Female Friendship – Bitch Flicks

“You Can’t Sit with Us”: Witchy Girl Gangs and Covens

Underwritten in this claim of selfhood, however, is a larger message. Each of the films and the TV series, to varying degrees, promote individuality over conformity. Eventually, each teaches viewers the importance of being true to yourself and avoiding the pitfalls of group mentality. …Each manifestation of the girl group trope proposes an affirmation of self-esteem, non-conformity, independence, and individuality.

This guest post written by Michelle Mastro appears as part of our theme week on Women in Horror.

The volume of films exploring the hazards of “girl world” is quite robust. Before the comedy Mean Girls there was cult classic Heathers, a darker satirical vision of teenage girl strife. Rounding out the cinematic landscape between these pillars of classic girl-on-girl warfare set in the average American high school are numerous other examples from Never Been Kissed to Jawbreaker. In fact, so hackneyed is the trope of female-centered cliques that if it isn’t treated as part and parcel of teen comedies as a genre, it is almost always at least a minor plot point. Yet horror films and television series grapple with themes inspired by catty drama and gossip as well, only the aesthetics are different to align better with their genre. In these iterations of the girl clique trope, girl gangs become covens, and the power of gossip is transformed into charms and incantations.

Swapping out girl gangs and cliques for covens is as easily done as replacing “witch” with that other not so nice pejorative term for women. In the TV series American Horror Story: Coven, for example, Fiona Goode (Jessica Lange) toys with both words, calling one of the school’s meaner pupils a “little witch bitch.” In that same episode, she takes the band of squabbling girls on a field trip through New Orleans, telling them all beforehand to “wear something black.” The show aired on Wednesdays, prompting fans to coin the phrase, “On Wednesdays we wear black,” another play on words, only this time in reference to Mean Girls. One of the frequently quoted lines from the film includes the “Plastics”’ rules about hump day association and uniformity: “On Wednesdays we wear pink.” The writers of AHS: Coven and fans alike got the joke: girls in groups can be mean — mean like witches.

This, of course, might seem like a sexist reading of girl friendships — and it would be even more understandable to question the show’s depiction of gender given how female sexuality is portrayed and its problematic depiction of race. Yet, given that women, historically, could only maintain their social status through heteronormative marriage — through their connections to men — it would make sense that the young women might begin to view each other as competition. In high school, who dates whom really matters, and thus the high schools of the films are more or less stuck in a time warp. Their cafeterias, the place of social gathering, are where romantic attachments are forged. The dining hall perfectly figures as a sort of Regency court of King George III, where marriages mattered to one’s social superiority. Social status dictated how close courtiers got to sit near the king. Terrifyingly, the king’s friendship could help produce advantageous marriages or dissolve them entirely. Thus, the more popular the girl in Mean Girls, the closer she resides near Regina George. She usually forbids more readily than she grants unions, however, and her despotic rule feeds much of the clique’s cattiness.

Which begs the question: why would these characters hang around each other at all? On the surface, each school clique offers a certain amount of protection. In AHS: Coven’s case, if the girls don’t band together, they will face assaults from outsiders. “If witches don’t fight, we burn,” says Fiona to the students. In Mean Girls (written by Tina Fey), the point of being in the Plastics is somewhat similar, though obviously not nearly as dire. For protagonist Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan), lunchtime at the cafeteria posed as a minefield full of aggressive cliques, and not being a member of any group at first, she found herself the butt of jokes, a social outcast forced to eat alone in a women’s bathroom stall. Better to have fun at the expense of others with the Plastics in their “Burn Book” than get burned oneself. The same conclusion is proposed near the beginning of The Craft and Heathers. Sarah (Robin Tunney) in the former joins her clique more out of necessity than anything else, whereas Veronica (Winona Ryder) in the latter participates in spiteful pranks on fellow students, even though she questions the group’s methods and is quick to claim her own name in a gaggle of Heathers, stridently affirming: “I’m a Veronica.”

In The Craft, when the girls catch a bus together, they all wear dark sun-glasses and nearly identical fashions, precursors of the pink Plastics and black-draped New Orleans witches, not to mention references to the shoulder-pad loving Heathers of the 1980s. Each group of young women has made their own clique, but within each group, conformity is essential. What’s worse, the supposed protection proffered by The Craft’s coven in the form of casting spells is as spiteful as participating in any girl gang gossip. Both hurt and have unforeseen consequences. Sarah learns to be careful about what energy she puts out. “Whatever you send out, you get back threefold,” she is counselled. She casts a spell to get back at football player Chris Hooker (Skeet Ulrich) for spreading lies that the pair had sex. After the spell, he becomes her lapdog, but his obsession quickly turns violent. Apparently, her intention behind the spell was wicked, and the results matched. Although Sarah was right to seek justice, her spell was framed in a way that could only elicit revenge, a much more volatile act that inflicts a cost on both parties, although this in no way means that she deserved nor brought on herself slut-shaming or attempted rape. In AHS: Coven, one of the girls, Madison (Emma Roberts), is gang raped. She uses her magic to kill the boys, but also murders an innocent guy in the process. Her actions will come back to haunt her, as all the witches’ poor decisions inevitably do. Madison becomes more and more heartless as the series progresses, symbolized by an actual heart condition preventing her from ever serving as the coven’s leader. “The only good or bad is in the heart of the witch,” Lirio (Assumpta Serna) tells the girls in The Craft. Cady in Mean Girls arrives at a similar realization. The Burn Book of the Plastics is photocopied and dispersed among the students, and Cady will have to find a way to take back her words. It is too late, of course, just like in Sarah’s case. In The Craft, Lyrio tells her: “When you open a flood gate, how can you undo it? You unleash something with a spell. There is no undoing; it must run its course.” The mistake each of the girls all made was attempting a kind of vigilante justice — really a type of revenge.

