Never Forget Femmes

An archive of mixed emotions. Documents all the ways femmes are represented on television. 

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Alison appears in the fifth season of 90210, the original series. The show loved making scary dudes fall in love with Kelly so it makes sense they’d want to test the boundaries of that trope with a college lesbian. Kelly and Alison met in a scary situation. They happened to be using the basement bathroom during a house party, when the house caught on fire. Both survived. Alison had second and third degree burns all over her body, while Kelly came out with a few scars on her neck and back. Of course, surviving this traumatic incident together made Alison fall in love with Kelly, even though Alison was dating another girl at the time. The fire also caused Kelly to question her identity. As Alison recovered in the hospital, Kelly rejected her modeling career, joined a cult led by one of her professors and broke up with two boyfriends. Kelly and Alison were reunited when Alison’s ex and her new girlfriend angrily confronted Kelly, letting her know about the extent of Alison’s feelings. Yes, they were romantic feelings. Upon hearing this information, Kelly decided it would be okay to be the one to take Alison home from the hospital. When Alison leaves the hospital, all of her scars have magically healed. They go on a shopping date and Kelly cooks her dinner. Then, there was a DRAMATIC scene where Alison confesses her feelings and Kelly politely rejects her while affirming her straight identity. Kelly is very open-minded, but not gay, you see. I assume after that, Alison moves on to better things.

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This is Sharon who shares the infamous kiss with Roseanne in the episode, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Sharon is Nancy’s girlfriend and works as a dancer. From what Nancy says, Sharon is poly. Sharon thought Roseanne would be chill about the fact that they kissed, but Nancy knew better.

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Nancy is maybe the first bisexual femme to appear on network television, although she wasn’t out when first introduced. Sandra Bernhard was a 90’s queer celebrity in her own right, appearing on Letterman with Madonna in matching denim, talking about how they go to Cubby Hole all the time with Jennifer Grey. Sandra Bernhard’s character Nancy is a working class femme who is also femme for femme. The main thing to know about her character is that she is hated by all of the other characters, probably for being a queer femme. We first start to see that disdain emerge when Nancy kisses her girlfriend in the Connor’s living room and Dan gets really offended that they would do that in HIS house in front of his CHILDREN. After that, we get a lot of jokes about how self-involved and selfish Nancy is. They make fun of her clothes and her femme partners. Roseanne and Nancy co-own a diner and are theoretically friends. But when Roseanne goes with Nancy to the only lesbian bar in town, Lips, Roseanne kisses Nancy’s girlfriend and freaks out, strongly asserting how NOT GAY she is. The above scene is Nancy calling Roseanne out on trying to appropriate queer culture to feel edgy while strongly disavowing any possibility that she might be gay in any way. That was very trendy in 90s television—having straight characters briefly encounter homosexual desire only to reject it. There’s a whole book about it that largely focuses on gay men called Gay TV and Straight America by Ron Becker

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For all of The Wire’s claims of trying to closely represent the people and places of Baltimore, the show’s gay spaces often feel like pure television fantasy. In this scene, we see this “pretty lesbian” exchange a flirty glance with Kima, a foreshadowing of Kima’s infidelity later in the season. The actress Lizz Robbins brings femme-life to this generic role in what amounts to a two-second scene. We just have to ignore the general atmosphere of spaghetti straps and 100% thin bodies.

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Cheryl is the FEMME partner of Kima Greggs, a butch cop. Like many cops’ wives on The Wire, Cheryl is portrayed as underappreciated, disregarded, disciplinary, a killjoy. David Simon + Co intended to write Kima’s character off the show in the first season, in the form of an untimely death. We can assume that Cheryl’s character was conceived as a femme-afterthought, intended to help us care more about Kima, instead of being an important character in her own right. I’m relieved that we got to see several seasons of Kima and Cheryl’s relationship play out. We got to see Cheryl try to convince Kima to quit her job as a cop. We saw them have a baby, even though Kima didn’t want to be a dad. And we saw Cheryl eventually set a limit with Kima who was treating her badly, and find a femme partner who treated her with care. I only wish we could have seen more of Cheryl. She worked as a journalist. Wouldn’t it have been amazing to see her show up in season 5, the season all about the role of the press, and have her doing things that had nothing to do with Kima? Instead, like many FEMMES on tv, she fades into the background of things.

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The Ego Boost

For a show that holds a certain queer currency, Golden Girls is somewhat lacking in its portrayal of out queer femmes. When Dorothy's college friend Jean came to visit after the death of her lifelong partner Pat, Dorothy advised against telling the other girls Jean was a lesbian.

