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Given
all the obstacles the L Word had to tackle on
top of the ones that every new show faces, is it any wonder
that the characters on the series were generally written
to conform to traditional norms of femininity?
In
The L Word pilot
when Tina (Laurel Holloman) and her partner Bette (Jennifer
Beals) are discussing whether to use a black donor in their
quest to get pregnant, Tina expresses concern that two lesbians
choosing to have a biracial baby is "a lot of otherness
to put on one child." While Tina's statement is debatable,
to ask The L Word to reflect the full diversity
of the lesbian community when it already has so many hurdles
to jump just to survive is too much otherness to
put on one show.
Besides
the occasional guest appearance by lesbians like
Lea DeLaria or Candace Gingrich, there have been no
real butch characters on television in the past ten years.
There have been a few lesbian characters in the past that
have embodied more masculine traits, like ER's
Sandy Lopez (Lisa Vidal) or The
Wire's Det. Greggs (Sonja Sohn), but these women
still have long hair.
Then
there are the lesbian or bisexual women with short hair,
like AMC's Lena (Olga
Sosnovoska) or Sophie on That 80's Show, but their
clothes and makeup firmly mark them as feminine.
Ellen
DeGeneres is one of the only successful actresses who
has been able to get away with having short hair while not
wearing dresses and makeup (both in real life and in her
sitcoms), but even she has feminized her image in the last
few years. As Ellen discovered when she submitted to a series
of makeovers shortly
after her new talk show launched, Americans prefer their
women--gay and straight--to adhere to traditional notions
of femininity.
This
preference is sexist, limiting, and a denial of reality,
of course, and it's important that television begin to diversify
how women and lesbians are portrayed; butch women and others
who don't conform to convention do not deserve to continue
to languish in television obscurity.
To
ask The L Word not only to challenge the invisibility
of lesbian and bisexual women on TV, however, but also the
way women have been represented on television for
fifty years, is asking too much if you want the series to
last longer than a few minutes.
And
although the The L Word does feature a cast of
Beautiful People, the show has pushed the envelope in other
ways--by introducing Americans to bisexuality, for example,
which has always been a major taboo on television, and by
introducing the gender-bending drag king character Ivan
(Kelly Lynch).
But
The L Word's biggest achievement
is simply in improving the visibility of lesbian
and bisexual women on television by leaps and bounds,
which will make it that much easier to
challenge traditional concepts of gender and appearance
in the future--just as early television shows with women
in non-traditional roles (like Mary Tyler Moore
and Cagney and Lacey) that were stereotypical in
many other ways have helped to pave the way for The
L Word.
A
few years from now, when The L Word has or or two
seasons under its belt and Americans have gotten more accustomed
to seeing lesbian and bisexual women on television, I fully
expect Chaiken and crew to push the envelope further and
start including more butch lesbians and transgendered characters--and
if they don't, we have every right to be disappointed and
upset.
But
to attack The L Word for not taking on butch visibility
in its first season is to ask it to run before it has learned
to crawl--and to impede our long-term progress for a quick
and temporary fix.
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