The Craft is a cult classic that impacted many women due to its representation and messages of empowerment and “taking back the threat of female power.” In the oral history of The Craft at Entertainment Weekly, producer Douglas Wick said he “was curious about the phenomenon of girls marginalized in a man’s world who suddenly come into their sexuality and have this enormous power.” Actress Robin Tunney said, “Somehow it still speaks to everybody’s inner teenage girl.” In her Vulture article on The Craft‘s legacy, Angelica Jade Bastien writes:

“Witchcraft is more than mere teenage rebellion for these young girls. It’s a means to attain what at first glance appears unattainable: power, control, autonomy, the ability to live beyond the various oppressive forces that govern their lives. […] These girls, each in their own way, is calling out for something women learn early and often is hard to attain: the power to control your own life.”

Yet the girls’ friendship ultimately turns toxic and destructive, demanding conformity over individuality.

Sarah, Veronica, Cady, and the girls from AHS: Coven learn painful lessons. Words and spells cannot be taken back and cannot be undone, and the girls prove more powerful in their individuality. In The Craft, Sarah realizes her friends’ coven is organized more like a petty club and her fellow witches are just as spiteful as the young women and men they sought vengeance against. Veronica realizes she cannot undue the harm she has caused; she cannot bring back the kids she helped to murder. And Cady learns that being “personally victimized by Regina George” does not give her license to become another queen bee. Each of the protagonists find strength in themselves. Sarah is called a natural witch, for unlike the other girls, her “power comes from within.” After Sarah’s coven disperses, all the girls lose their magical powers except Sarah. Veronica and Cady, meanwhile, end their films with the promise of never allowing any future cliques to form in their respective high schools ever again. Or at the very least, they won’t conform to what others say; they will listen to their own moral compass. In AHS: Coven, the ruling mean girls Madison and Fiona have been ousted as well. And the rise of a new headmistress, Cordelia (Sarah Paulson) brings with her the promise of beginning the school afresh. Past mistakes will not be repeated, she informs the press, revealing the school to the world.

In this way, each manifestation of the girl group trope proposes an affirmation of self-esteem, non-conformity, independence, and individuality. The chilling and ominous tales about teenage witches invoke and summon the moral of their comedic cousins, warning female viewers against resentment and revenge, while encouraging them to always “do unto others as they would have done unto them.” What might seem like an allusion to Christian doctrine is, in fact, the basis of many beliefs, even Wiccan practices. “[I]t’s part of a basic spiritual truth. Said in many ways in many faiths,” Lirio says matter-of-factly. Spells, like gossip, will come back “threefold.”

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Girl Gangs Are Mean: Teenage Girl Gang Movies Through the Years

20 Years of The Craft: Why We Needed More of Rochelle

American Horror Story: Coven: Gabourey Sidibe’s Queenie as an Embodiment of the “Strong Black Woman” Stereotype

Exploring Bodily Autonomy on American Horror Story: Coven

I’m a Veronica: Power and Transformation Through Female Friendships in Heathers

Veronica Decides Not to Die — Heathers: The Proto-Mean Girls

How Should a Show about Witches Be?

Michelle Mastro is a graduate student at Indiana University, Bloomington’s English PhD program. She loves all things horror, and to her, autumn is the greatest season not just for Starbucks pumpkin spice but for the availability of horror film marathons on TV — of which she watches plenty.

We Need To Talk About ‘Claws’: The TV Series We Need and Deserve

This powerhouse series is led by Niecy Nash, who has finally been given the leading lady role she deserves. … The friendship and loyalty between these five women places this show in a long legacy of TV shows about female friendship, from ‘Sex and the City’ to ‘The Bold Type,’ but it handles itself in a much more realistic manner — it isn’t afraid to call out their flaws just as it highlights their strengths.

This guest post by Odalis Garcia is an edited version of an article that originally appeared at Enjoy the Marina. It is cross-posted with permission.

With the summer now over, I have to say that the best “summer show” premiered this year. Yes, of course we have all been preoccupied with the twists, turns, incestuous deeds, and dragons of Game of Thrones and yes, The Handmaid’s Tale won numerous Emmys, but I’m talking about Claws.

This powerhouse series is led by Niecy Nash, who has finally been given the leading lady role she deserves. She is introduced as Desna, a nail technician from Palmetto, Florida trying to get out from under the hold of the Dixie Mafia, an organized crime syndicate, and open a new nail salon in the wealthier part of town. However, the unplanned murder of her flame (Jack Kesy), the Dixie Mafia’s golden boy, sets her back a couple of steps.

The main story focuses on Desna wanting to give herself and her brother (Harold Perrineau), who’s on the autism spectrum, a better life. Yet in the span of 10 episodes, you start to care deeply for the other members of Desna’s crew and see that they are unique and complex characters. The crew comprises Quiet Ann (Judy Reyes), Polly (Carrie Preston), Jennifer (Jenn Lyon), and Virginia Loc (Karrueche Tran). The friendship and loyalty between these five women places this show in a long legacy of TV shows about female friendship, from Sex and the City to The Bold Type, but it handles itself in a much more realistic manner — it isn’t afraid to call out their flaws just as it highlights their strengths. These women are mothers, caretakers, sisters, nail techs, and lovers; they are absolutely badass and unafraid to ruin anyone who gets in their way.

Quiet Ann, is a lesbian character who’s not a punchline or a trope. She’s a pivotal, if not the most important, member of the crew. She protects the team and keeps them grounded. Plus, she gives great pedicures. She rarely ever speaks but when she does, her words are insightful and always taken as sage advice. Quiet Ann is their protector at all times, but we see her go through a journey of love and inevitably, she must decide to whom she is most loyal.

