instead of reinforcing them. |
