TV

2005 Year in Review: Lesbian and Bisexual Women on TV

On a January 2005 episode of the hit crime drama Law & Order, Assistant District Attorney Serena Southerlyn (Elizabeth Rohm) was unexpectedly fired. Even more unexpected was what she asked her boss immediately after receiving her dismissal: “Is it because I’m a lesbian?”

Those words were a telling marker of the status of lesbians on television over the past year. They implied that being a lesbian has become something less shocking than normal-so normal, in fact, that sometimes it’s not even worth mentioning.

The growing normalcy of homosexuality has been marked on television in 2005 by increasing numbers of lesbian and bisexual characters on reality television, from Kim Stolz of America’s Next Top Model 5 to Ivette Corredero on Big Brother 6.

That throwaway comment also implies that coming-out is no longer as big of a deal as it was when Ellen DeGeneres uttered the famous words “I’m gay” on her television sitcom in 1997. And because coming-out is no longer the huge issue it once was, it is now possible for teen characters to come out without much homophobic backlash.

In 2005, three television programs introduced coming-out storylines for their teen characters, including The O.C., One Tree Hill, and more recently, South of Nowhere.

Finally, the fact that Elizabeth Rohm’s character did not come out until the very last moment she appeared on Law & Order indicates something that has not changed much over the years: even when characters are out lesbians on network or cable television, they rarely get to have a social life that includes their sexual identity. They can work as hard as their straight counterparts, but they don’t get to go out on dates, as we can currently see on shows like ER, Nip/Tuck, and Out of Practice.

For well-rounded lesbian characters with both careers and personal lives, you have to turn to cable television, which has continued to push the envelope this year on programs ranging from The L Word to Lackawanna Blues (HBO), in addition to the fledgling gay cable channels Logo, here! and Q Television. By the Numbers

Scripted television in 2005 featured 13 lesbian characters and nine bisexual characters. This is a marked increase in the number of bisexual characters on television in previous years, but this increase is also due to the fact that many of the female characters on television who had same-sex relationships in 2005 either went back to dating men after their same-sex relationship, or previously had dated men. There are still relatively few characters on television who openly identify as bisexual.

Once unscripted television is added into the equation, the total number of lesbians rises to 17, and the total number of bisexuals rises to 10. Though this may seem like a large number and in fact has risen from previous years, lesbians and bisexual women make up a minority of LGBT characters on television. According to GLAAD, lesbians and bisexual women comprise only 22 percent of the LGBT characters on broadcast TV, with gay/bisexual men comprising 78 percent.

The proportion is much more balanced on cable television, where The L Word helps lesbians push ahead.

When considering the race and ethnicity of these 27 lesbians and bisexual women on television, trends emerge which are both positive and disturbing: 20 were white, four were multiracial (Bette on The L Word, Lynn on Girlfriends, Shakima Greggs on The Wire, Honey Labrador on Queer Eye for the Straight Girl), and three were Latina (Carmen on The L Word, Anna on One Tree Hill, Ivette on Big Brother). This indicates that 35 percent of regular or recurring lesbians and bisexual women on television in 2005 were women of color, a very positive figure.

Indeed, the fact that three women were Latina marks something of an explosion in visibility for Latina lesbians, who were previously only represented by Iyari Limon in the role of Kennedy on Buffy: The Vampire Slayer.

But Asian-American lesbians continue to be nearly invisible on television, which is particularly disappointing but not unexpected given the general dearth of Asian Americans on television in general.

In addition, diversity in gender expression is almost nonexistent, though significant strides have been made over the past year in representing women who are not traditionally feminine in appearance. Among regular or recurring characters on television, only Shane (The L Word), Kim Stolz (America’s Next Top Model), and Jessica Cabo (Hell’s Kitchen) stretch the boundaries of what is feminine in gender expression, and Cabo had little opportunity to do so since she was typically wearing a chef’s uniform. (Though The L Word did push gender boundaries with the character of Ivan in Season 2, Ivan never clearly identified as either a lesbian or a transgender person, and thus has not been included in these statistics.)

Three additional programs included one-time lesbian characters who were not traditionally feminine in 2005: Pam on a January 2005 episode of Las Vegas, Ricky on HBO’s Lackawanna Blues, and a butch murder victim on a May 2005 episode of Cold Case. The fact that all three characters were African American as well as butch in appearance indicates a longstanding interrelation between race, non-normative sexuality, and class. This is a problematic relationship that reveals longstanding stereotypes about African-American hypersexuality and masculinity, as well as stereotypes about butches and the working class.

More simplistically, it would be nice if the politically charged triad of butch, African American, and working-class could be separated on television in the future. Queer Teens on TV

One of the most significant developments in 2005 was the growth in representation of teen lesbians and bisexual girls on television. In early 2005, both The O.C. (Fox) and One Tree Hill (UPN) featured storylines in which teen characters explored their sexuality. On The O.C., Marissa (Mischa Barton) fell for bisexual bad girl Alex (Olivia Wilde) in storyline that began well?garnering praise as one of the best lesbian storylines on TV since Buffy?but ended badly, when Marissa went back to dating boys without much explanation.

On One Tree Hill, Anna (Daniella Alonso) came out as bisexual, making her the first openly bisexual Latina character on television, but she also disappeared quietly into the night at the end of the season.

And in November, cable channel The N introduced a lesbian storyline on its new program South of Nowhere, a show geared toward younger teenagers. On South of Nowhere, 16-year-old Spencer Carlin (Gabrielle Christian) befriends openly queer classmate Ashley (Mandy Musgrave) soon after she moves to Los Angeles with her family. Their developing friendship and Spencer’s gradual realization that she might be gay has been the most significant teen coming-out storyline since Once and Again.