Polly is a force to be reckoned with. We catch up with her as she is just released from prison after conning older people in a retiree community out of their money. Even though she lied her way through life, she always stays true to Desna and the crew, even if that means she reverts to the criminal habits that landed her in jail in the first place. Preston has been in the game acting for a long time, from True Blood to The Good Wife, (as have Niecy Nash on Reno 911!, Getting On, and Scream Queens, and Judy Reyes on Scrubs and Jane the Virgin), and this is yet another iconic role, a testament to her talent.

Jennifer Husser, is Desna’s best friend but there is more to her than just the constant companion. She’s a mother and recovering from alcoholism, who has already been hurt by the mob’s influence in her life, though she technically married into it. She will ferociously defend her daughters and family even if at times it conflicts with the interests of her best friend.

And last but not least is Virginia, who at first seems to be Desna’s foil. But as the series progresses, we see her evolve from petty and competitive to realizing that she seeks acceptance, a way to get out of the stripping business, and a desire to have a “found family” who will support her and have her back.

Devoted to each other, these women are as intense in their loyalty to one another as they are in their manicure game. They will just as easily create art while simultaneously framing some evil, rich, white people for murder. It’s not to say that there aren’t divisions in the friendships at times and that trust doesn’t falter every now and then, but that’s just life. Friendships will chip but the beauty of women, which Claws illustrates, is that even when we’re not on great speaking terms, we will root for each other.

Of course it makes sense that the female characters are so complex and intriguing since the creative team is composed mainly of women, including showrunner, executive producer, and writer Janine Sherman Barrois (The Jamie Foxx Show, Criminal Minds, ER) — one of the few Black women showrunners — as well as directors Victoria Mahoney (Yelling to the Sky, Queen Sugar, Power) and Nicole Kassell (The Killing, The Closer, The Americans), and executive producer Rashida Jones.

This show is the perfect example for what happens when diversity isn’t just written into the script but is also practiced behind the camera; because of this the women of color in the show are written with the nuance and care that any other character (read: usually white characters) gets.

It could be because of this same reason that its characters are so intriguing. It goes beyond women understanding the way female friendships work, but also knowing that one woman doesn’t have to be a paragon of strength for all women. Women also fail, are complicated, and will get angry. Women are saintly but also manipulative. Women are people too. The creators of this show demonstrate that through the way they’ve written the characters.

Claws also deconstructs gender roles and toxic masculinity. The three main male Hussers of the Dixie Mafia are not afraid to express their emotions and cry. When (SPOILER ALERT) Roller is believed to be dead, the Husser men cry openly and in front of everybody, unafraid to show how they feel. Bryce Husser (Kevin Rankin), Jennifer’s husband, is very vulnerable and honest with his wife about their marriage and is willing to talk about how to make it better — instead of just closing off.

Mob boss, Clay Husser (Dean Norris), who goes by the nickname “Uncle Daddy,” has his own side boy toy who’s treated as part of the family. He’s also devoted to his wife (Dale Dickey), treating her with the reverence due a warrior empress. Uncle Daddy’s masculinity and bisexuality are never questioned.

The show addressed Roller’s (Kesy) trauma after being a victim of kidnap and sexual assault; a narrative that’s not usually given to male characters. It’s a sad reality that men are less likely to report when they have been abused for fear of not being understood or supported. However, about 14% of survivors who report rape are male.

When it comes to the women and gender roles, Desna, and the rest of the women for that matter, are not judged for their sexual desires and casually talk about sex in the nail salon — really the best place for that kind of gossip. Quiet Ann is probably the most physically strong but there is a tenderness to her when it comes to falling in love. And it’s admirable that her queerness is a simple fact, giving her a love interest without anyone batting an eyelash. The only issue with the woman she falls for is that she’s a detective looking into the Dixie Mafia and Desna by default.

Claws is the show that you can’t miss. Now that it has been renewed for a second season, I can’t wait to see how the series will further develop. And I will repeat: it is SO GOOD to finally see Niecy Nash in the spotlight she deserves.

Through Nash’s Desna, we see a character that is not often explored in the world of television. She’s unapologetic, driven, and totally badass — characteristics not usually attributed to actresses in their late 40s, and especially not to women of color. We, as the audience, want to see her achieve her goals of opening the new salon, of finally getting out from under mob rule, of her getting that big house her brother always dreamed of, of finally leaving abusive people behind. Women need to see that happen, no matter how dramatic it may be; it’s a message they can relate to.

Here’s hoping that next summer won’t just be about the arrival of winter or whatever else, but about the heat and vibrancy of the sunshine state and the five women who stick together through thick and thin and all that humidity.

Odalis Garcia is currently trying to figure life out, in the meantime, she watches all of the TV shows and likes to yell about them to her friends, occasionally writing about those feelings. She is originally from Puerto Rico but calls Miami home (#Miss305) and is very passionate about Cuban food, empanadas, and the salsa dancing emoji. You can read more of her work at her website and you can follow her on Twitter @odcgg and Instagram at odalis.gg.

Why ‘The Bold Type’ Is Exactly the Feminist TV Show We Need Right Now

The magic that has propelled ‘The Bold Type’ to the forefront of the TV summer landscape is, without a doubt, the depth and strength of the bond between the trio. … I just can’t overstate how lovely it is to see young women caring about each other unconditionally, through thick and thin. Strong friendships and more importantly strong writing, especially for female characters, doesn’t always have to rely on drama and conflict and rivalry. Sometimes all we want to see is women giving their friends a shoulder to lean on.

Written by Erin Tatum.

At a time when it feels like an alarming number of people would happily turn back the social clock 50 years (or 200), it’s nice to have a lighthearted beacon of hope in our perpetually apocalyptic media shitstorm. The Bold Type has emerged as an unexpectedly poignant tonic to… well, almost everything else that’s made headlines this summer.

