Yearning for Lesbian Media

Have you ever read or watched something that seemingly revolves around relationships between women, only to feel a sharp pang of alienation when a male love interest with a diminishing number of character traits materialises out of the narrative’s ass?

Really, a lot of media made for women as its target audience (but not lesbian women in particular) share this peculiarity. The perfunctory nature of the male LIs is actually indicative of that; they’re just here to be a kind of trophy, and their personality is only important insofar as they are “good men”. Unlike the MC’s previous shitty boyfriend, or just unlike shitty men in general. And they are also an eager—if not usually self-aware—reminder to any lesbian viewer of her place among women. The only one sitting quiet and alone in a cinema among a crowd of pleased viewers clapping along to the MC snatching her Mister Man.

Though this feeling is not quite exclusive to straight fiction. Venturing outside dedicated dyke niches into the wider queer ocean will abruptly remind you, nobody’s got an eye for women unless she’s standing next to a man. An announcement for a lesbian couple in the next season of Bridgerton brings out the ire of viewers that were perfectly—and self-avowedly—happy to watch Heated Rivalry. The majority of books tagged as “sapphic” feature prominent male LIs, and among those that don’t, only a fraction still feature explicitly lesbian characters. It is as if lesbian art is siloed away, rendered invisible when not directly sought after, and met with outrage when it happens upon an audience outside of the dyke bubble.

And what of the dyke bubble? Well, once you sort past a mountain of cis femme4femme romances with interchangeable covers and incredibly inoffensive leads with surprisingly tame conflicts, you’ll certainly happen upon something. But the process might leave you with a certain impression of what is palatable.

I mostly read lesbian lit of a particular selection, and I haven’t watched many films or shows in the past few years, so I’ve lost my familiarity with this particular ennui. But in the past month, two things reminded me of it: I read another Anna Dorn entry in the messy lesbian litfic genre, called Perfume & Pain, and I rewatched an early 2000s classic The Devil Wears Prada.

Perfume & Pain follows Astrid, a lesbian writer of some success—she is a bestselling author with a movie deal, and she’s cancelled on Twitter (for calling herself a “female faggot” while maintaining an ambiguous sexuality in public; not a terribly believable major cancellation cause, in my opinion, but never mind that). Over the course of the story, Astrid stumbles through romance and struggles with drugs and alcohol. Pretty standard fare for a litfic about a writer (although she does not partake in cocaine).

Of more interest to me, though, was Astrid’s relationship to lesbianism.

She’s the most insecure woman in the world to ever be proud of being a lesbian. She takes great interest in lesbian pulp—trashy lesbian romances of the Hayes code era, skating past the censors by fulfilling the requirement for a tragic ending—but she thinks dating butches is a mildewed remnant of a bygone time, and she hasn’t “seen herself” among lesbians until “actually pretty women” were shown doing it. She’s not a “dyke”. Most of her friends are gay men; all the queer women she meets, she either hates, envies, or wants to fuck. Often all of the above. She thinks she has deep observations on gender, and sometimes she does—an unavoidable consequence of living as a lesbian, but certainly nothing owing to merit or capacity for compassion. And then there’s this:

There’s a lot to unpack. But let me start by saying: this doesn’t actually go anywhere. At some point in the story, Astrid just unclenches and decides, hey, why did I care about it all this much in the first place? It’s not a big deal. Let the screenwriters do whatever they want.

