there’s this trend in movies that i’ve always found really annoying, and it’s been incredibly persistent over the years. it’s when, during a movie or tv show, a young woman casually mentions that she once had a relationship/hook up with another woman, characterized by the following:
with one exception out of what i was able to come up with (bottom left), the woman is the most conventionally attractive white woman in her 20s that the writers have at their disposal
the relationship/hook up is only mentioned once, and there is only one relationship/hook up
the woman never identifies herself as anything other than straight and demonstrates no further interest in women (and often the confession is directed toward her male love interest)
the mention is played for shock value, humor, and/or sex appeal.
obviously, there are a lot of straight women who have experimented with other women and ultimately decided that they are only interested in men. there are also bisexual/pansexual women who have dated and slept with more men than women. both the former and the latter should be shown in tv & film! however, this trope of the hot female lead briefly alluding to a one-time fling with a woman is never included to show the complexity and diversity of sexuality. instead, it’s done to draw gasps, laughs, and arousal from the audience as well as other characters. sadly, besides male gaze-y hypersexualized lesbian scenes, this is the only representation of lesbian, bisexual, & pansexual women in mainstream movies. the thing is, queer women do not exist to be laughed at, cause controversy, or turn men on. in order to communicate this to people, we need less of “it was just a phase” and more of women loving other women at the forefront of the media.
my examples, pictured above:
ramona flowers in scott pilgrim vs. the world had a brief relationship with a girl that she describes as “just a phase.” her current boyfriend, scott, responds with, “you had a sexy phase?!”
chloe in don’t drust the b—— in apartment 23 says to her friend june when talking about casual sex, after seeing june’s shocked reaction to chloe mentioning girls: “hey, i’m not a fan of the lady cave either, but in a pinch…”
tiffany in silver linings playbook describes the sex she had with an older female coworker to her male love interest, who is clearly turned on and presses for details
clara oswald in doctor who mentions a crush she had a girl and then brushes it off as “just a phase”
summer in (500 days of summer) describes her past relationships to her current boyfriend tom, who is visibly surprised to learn that “charlie,” one of summer’s previous romantic interests, is a woman
amber describes her sexual past to her younger sister, mentioning when she had sex early on in college then clarified that that particular instance was with a girl before moving on
the main character’s mother in easy a informs her daughter that when she was younger she slept with a lot of people, “mostly men”
a montage of the sexual history of margot in the royal tenenbaums is shown during the film, and the audience sees that when she was 21 she slept with another woman (it’s also the only scene in the montage that contains nudity)
echo in dollhouse tells the man she loves that when she was in the dollhouse she was programmed “at least seven times gay”, something that was never shown on the show and is instead intended to humorously prove a point
related tropes: experimented in college, girl on girl is hot, but not too bi