With my 26th birthday around the corner, I admittedly felt I was getting a little long in the teeth for Freeform (formerly ABC Family). I can no longer watch frothy high school soaps without feeling like a disapproving PTA mom, even if the vast majority of the characters are played by actors over 21. I’ve resisted adulthood as much as anyone, but for obvious reasons, I just can’t relate to teenage issues anymore. I could care less about Jimmy trying pot or Amy running for student council — although Manny wearing a thong to school was one of the most scandalously memorable TV moments for an aughts teen. Feels quaint in an era saturated with Snapchat nudes, doesn’t it?

It’s been frustrating to see actors in their 20s repeatedly siphoned away to play eternal 17-year-olds (no, really) instead of being allowed to explore characters who are also navigating early adulthood. Cue The Bold Type.

The TV series, created by showrunner Sarah Watson, follows the adventures of BFFs Jane, Kat, and Sutton (Katie Stevens, Aisha Dee, and Meghann Fahy) and their work at Scarlet, a women’s magazine based on Cosmopolitan as the show is “inspired by the life” of former editor-in-chief Joanna Coles. The first revelation? We get to see actresses in their 20s playing characters the same age instead of passing themselves off as high school sophomores! Praise Anna Wintour! I’m thoroughly enjoying watching my demographic actually being our demographic. It alleviates the weird peer/parent viewing experience and validates your more recent missteps rather than make you cringe at your old ones. In particular, the social issues that felt earth-shattering as a teen pale in comparison to the potential consequences of a professional pratfall. The show thus acquires a mature and reflective tone alongside sillier beats like fishing a yoni egg out of your friend’s vagina and pouring a bucket of cold water on the myth that shower sex is fantastic.

Special mention also goes to the girls’ boss Jacqueline (Melora Hardin) for being the most delightful subversion of every fashion alpha stereotype ever. I fully expected her to be a scathing Devil Wears Prada redux, but she’s most notable for what she isn’t — namely, a bitch. Female bosses both on TV and in real life are not only assumed but expected to treat their female subordinates with contempt and derision, to the point where getting your spirit broken by a “bitch boss” is perceived as a rite of passage for any young woman looking to make it in the corporate world. Jacqueline turns this trope on its head, gamely taking the trio under her wing as a no-nonsense mentor, her capacity for understanding and kindness as high as her intolerance for bullshit. Plus, she gives actual sound career advice without exploiting the girls or crushing their self-esteem! The bar may be low, but the results are heartwarming to watch. Hardin plays “ambiguously maternal authority figure who would still totally kick your ass” really well.

Gif credit: Kadena Daily

Another surprise crowning jewel of the show has been the relationship between Kat and Adena (Nikohl Boosheri), one of the first portrayals of an out Muslim lesbian on mainstream television, generating both praise and controversy. Kat initially tells a curious Adena that she’s straight and I was already bracing myself for a season of gay panic à la Skins‘ Naomi and Emily. In a hilarious about-face for the plot and the character, Kat decides she’s into women and cheerfully announces she wants to bang Adena like 12 hours after the orientation conversation. Super hetero there, Kat. Rather than squandering the emotional momentum of their relationship on the usual label dance, the couple faces much more pressing obstacles like immigration law and Islamophobia. The main romance on the show is between two sapphic women of color and I am HERE for it! And not just because of my massive crush on both Aisha and Nicole.

That’s not to say Jane and Sutton don’t deserve shoutouts, too. Jane is a newly promoted writer navigating the responsibilities of her new position and what it means to date as a Millennial woman. Katie Stevens has thrown herself at the zanier moments of the show with gusto and her apparent embrace of cringe comedy (she is the subject of both the yoni egg scene AND the awkward shower sex) has paid off well in terms of making the character more nuanced, in addition to the narrative tone overall. Stevens can also carry more emotionally hefty storylines, like Jane grappling with the decision to be tested for the BRCA gene after it is revealed that her mother died at a young age from breast cancer.

Assistant Sutton struggles with the potential professional ramifications of secretly dating hunky board member Richard (Sam Page) and plucking up the courage to pursue her ultimate dream of working in the fashion department. While I sadly can’t relate to having a sexy covert affair with a superior, her discussion with Richard about feeling pressure to achieve her goals ASAP because she’s turning 26 this year and she fears complacency REALLY hits close to home right now. Bonus points for the fact that neither of them bat an eye at Kat’s overnight sexuality revelation and are immediately as invested in her relationship with Adena as they are in their own love lives.

Above all, it’s refreshing to watch young women support each other and face challenges while still being realistically flawed in ways that aren’t always redeemable. Jane publicly snaps at Jacqueline when an assignment unearths painful memories of her mother’s illness. Sutton inadvertently threatens Richard’s career when Kat angrily barges into his office to confront him about sharing their private conversation with a fellow board member. Kat coddles an incompetent intern and creates a PR nightmare for the magazine. Frankly, she doesn’t seem that great at her job at times. For a supposedly seasoned social media manager, she frantically deletes quite a few tweets, although I’m willing to hand wave that for the laugh I got out of her accidentally tweeting, “This lesbian shit is intense!” from the corporate account. In the end, however, they all acknowledge their mistakes and use the consequences as an opportunity for growth. Jane apologizes to Jacqueline and realizes she has to face her fear, Sutton breaks up with Richard to protect their respective jobs, and Kat must fire her intern. Ultimately, none of these mistakes are really meant to morally categorize or negatively impact our perception of any of the trio, a welcome departure from the broad brush strokes that usually plague the characterization of women on television.

