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Perhaps nostalgia has gotten the better of me this week, but I want us to leave something to the imaginations of young viewers because, hindsight being 20/20, I'm glad I wasn't robbed of the sexual ambiguity of my favorite TV characters.
There are strong women, good role models for lesbians and future lesbians on TV now, but as Weeds' Celia Hodes made clear to her daughter, the tomboy icon of yesterday is in danger of disappearing. The lesbian icon has arrived, and she looks more like a centerfold than a centerfielder.
The smart, athletic tomboy, who used to devilishly outwit the shallow, boy-crazy, pretty girl is now a sophisticated and alluring young woman who could lead a seminar on HPV while holding an entire line of Mac cosmetics behind her back. She's just as tough and independent as the tomboy icon once was, but she's lost her boyish charm and innocence. Her knees are no longer scraped, but waxed, and her tousled hair isn't marbled by the dust of a dugout, but perfectly highlighted.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. Times change. Knowledge is always good. But magic has been replaced with data, subtlety with bluntness, and I mourn the loss.
If during the time of my sexual confusion I were asked if I would sacrifice the wonder of Wonder Woman for the graphic clarity of Shane and Carmen's relationship, I would have answered, “Yes! Yes!” at the top of my lungs. But today I'm glad I didn't have to make that choice, because yesterday's chunks of anxiety are today's morsels of innocence. And I covet them.
I'm sure the lives of many not-yet-lesbians would have changed if Buddy, on ABC's hit drama of the '70s, Family, came out in the same episode in which she discovered her teacher was a lesbian. But would that change have been for the better?
Sexual confusion is part of growing up, as is struggling to make order of that confusion while building forts and friendships. Until young people actually have sex, they look at it from the outside. Thirty-plus years ago, my friends and I looked at sex from the safe distance of magazines and dictionaries that weighed 20 pounds. Now, though, discovering sex doesn't seem as exciting and wonderful as it does pressing and stressful.
I feel sad for young lesbians who watch The Real World and Next and who now not only have performance anxiety at school and on playing fields, but also at slumber parties. I also feel sorry for their parents, who have to run interference in ways that my parents never had to.
I know that The L Word and Weeds aren't targeted at children, but don't the people who do aim programming at kids, and who are responsible for the valueless and gratuitous portrayals of straight and queer teens and pre-teens on TV, remember being a kid?
I watched Buddy and Jo because they were strong, independent and boyish, just like me, not because they were or weren't having same-sex sex. Sure, my role models gave me butterflies, and somewhere in my gut I knew what that was all about, but the feeling wasn't “sexy” — it was empowering.
As much as I admit that if my favorite characters had announced they were lesbians, they would have brought some clarity to a confusing point in my life, I think it's much more important that I knew they were spirited girls who marched to the beat of their own drummers — successfully.
I'll never know how my perception of myself and other lesbians would have changed if I were exposed to lesbian story lines and had the ability to access sexual visuals and the answers to the questions I didn't dare ask with the click of a remote or a mouse. Truth and clarity would have made some difference in how I thought of myself and how I related my feelings to friends and family, but would I be a better person today because of it? At the end of the day, isn't that the question we all ask ourselves?
We'll find out soon enough if the girls who are more clued in than I ever was will grow up to be strong, happy women with healthy attitudes toward sex and diversity. I hope they do, and I hope they're not bitter about not having a Jo or a Buddy to call their own.
Kim Ficera is the author of Sex, Lies and Stereotypes: An Unconventional Life Uncensored. Her bi-weekly column Don't Quote Me is dedicated to all the folks in and out of Hollywood who talk without thinking or who don't know when to stop talking. Email her at kim@kimficera.com.
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