In contrast to the high number
of female same-sex encounters on the series, actual lesbian
characters (women exclusively attracted to women) only appear
twice, and both times are portrayed as not-quite-women.
The
first is Margaret Camero (Wendy Worthington), a women’s
rights advocate whom Ally's colleague Richard Fish (Greg Germann)
describes as a “man-hating, vicious lesbian” who “looks
like a man” (Season 2, Episode 19). The second is a very
feminine woman whose husband is suing for an annulment because
she did not disclose her sexual orientation before their marriage.
In
both cases, the lesbians are portrayed as refusing to adhere to
their assigned roles as women--the first because she eschews conventional
images of femininity, the second because she failed her duties
as a wife. On Ally McBeal, therefore, "real women"
are heterosexual (or heteroflexible), while lesbians are something
lesser-than.
But
the show also occasionally provides a platform for exploring a
lesbian perspective, such as when Camero tells Ally "I guess
I just reject the notion that your life is empty if you don't
have a man" (Season 2, Episode 23). It is also realistic
about the persistence of homophobia, even as it claims not to
condone it; in Episode 13 of Season 3, for example, Ally sadly
acknowledges the homophobia behind her own decision not to date
a bisexual man, but comments "sometimes prejudice wins out."
Bisexual
women do not come off looking any better
than lesbians do on the show. When Heather Locklear guest-stars
in the fifth season as a bigamist on trial for being married to
two men, the prosecution attempts to discredit Locklear's character
as "aberrant" by introducing Lara Flynn Boyle's character
as a woman with whom she formerly had a sexual relationship. Even
though both women identify as heterosexual, in the absence of
any actual bisexual characters on the show and given the persistence
of American cultural stereotypes about bisexual women as promiscuous
and confused, viewers are likely to believe these characters actually
do represent bisexual women.
In
this way, Ally McBeal’s depiction of sexual relationships
between women is simultaneously conservative and liberal, homophobic
and gay-friendly; it both reinforces cultural stereotypes of lesbian,
bisexual, and heterosexual women and subverts them.
Ally
McBeal's contradictory perspective
on this topic is representative of contemporary American culture's
conflicted attitude towards sexual relationships between women;
as Suzanna Danuta Walters writes in “All
The Rage,” “no series has so delved into the strange
heart of the heterosexual at once disgusted by and desirous of
gay sexuality as Ally Mcbeal” (p. 119).
This
contradiction is revealed through multiple statements by many
characters over the course of the show, but in particular by Ally
herself, who in the same episode, says both that enjoyed kissing
another woman, but that she's "not even ashamed to admit
that I don't want to be gay” (Season 3, Episode 2). In another
episode, she denies that she doesn’t like lesbians and states
as proof that she “wrote ABC when they canceled Ellen”
(Season 2, Episode 23), while in yet another episode admits “I’m
far more homophobic than I ever imagined” (Season 3, Episode
13).
The
way the Ally-Ling kiss was portrayed is another manifestation
of this conflict, according to Danuta Walters:
