Michaline Babich Gives Us Some Sugar

"In TV you're making wallpaper for people's lives, so you may as well make it as diverse as possible," said filmmaker and television producer Michaline Babich in a recent interview with AfterEllen.com, adding that she includes underrepresented communities in all of her projects.

Babich is the executive producer and director of the new reality series Gimme Sugar, currently airing on Logo, AfterEllen.com's parent company. The show follows a group of friends in their early 20s as they navigate the lesbian club scene in Los Angeles. Of the five women featured, three are Asian Americans, and at least one identifies as bisexual.

"If I have the opportunity to expand people's awareness, then to not do so would be a waste," Babich said.

Babich has won awards for her documentary and narrative short films, including The Last Days of Jonathan Perlo (a 2005 official Sundance selection) and Solace (which won the 2008 Members Choice Award for PlanetOut and Gay.com). Solace is currently airing on Logo’s The Click List: The Best in Short Film. In May, Babich was named by Power Up as one of 2008's 10 Amazing Gay Women in Showbiz, and she will be honored at their annual gala this fall.

Despite all the hype, Babich is very unassuming regarding her own work. Referring to Gimme Sugar, she said: "It's not groundbreaking in any way, but just an entertaining show about lesbians. Straight audiences and gay boys love the show, and I love that it's crossing over. People are watching it for pure entertainment, and that opens people's eyes."

The cast of Gimme Sugar

Babich grew up in a small town outside of Pittsburgh, where "being gay seemed crazy to some people." So she's happy that the show makes no issue of queer identities: "The fact that these girls are lesbians is not even dealt with on the show, but sort of moved past, so I'm proud of that."

While no one on the show takes issue with the young women being lesbians, bisexuality is another matter altogether. Self-identified bisexual cast member Alex is frequently teased about her orientation by the other four women, some of whom go as far as expressing disgust.

But is it friendly ridicule or out-and-out biphobia?

Alex from Gimme Sugar

"Girls give each other a hard time if they smoke or wear the wrong lipstick. At end of day, it has more to do with being 20 and drunk," Babich's friend and fellow filmmaker Roberta Munroe (Dani & Alice) said of the apparently biphobic behavior.

"I never felt that they were really nasty about Alex," Babich noted. "They tease Alex and think she'd be happier if she were with a girl, but they're just giving her s--- and Alex is OK with it." Babich added that Alex agreed to participate on the show because she knows bisexuals are discriminated against and she wanted to represent them well. And in order to make Alex's orientation clear and to depict her friends' attitudes about it, Babich said the producers decided to include a lot of anti-bi comments from the rest of the group on the show.