The magic that has propelled The Bold Type to the forefront of the TV summer landscape is, without a doubt, the depth and strength of the bond between the trio. Sure, they get pissed off with each other – what best friends don’t on occasion? – but it’s mercifully never left to fester as a long term conflict. They fuck up, they recognize it right away, they apologize, they move on. Their connection easily transcends the personal drama of the week. Although I’m well aware that the writers will probably break them up temporarily at some point, I have complete confidence that nothing can keep them apart for long. I just can’t overstate how lovely it is to see young women caring about each other unconditionally, through thick and thin. Strong friendships and more importantly strong writing, especially for female characters, doesn’t always have to rely on drama and conflict and rivalry. Sometimes all we want to see is women giving their friends a shoulder to lean on. Or more accurately, having those friends happily climb fully clothed into a bathtub to feed you wine. I can’t think of a purer expression of friendship than that.

Erin Tatum is a social media marketer and writer. She lives in Pennsylvania with her numerous dogs and birds. Her passions include animals, intersectional feminism, and baking. She is a diehard foodie with a weakness for bad reality TV.

‘The Fits’ and the Complicated Choreography of Adolescence

Director Anna Rose Holmer… described her film as portraying “adolescence as choreography.” I personally cannot think of a more apt way to describe the delicate movements one takes throughout the teenage years. One yearns to step into the spotlight and embrace one’s individuality while also fearing the consequences of doing so. It’s a delicate balancing act, wanting to be your own person while also wanting to fit in with everyone else.

This guest post written by Lee Jutton originally appeared at Medium and appears here as part of our theme week on Women Directors. It is cross-posted with permission.

I saw The Fits at a screening at the Museum of Modern Art that was followed by a Q&A with director Anna Rose Holmer, who described her film as portraying “adolescence as choreography.” I personally cannot think of a more apt way to describe the delicate movements one takes throughout the teenage years. One yearns to step into the spotlight and embrace one’s individuality while also fearing the consequences of doing so. It’s a delicate balancing act, wanting to be your own person while also wanting to fit in with everyone else. Just one misstep can ripple throughout one’s adolescence, leading to bullying and ostracizing. Once you’re an adult, you can look back and almost laugh at these things, many of which, in hindsight, seem so little as to barely be memorable; but at the time, these decisions are so massive that they can occupy your entire mind.

The Fits chronicles one girl’s journey to find herself both as an individual and as a part of a group. It’s a unique take on a timeless story, infusing the usual coming-of-age drama with a hearty splash of magical realism. Here, the choreography of adolescence is both figurative and literal. Eleven-year-old Toni, played by newcomer Royalty Hightower, is a quintessential tomboy who spends most of her time at a Cincinnati community center training as a boxer alongside her supportive older brother, Jermaine. One day, Toni finds herself drawn to the award-winning drill dance team that practices in the same building. The team, known as the Lionesses, are a tight-knit clique who barely notice Toni lugging her gym bag as they stream by her in the hall, giggling and glittering. After Jermaine catches Toni dancing around on her own, he encourages her to try out for the team, and despite a hilariously awkward first attempt at the team’s signature clap back call choreography, Toni is accepted as one of the newest Lionesses. However, it becomes clear it will take more than memorizing a few steps for Toni to fit in.

At one of her first rehearsals, Toni witnesses one of the Lionesses’ captains collapse with what appears to be a bout of seizures. Not too long afterward, a similar attack strikes down the team’s other captain. Soon, these episodes of hysteria, dubbed “the fits,” take the girls by storm. They start with the older, more experienced girls, but they gradually make their way down the hierarchy to the youngest and newest recruits. The community’s inability to explain why the episodes keep happening, compounded with the unpredictable way they occur, builds tension in the way of the best horror movies; after all, how can one not be terrified when it appears one doesn’t have control over one’s own body? Yet eventually the fits start to be seen less like a scary sickness and more like a desirable way to mark one’s progression into womanhood. Once one has had the fits, one has something to relate to the rest of the girls about; one truly feels like part of the team.

Having the fits bears a striking similarity to how so many girls feel about starting to menstruate; you’re afraid of it happening, this mysterious and morbid signifier of womanhood, but once it starts happening to everyone else, you can’t help but wonder when it will be your turn. (And, when it still doesn’t happen, if there’s something wrong with you.) At first, Toni is grateful to be spared from the fits, finding them frightening, but eventually, she starts to grow anxious about not having experienced this strange rite of passage. Already a girl of few words, Toni silently listens to her newfound friends gossip together about their own unique experiences with the fits — each attack different and yet somehow the same — while she is deemed unworthy of inclusion in the conversation. As one friend snaps at Toni, “You don’t know anything about it.” Toni grows increasingly distant from her old world of the boxing gym as she devotes more and more hours to perfecting the Lionesses’ choreography, yet because she has not experienced the fits, she remains on the outside of her new world looking in, a face peeking out from behind the backstage curtain. She’s stuck in the middle, with no clear place to belong.

In the absence of the fits, Toni tries to fit in in other ways, incorporating more feminine details into her appearance. However, in the end these are all uncomfortably rejected by her. When a friend applies a temporary tattoo to Toni’s arm, she peels it off; when her nails are painted with gold glitter polish, she picks away at it until the flecks litter the floor of the boxing gym. She even goes as far as to pierce her own ears in the community center bathroom, but eventually removes the sparkling studs, citing infection. In these small ways, Toni maintains some small part of her individuality in a world that values the team over the individual; she’s trying to fit in, but her willingness to do so will only go so far.

Hightower carries The Fits on her remarkably muscular shoulders. Reliant almost entirely on movement and expression, as opposed to dialogue, her performance is remarkably natural and her struggle to fit in relatable. When one learns that Hightower is in fact an experienced dancer who has been a member of the team portraying the Lionesses since she was small, as Holmer told us during the Q&A session, one is even more in awe of the evolution she manages to portray onscreen. I was someone who was incapable of sticking to the choreography growing up, both in my childhood dances classes and in my actual life. In some ways, I was proud of my ability to march to my own oddball tune, but in many others, I longed to know what it was like to be just one of the smiling girls in the line, never missing a beat. Watching Toni walk this tightrope in The Fits hit home for me in a way that very few movies about girlhood ever do.