It’s a subtly uncomfortable resolution. On the one hand, the narrative presents lesbianism and being non-binary as mutually exclusive things—sort of. It’s all in the mouths of the characters, none of whom are that likeable or even smart; the text itself makes no statements, it just keeps quiet. The story circles the idea of lesbian gender non-conformity as something that evokes knee-jerk discomfort in Astrid multiple times, but there’s only one butch tertiary character, and her butchness is very unimportant to anyone or anything in the narrative. There are no prominent trans and/or non-binary characters at all, let alone lesbian ones. Astrid never gets to demonstrate, really, how much of a TERF she is or isn’t. On the other hand, the people that do represent something of an opposing view to Astrid’s—as in the snippet above—obviously treat lesbianism and womanhood with an element of disgust and misogyny. A phenomenon no less real than Astrid’s latent transphobia and, yes, misogyny, with a different accent. So Astrid is technically validated in her feelings on the matter entirely; no one ever provides a third or fourth point of view. But we—and the text—know that Astrid’s conclusions are… gauche? Bad? Unseemly? Look, she’s a pathetic character. You’re not supposed to take her seriously, even though you’ve read 300 pages of her.

Astrid is not only pathetic, but also lonely. A lot of it is due to her sparkling personality, but much of it is also because of the loneliness of lesbianism, the isolation that love for women entails in a misogynistic world. It’s not very clear where one ends and the other begins. In theory exploring that boundary is an interesting space for a story. Even, how that might affect Astrid’s feelings on gender and other women. One might imagine a narrative that considers seriously whether Astrid’s clinging to being “just like the pretty girls” is perhaps a reaction to that loneliness.

But in the end, one must ask: what was the point of bringing up all that if you’re not going to do anything with it? Why dangle such a fraught and narratively fruitful tangle if you’re never going to confront its thorns?

Perfume & Pain clearly imagines itself to be salacious, daring, and sincere in that litfic-y “unafraid to look at the ugly parts“ kind of way. Just look at the cover:

And you know, sometimes it is all those things. I think I’m making it sound like I didn’t enjoy reading it, which isn’t the case. But in the end, it was published by Simon & Schuster. Sure, the cover features a bombshell reclining sensually, and the book contains lesbian sex as the general vibe implies—but it is mostly glossed over and described in passing. That’s if the character remembers it at all, on account of the drugs. Sure, the book knows the hip queer lingo and even some discourses, but much like Astrid herself, it doesn’t really understand the way it interlaces with lesbianism. It just kind of sits on the surface, recoiling at the movements beneath the water and laughing them off till the very end. Which isn’t to imply Anna Dorn shares the same flaws—I have no grounds to speculate so—or that a character like Astrid doesn’t deserve exploration. I only judge the finished product, such as it is, accepted by a Big 4 publishing house and tailored accordingly.

Maybe it is a modern lesbian pulp, in a way. Very much dyke fare, undoubtedly; we are the intended audience. Begone, saccharine romcoms with no real problems! Give me that yummy problematic woman slop. She even takes drugs! She’s just like me.

But you know. To a point.

The 2000s was a funny time. Eating disorders were a joke and the girlboss loomed large on the horizon. Of that era, The Devil Wears Prada is an iconic chick flick offering. Andy—a smart, ambitious, and supposedly frumpy young woman played by Anne Hathaway—steps into the corporate world of high fashion as second assistant to Miranda Priestly, the editor-in-chief of a prestigious magazine and a thinly veiled fictionalised version of Anna Wintour. Priestly’s name on Andy’s resume would open doors to any other publication, so despite Andy’s complete disregard for fashion, she takes on the job. Only Priestly is an incredibly demanding boss—she doesn’t understand why no one can book her a flight during a hurricane—and Andy is in competition for her favour with the other assistant, Emily.

Watching the film now is an interesting experience, with the themes a bit uneasy on the eye.

Andy looks down on the world of fashion and cares little for her own appearance. In each scene of the first third of the movie, she’s wearing about as unflattering an outfit as you can hang on Anne Hathaway. Her mediocre boyfriend encourages this and does not “want her to change,” perhaps because he believes a more dressed-up Andy would get swept up by a more successful man (and later, she is). The film makes the case that Andy embracing her femininity—by caring to look good and expensive—empowers her, gives her the confidence to succeed in her job and outcompete Emily.

And it makes Miranda Priestly like Andy better, naturally. Either because Andy is prettier to look at or because Andy can now fulfil Miranda’s bizarre demands. Or maybe both.