More importantly, it is the first show geared toward ‘tweens to deal frankly and acceptingly with coming-out, and hopefully represents the more open attitude that younger people have toward sexual orientation today.

Reality TV Lesbians Become More Common

After Survivor‘s Ami and Scout became the first lesbians to appear on a network reality show in 2004, lesbians and bisexual women began appearing everywhere on unscripted television in 2005, and often in leading character roles. One of the most gay-friendly unscripted shows has been America’s Next Top Model (UPN), which featured openly lesbian Ebony in its first season. In 2005 it included Michelle Deighton who came out as bisexual on the air, and openly lesbian Kim Stolz who made it to the top five.

The CBS reality show Big Brother also included an openly lesbian character this year: Ivette Corredero, who despite being one of the least popular contestants, managed to make it to second place, winning $50,000 in the process. On the Fox Apprentice-style cooking reality show Hell’s Kitchen, contestant Jessica Cabo took third place, and achieved a reality show first by kissing her girlfriend on the air.

Finally, on the short-lived Bravo spinoff Queer Eye for the Straight Girl, Honey Labrador became, arguably, the first lesbian to give style advice on television to anyone, straight or gay. Though the show was quickly canceled, it did begin the long trek toward proving that lesbians are not universally fashion-challenged.

Daytime TV Lesbians Become Less Common

In February, popular lesbian character Bianca (Eden Riegel) left ABC’s All My Children with maybe-gay best friend Maggie (Elizabeth Hendrickson) in tow, and daytime television was temporarily lesbian-less for the first time since Bianca came out in 2000.

But it didn’t stay that way for long: in August, NBC’s Passions wrote a coming-out storyline for one of its characters, Simone (Cathy Jeneen Doe), who engaged in a brief if unusually provocative affair with another woman before descending into months of bad-storyline hell that made the days of lesbian-less daytime TV almost preferable.

Cable TV Pushes Boundaries – Sometimes Badly

Though lesbians did become more numerous on broadcast television in 2005, truly groundbreaking portrayals of lesbians and bisexual women were only seen on pay cable. On Showtime, Queer as Folk ended its five-year run, marking the end of half a decade of dyke drama in the form of lesbian mommies Melanie and Lindsay. The couple never proved to be as three-dimensional as the gay men on the show and were often saddled with the stereotypical lesbian motherhood storyline, but they also were the first lesbians on television allowed to have both careers and romantic relationships.

The L Word, in its second season, also continued to push the boundaries of what has been seen on television. Though it raised viewers’ hackles by ineptly engaging with a transgender storyline, allowing a straight male character to invade Shane and Jenny’s household with video cameras, and abandoning a commitment to representing bisexual woman, overall The L Word has done more than any other television program in history to humanize lesbians and bisexual woman.

Despite its flaws, The L Word is still the only place viewers can go to see lesbians living fully three-dimensional lives, complete with the good, the bad and the ugly.

HBO has also done its share for lesbian visibility in 2005, though its results are decidedly more mixed. The movie Lackawanna Blues included one of the few African-American lesbians on television in 2005, and Rome included a problematic same-sex relationship between two women that eventually ended in incest. And although The Wire didn’t actually air in 2005 (it’s on hiatus until 2006) Sonja Sohn will be returning as openly lesbian African/Korean American cop, Detective Shakima Greggs.

On cable channel F/X, a basic cable channel that has aped its pay cable competitors by producing edgy shows like Rescue Me, lesbians and bisexual women were represented in two shows, Nip/Tuck and Starved.

On Nip/Tuck, Roma Maffia played openly lesbian Dr. Liz Cruz, though her character has not actually had a lesbian romance on the show despite numerous spoilers that pointed to that possibility during the current season.

On Starved, Laura Benanti played a bisexual anorexic singer-songwriter, a strange and potentially disturbing combination that, thankfully, was canned when the show was quickly canceled. Looking to the Future

If 2005 was any guide, 2006 should be a promising year for lesbians and bisexual women on television. The premiere of three gay-centered cable channels, Logo, here! and Q Television, indicates that this country is more open than ever before to programming that includes gay characters. Though the majority of programming on the gay cable channels is about gay men, nonetheless they do attempt to be inclusive of lesbians, and hopefully in the future the programming mix will become more balanced.

Cable television has also continued to become more gay-friendly as more foreign programs are aired in the U.S. The premiere of U.K. drama Bad Girls on BBC America, the continued showing of queer-inclusive Canadian teen show Degrassi: The Next Generation on The N, and the BBC America showing of the made-for-TV movie Fingersmith are all signs of progress.

There are not enough lesbians on scripted daytime or primetime broadcast television, however; in fact, the numbers are lower than they’ve been in years. But the fact that one of the few sitcoms to survive the fall 2005 television season is Out of Practice is a positive sign. Let’s hope that Paula Marshall’s character, lesbian ER doctor Regina, doesn’t go the way of Dr. Kerry Weaver on ER–in other words, that Regina gets to go out on some dates once in a while like her heterosexual brothers.

There were some unfortunate moments in the representation of lesbians and bisexual women on TV in 2005 — including numerous lesbian killers on network procedural crime dramas like CSI and Law and Order, the Wife Swap episode in which a conservative Christian mom accused a lesbian mom of being a sexual predator, and the WB reality show Starlet in which the contestants were forced to reenact the Fastlane hot tub scene.

But despite this and the other challenges that remain, overall, 2005 was a good year for lesbians on TV.

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