Lee Jutton has directed short films starring a killer toaster, a killer Christmas tree, and a not-killer leopard. She previously reviewed new DVD and theatrical releases as a staff writer for Just Press Play and currently reviews television shows as a staff writer for TV Fanatic. You can follow her on Medium for more film reviews and on Twitter for an excessive amount of opinions on German soccer.

Adolescence and Female Friendship in Gurinder Chadha’s ‘Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging’

After chronicling the clashes among family, football, and adolescence in ‘Bend it Like Beckham,’ Gurinder Chadha delves into similar territory with the ebullient coming-of-age tale ‘Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging.’ An adaptation of the 1999 novel ‘Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging’ by the late Louise Rennison, the film tells the story of Georgia Nicolson, a teenager growing up in Eastbourne, England, whose entry into the world of romancing boys is as fraught and funny as you might expect.

This guest post written by Deborah Krieger appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors.

After chronicling the clashes among family, football, and adolescence in Bend it Like Beckham (2002), Gurinder Chadha delves into similar territory with the ebullient coming-of-age tale Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging (2008). An adaptation of the 1999 novel Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging by the late Louise Rennison, the film tells the story of Georgia Nicolson (Georgia Groome), a teenager growing up in Eastbourne, England, whose entry into the world of romancing boys is as fraught and funny as you might expect.

Georgia falls quickly for the “sex-god” Robbie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a new boy in town, and spends the course of the film trying to win him over. In the film’s opening scene, Georgia’s friend Jas (Eleanor Tomlinson) tells her regretfully, “Boys don’t like girls for funniness.” Taking this questionable advice to heart, Georgia attempts to make Robbie fall for her by hiding her own dramatic attitude and hapless sense of humor that separate her from the other girls in town. By the end, of course, she learns the all-too-important lesson that you don’t need supermodel looks to get a boyfriend, and that your significant other should like you for yourself and not who you pretend to be.

Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging has a quite a bit in common with other movies and books in the “teen romantic comedy” genre. It is undoubtedly formulaic, and contains the expected happy ending and all-important positive message of self-confidence. Yet Georgia herself, and her attitude towards life, are what make the book and the film memorable, as Georgia is vividly crafted, full of recognizable flaws. She consistently makes the worst, most embarrassing social errors in nearly any given situation, including being caught spying on Robbie by him and his girlfriend; accidentally exposing her “knickers” to a crowd of partygoers (including Robbie) while fighting off another boy’s advances; or telling said boy that she’s a lesbian in order to avoid having to date him. For Georgia, her parents’ refusal to rent out a club for her fifteenth birthday constitutes the cruelest mistreatment, and she rather callously views her father’s job transfer to New Zealand as little more than an opportunity for her to have only one parent to supervise her misbehavior. (Of course, by the end of the film she realizes that she misses her dad and would rather have her family together.)

Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging is of opposing minds when it comes to showing how teens deal with their developing sexuality. On the one hand, many such encounters in the film are refreshingly realistic, for the most part eschewing picture-perfect kisses and idealized romantic encounters for true-to-life depictions of what being a teenager is actually like: full of awkwardness, weird mishaps, and lots of saliva. Seemingly over the course of minutes, teenage boys go from disgusting, unsanitary mysteries to objects of fledgling desire — from mere concept to attainable goal. In an early scene, Georgia’s friend Rosie (Georgia Henshaw) instructs their group of friends to sit on their hands to numb them, then to touch their chests over their clothes to simulate getting “felt up” by a boy.

On the other hand, the girls also treat sexuality in a rather cynical way: as a competition to be won, a skill to be taught and learned, and a game to be quantified and scored. Early in the film, Georgia and Jas introduce their “snogging scale,” or ten escalating forms of romantic and sexual kissing, with hand-holding while kissing at number one and “the full monty” at number ten. This scale is referenced consistently in conversations between Georgia and Jas, with them discussing their sexual experiences in terms of what number they earn on the scale. While preparing to make Robbie hers, Georgia visits the home of local boy named Peter Dyer (Liam Hess) to learn how to kiss. Peter is a local “ladies’ man” who apparently teaches snogging to all the local girls, and goes about his work with all the seriousness of a businessman. He sets a thirty-minute timer at the beginning of his lesson with Georgia, delivers questionably-sage advice, and insists that she be honest about her previous experience so that he can “evaluate” her accurately, prompting her to admit her only experience is with “the back of [her] hand.” Where other teen romances might feature the protagonist fantasizing about sharing her first-ever kiss with her crush, in the world of Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging kissing — and what comes after — is treated in a much more transactional (and perhaps more practical) way.

Another central aspect of the film’s narrative is the looming presence of beauty standards to which Georgia and her friends feel they must adhere if they have any hope of getting a boyfriend. After realizing that even to her own friends, her large nose diminishes her attractiveness, Georgia continually tries to change her looks in order to make herself more appealing to boys. While in pursuit of the kind of supermodel beauty that will undoubtedly make Robbie hers, Georgia also manages to lose some of her hair by trying to bleach it, accidentally shaves off one of her eyebrows, gives herself the appearance of having pink eye by putting Vaseline on her eyelashes, and turns her legs bright orange with self-tanner, which Robbie notices while the pair are swimming in a public pool. Yet despite Georgia’s perception of herself as unattractive and in need of beautifying, the film’s plot actually belies her claims, revealing her to be rather unreliable as a narrator. In addition to Robbie, whom Georgia wins over by the end of the film, naturally, she has to contend with two other boys who want to date her: the aforementioned Peter Dyer, he of the copious saliva, and Dave the Laugh, a boy she goes out with only to make Robbie jealous. Additionally, both Robbie and Georgia’s father comment disparagingly on her desire to keep changing herself, and that she is fine the way she is. Therefore, despite the early assertion in Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging that boys don’t like funny girls, or weird girls, or girls who don’t have the CoverGirl look, Georgia’s own travails prove otherwise, and demonstrate that she really didn’t need to change much about herself at all to get the boy she wants.