This is all good and well, only I’m not totally sure how caring for your appearance makes you psychologically immune to a boss who heaves impossible demands upon you and treats your work hours like a suggestion. That’s to say nothing of the fact that, well, albeit Andy can certainly use more feminine self-confidence and, I guess, awareness of the clothing and textile industries, the world of fashion really is filled with rich, out-of-touch twits. The film unintentionally underscores this dissonance by being incredibly blase about Emily starving herself for Paris Fashion Week. You’re just not meant to think about these things—and when I was watching TDWP for the first time as a teen, I didn’t, because I had a severe and perfectly normal eating disorder myself, and I didn’t have the experience to imagine what an employer shattering my personal life and free time would feel like.

In other words, The Devil Wears Prada is sort of like forcefem for cis women (but then, what chick flick isn’t?) Input: an unfulfilled woman who doesn’t know the value of her own femininity. Output: one bad bitch everybody wants. The particulars and their implications shouldn’t be thought of too deeply—they get uncomfortable.

Speaking of uncomfortable—there are, of course, the men. In TDWP, good straight men serve as rewards for succeeding in womanhood, and the lone gay guy is the fairy godmother that will upgrade your closet. The film centres the relationship between Andy and Miranda, so really, there’s no space to have the male LIs do anything other than represent Andy’s womanly journey. For me at least, that is the biggest point of alienation, even more than the cognitive dissonance the film demands. Andy’s ultimate prize for self-actualisation can only ever be a man. Even at the end, when Andy is her own woman, apart from Miranda, and taking on a new job in journalism, she simply must reunite with her now-ex—who’s upgraded himself in her absence to a “good” man. So really, Andy’s life ends more or less where it started, only “leveled up” in prestige and wardrobe.

The other thing that’s always needled me about stories like this is the underlying assumption that a woman feeling disconnected or dismissive of femininity just doesn’t know how to blossom into her full feminine self yet. Much ink and TikTok reel has been spent on decrying the woman who thinks she's not like “other girls”, but you know. Some women are lesbians, Harold. Some women are butch. Some women get funny with gender. Some girls really are not like other girls.

But none of this is new, let alone in the context of The Devil Wears Prada. Here’s what is.

Did you know that, for some reason, twenty years later, we’re getting a sequel to The Devil Wears Prada? It’s coming this May. Which is accidentally fortuitous for me, because I’m currently working on a novella greatly inspired by the film. And it will likely be finished by around the time of the sequel’s release.

I didn’t plan for this, I swear, and if I did, it would’ve been a stupid plan, given that the rest of my catalogue is speculative fiction.

Provisionally titled To Her Exacting Measures, my work-in-progress is a reimagining of TDWP’s core premise with lesbian themes and cast. Knowledge of the film is completely optional (unless you’re deeply invested in saying “I get that reference!”). The themes are, incidentally, very much “what if Perfume & Pain pissed you off a little“. Because what is required is an interest in reading about non-binary self-actualisation and two butches competing for the love of their femme boss.

I figured, if you’re going to violate basic workplace ethics, it should at least be fun and horny—and this is certainly the horniest thing I’ve ever written.

Genre-wise, this is a pretty significant deviation for me, so I anticipate some difficulty selling the idea to my existing readership. That said, if you enjoyed non-binary lesbianism and the suit montage in my debut novel Imago and the dyke dating drama in Appetite, you will probably enjoy this too.

There are two other—collaborative—projects in the works behind the scenes. One shares a lot of genre DNA with To Her Exacting Measures, and the other fits more neatly into my regular oeuvre. So if you’re interested in my contemporary fiction, you will get more, and if you’re apathetic about reading my work without all the blood or the fantasy, know that I’m not stepping away from that, either. Can’t share more details than this for now, though.

So stay tuned for previews and release date of my upcoming novella, as well as other news!