Jean and Rose became fast friends under the assumption Jean was straight, which she was not. They bonded over both growing up on a dairy farm. They saw Love Story and Terms of Endearment together, the "Cry Me a River" double feature at the local cinema. Jean liked Rose for being good and decent. She confessed to Dorothy her feelings for Rose were more than friendship.

Sophia and Blanche found out before Rose did. Sophia claimed she always had known. Blanche was disappointed that Jean didn't have a crush on her. That night, Rose and Jean stayed up late talking. Rose invited Jean to stay with her in her bedroom. Jean didn't say she was a lesbian but she did tell Rose she really liked her, and Rose eventually got the point. Rose pretended to be asleep.

The next morning, Jean asked to speak to Rose alone. She wasn't surprised that Rose didn't reciprocate her feelings. Rose said she might feel flattered and proud about Jean's attraction, if she could understand it. Sophia walked back into the room knowing the conversation was over. She had been listening at the door. Dorothy and Blanche had been listening at the window; they poked their heads up.

Jean wasn't surprised when Rose rejected her. Jean had her bags packed and was ready to flee the scene.

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Visible and Invisible

Rickie Vasquez’s eyeliner was enough to make him an object of suspicion in the Chase household. In the first episode of My So-Called Life, Angela Chase described him as bisexual. “How can he be bi-anything?” Angela’s mom asked. “He’s a child. He’s obviously very confused.” In the last episode, Rickie said “I’m gay,” and that made it a fact. He was the first openly gay character in a teen television drama.

Rickie was accused of a lot of things. Accused of being confused. Accused of bringing a gun to school. From the beginning of the show, Rickie hung out in the girls’ bathroom to help Rayanne and Angela with their problems. When he came to school with bruises, people were afraid to ask why. He lived with his Uncle who one day left without telling Rickie where he went. The gay English teacher who was in the closet called him “Enrique” despite being corrected many times.

He took care of Rayanne when she drank too much. Memorized Jordan Catalano’s class schedule, when Jordan never noticed him. Ran interference between Angela and Jordan, Rayanne and Angela, Angela and Brian. When he stayed with Angela’s family, he cleaned up after everyone.

When he danced with Delia in the school gym, everyone cleared the floor. He wore earrings and beautiful patterned shirts.

In the last episode of My So Called Life, before Rickie came out to her, Delia asked Sharon in the girls’ bathroom: “How much do you, like, know about him?” Sharon responded, “Rickie Vasquez? Nothing.”

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The Bisexual Snob

The funny thing about Susan was that everybody hated her. Even George hated her, but was dating her for some reason. That was the joke.

Bad things kept happening to Susan. She was fired from her job at NBC. Kramer vomited on her. Then he burned her father’s ancestral cabin to the ground.

George admired Susan from afar. “No one’s better than her,“ he told Jerry, as he lay on the couch in Jerry’s apartment.

George was impressed by Susan’s "lesbianism.” How sophisticated, how beautiful, how hip. There’s no one more perfect than Susan. George only wanted Susan when she found him disgusting. “Do you think I could have driven her to it?” George asked Jerry.

Kramer slept with Susan’s girlfriend.

After years of separation, George impulsively proposed to Susan. Their engagement went on for most of Seinfeld’s seventh season.

George insisted on buying the cheapest wedding invitations. Susan was left alone to complete the task of writing every invitation and licking every envelope. If George had helped her lick even a few he’d probably be dead too. Instead, the invitations Susan didn’t want ended up poisoning her.

Susan’s death– by toxic envelope glue– was the final sick joke. George would have inherited millions and a Manhattan townhouse had he married Susan before her death. Instead, he got the cheap invitations.

In 2015, Jason Alexander reflected on Susan: “We could do the most horrible things to her, and the audience was still on my side.”

Susan Ross was an NBC executive, an heiress who often wore blazers, vests and other subtle menswear pieces, and she was bisexual. She was an adult with a doll collection. She was rich and cold and mean.

Why did Susan, who despised George and his idiot friends, stay with him and even agree to marry him?

*Illustration Notes: Quotation from Seinfeld, “The Smelly Car,” episode 20, season 4. Aired on April, 15th, 1993.

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COMING SOON: I’m starting an illustration project called Never Forget Femmes! I will be drawing portraits and writing about a different TV femme character each week.

This is the gravestone of Susan Ross, a bisexual character on Seinfeld. Her funeral was shot in Mountain View Cemetary, which is only a short drive from my apartment. You can find her gravestone in the episode, “The Foundation,” episode 1, season 8.

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This is the logo for Never Forget Femmes. A rose inside a television screen.