However, the film falls into some unfortunate classic teen romance narrative traps as it tries to demonstrate Georgia’s own uniqueness and establish her as the ideal girl for Robbie. Right off the bat, the film immediately draws a contrast between the inexperienced Georgia and “Slaggy Lindsay,” Robbie’s girlfriend at the beginning of the movie, and thus Georgia’s rival. (“Slaggy” basically means “slutty,” for those not of us speaking the Queen’s English.) Lindsay (Kimberley Nixon) is immediately presented as the enemy even before Robbie is in the picture, and the narrative continually backs up this assertion. Lindsay is the conventionally attractive girl who stuffs her bra and wears a thong (the horror!), while Georgia doesn’t commit those apparently unforgivable acts. Lindsay’s behavior towards Georgia over the course of the movie is presented as needlessly petty and at times cruel, even though Georgia is, admittedly, aiming for her boyfriend. Despite the fact that boyfriends can’t be stolen, it’s still a pretty selfish move on Georgia’s part, and one that manages to avoid diegetic condemnation even as many of Georgia’s sneaky and dishonest maneuvers are properly called out.

While not as prominent in the movie as in the original book, Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging also keenly traces the way that girls’ friendships change during adolescence when the specter of boys — and maturity — comes into the picture. Georgia’s “ace gang” of Georgia, Jas, Rosie, and Ellen (Manjeeven Grewal) are presented as the thickest of thieves, ready to go “boy-stalking” together, take beauty quizzes, and encourage one another’s romantic adventures. Yet the very first scene actually undermines the unity of the so-called “ace gang,” demonstrating the kind of social pressures that adolescent girls must contend with, and conquer, in order to maintain their friendships. The film opens with Georgia arriving at a Halloween party dressed as a stuffed cocktail olive, making more of a statement than she’d like in a room full of sexy angels, devils, and cowgirls. We then learn that the rest of the “ace gang” was supposed to go in matching costumes, yet the other three girls have decided to join their peers in wearing sexualized and attractive costumes without telling Georgia. It is both an establishing character moment for Georgia, an olive in a room of nymphets, as well as a recognizable betrayal of friendship on the part of her friends.

The greatest such rift in the film, though, comes from Jas, Georgia’s conventionally pretty “best mate,” who manages to snag Robbie’s brother Tom (Sean Bourke) early on in the film with little effort. She subsequently spends much of the film disappointing Georgia and frustrating her attempts to date Robbie, culminating in a recognizable yet tragic falling-out that lasts until the end of the movie. Jas correctly points out Georgia’s “scheming and pretending” as a cause of why Robbie won’t date her, while Georgia argues (also with some legitimacy) that Jas has been a rather poor friend when it comes to keeping her secrets. Georgia also manages to dig the hole between her and Jas deeper when she criticizes what she views as Tom’s lack of ambition, as Robbie wants to be a rockstar. Jas delivers the classic fatal blow to a teenage friendship when she announces that she will be attending Lindsay’s party instead of Georgia’s, because of course they are on the same day.

Of course, the party at the end — the club party Georgia so wanted at the beginning of the film — allows everything to be solved. Jas and Georgia reconcile (as Jas secretly helped Georgia’s mother plan the whole thing, conveniently fixing their friendship), Robbie and his band headline the party set, Robbie very publicly rejects Lindsay in front of seemingly everyone in town and declares his feelings for Georgia unequivocally, and her father doesn’t end up having to move to New Zealand. Indeed, the ending of Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging is the least realistic aspect of the movie — nothing in the real world resolves itself quite so easily and painlessly. Perhaps outright condemning (or at least questioning) Georgia’s perpetuation of the Taylor Swift-esque “she wears short skirts / I wear tee shirts” dynamic with Lindsay might have taken the film all the way from cliché to truly lifelike. Still, though, it’s hard not to be pleased for Georgia and her happy ending, if only because there is so much in her (mis)adventures that are very recognizable and true.

Deborah Krieger is a senior at Swarthmore College, studying art history, film and media studies, and German. She has written for Hyperallergic, Hooligan Magazine, the Northwestern Art Review, The Stake, and Title Magazine. She also runs her own art blog, I On the Arts, and curates her life in pictures @Debonthearts on Twitter and Instagram.

‘Fleabag’ and Finding Comedy in Life After Losing a Best Friend

A particular focus in women-driven TV comedy is the importance of female friendship. … ‘Fleabag’ breaks from this pattern by exploring the effects of losing a best friend, and continuing to live in the world without her. Fleabag talks to us like we’re her new best friend because she can no longer talk to her real one. That the series is so funny while telling a tragic story about a very sad woman speaks to the power of comedy in addressing such difficult topics.

This guest post is written by Holly McKenzie-Sutter. | Spoilers ahead.

“It’s kind of a funny story, actually,” the titular character of the television series Fleabag explains, when asked by a taxi driver if she is running her independent business on her own. “I opened a café with my friend Boo. She’s dead now. She accidentally killed herself.” This exchange, during the final moments of the series’ first episode, is as much of a shock to the driver as it is to the viewer. He doesn’t find it funny, and neither do we. This moment is probably the first time that we haven’t shared Fleabag’s sense of humor, in the unsettling reveal that her best friend, who we have also met this episode, is dead.

“So yeah,” Fleabag concludes her anecdote, “I’m kind of on my own.”

The audience has spent the last twenty-five minutes befriending the unnamed protagonist, played by writer and creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge (“adapted from her award-winning Edinburgh play“), through fourth-wall breaking, Frank Underwood-esque asides and glances. These moments, interjections where she comments on her interactions with dates, bank managers, sexual partners, dogs, cucumbers, family members, and everyone in between, “turn the viewer into Fleabag’s new best friend,” as Emily Nussbaum writes for The New Yorker.

A particular focus in women-driven TV comedy is the importance of female friendship. Broad City, Insecure, Parks and Recreation, Golden Girls, Girlfriends, Orange Is the New Black, Sex and the City, Living Single, and countless others fit this description. Fleabag breaks from this pattern by exploring the effects of losing a best friend, and continuing to live in the world without her. Fleabag talks to us like we’re her new best friend because she can no longer talk to her real one. That the series is so funny while telling a tragic story about a very sad woman speaks to the power of comedy in addressing such difficult topics.

In an interview with Paste magazine, Waller-Bridge says:

“I guess it’s an articulation of something I see [around me] and very simply just makes me laugh. Like people openly lying to each other: ‘I’m fine, I’m fine’ and both these people can see that they’re not fine, and that the other person’s not fine. And that just makes everyone feel calmer: that they’re all lying. It’s so funny, I don’t know what it is, but it just makes me laugh.”

Finding humor in pain, and in lying, is at the heart of the series – and it’s a character trait of Fleabag’s that comes under criticism from her family and from herself. When driving to a mother’s day “silent retreat” in memory of their late mother, Fleabag’s sister Claire (Sian Clifford) cracks up at one of her sister’s inappropriate jokes, only to immediately start crying. “Don’t make this fun,” Claire says.

Their inability to not have fun, or to be silent, results in the two of them nearly being kicked out of the weekend program. Fleabag makes Claire laugh by mocking the faux-seriousness of the retreat activities, which mostly entail silently doing household chores for the mansion hosting them. The impossible task of being silent, and Fleabag’s inability to “shut out the noise” as she had hoped, is ironized by the “Better Man” retreat happening on the grounds at the same time. This group’s activities involve a repeated exercise where the attendees work through their aggression by yelling “slut” at the top of their lungs, punctuating Fleabag’s silent retreat with sexist descriptors that deep down, she feels might true about herself.

This joke is consistently funny throughout the episode, and the idea of intrusive, inappropriate thoughts punctuating serious moments is a recurring one in Fleabag. In one scene, Fleabag and Claire’s horrendous godmother-turned-stepmother (“She’s not an evil stepmother, she’s just a cunt.”) bustles around and interrupts the family gathering while the girls’ father (Bill Paterson) memorializes their mother. “Ignore me,” Stepmother (Olivia Colman) demands in a dramatic stage whisper as she loudly pops a champagne bottle. Clearly, Stepmother is there, she cannot be ignored and her awful intrusive presence in the would-be sentimental family moment, while very uncomfortable, is also just really funny. Pretending that the very loud, horrible thing is not present, when it clearly is, is one of Fleabag’s go-to joke formulas. It’s consistently hilarious, except when it’s horribly sad. For Fleabag, her relentless joking banter with us is her attempt at drowning out the very loud, horrible thing that constantly threatens to overwhelm her – the reality of Boo’s death.

Boo’s character (Jenny Rainsford) appears in every episode of Fleabag, in flashbacks that offer us a glimpse of the close bond the two women shared. These scenes are the only ones in which Fleabag does not directly address the audience, indicating that it was a time before she needed us. Many of them take place in Boo’s apartment, an unfamiliar space we can never access in our own relationship with Fleabag. The presence of these memories in every episode demonstrates that this was an irreplaceable relationship, one that will stay with Fleabag for the rest of her life. In the only somewhat tender scene between Fleabag and her father, he compares the way he misses the girls’ mother to the way Fleabag must miss her friend – in a way that the two of them will never fully get over.

With the recent losses of her best friend and her mother, Fleabag is living with the reality of death constantly on her mind. The cold open of the third episode is a visual gag on Fleabag jogging into frame – in a graveyard. She meets Claire there for her birthday, implicitly to visit their mother’s grave. Claire tells Fleabag that it’s “really inappropriate” to jog through a graveyard, “flaunting your life,” and is later shocked to learn that Fleabag comes there every day. The episode concludes with Fleabag cordially nodding to a fellow regular visitor on one of her jogs. This space of memorializing the dead is a part of Fleabag’s daily routine.

The void left in the wake of Boo, and Fleabag’s mother, cannot be easily filled. For most of the series, Fleabag is lying to her family, and to us, her “new best friends,” about the fact that she’s fine. But the show makes an argument for “flaunting your life” in the graveyard, by finding a way to laugh with people in the inappropriate moments, even when you’re very sad.

Waller-Bridge tells Paste:

“In my heart, for any of these characters to succeed they need to make human connection and be honest and open with each other. To know that success is something that will come and go. It’s not something you can hold onto tight enough. It’s not something that will keep you safe forever, whereas family and friends often will.”

In a review for Indiewire, Ben Travers writes that “by the end of just six episodes,” Fleabag’s use of direct address “pays off in a bigger way than House of Cards has provided in four full seasons.” The direct address “pays off” because, by the end of season one, we understand why Fleabag is speaking to us directly: she is desperate to connect.

We don’t see Fleabag break down fully until the last scene of the series. Her café is about to go under – and with it, the remnants of the passion project she started with Boo. She is losing her livelihood and the most significant physical reminder of her best friend. In this moment, Fleabag unloads all of her true feelings of guilt about hurting Boo, about hurting her family, and about her fears of being a selfish person. “Either everyone feels this way a little bit and they’re not talking about it, or I’m completely fucking alone, which isn’t fucking funny,” she says.

After spending six episodes with her, we know the answer to this. Everyone feels that way a little bit, and it’s definitely fucking funny.

Thankfully, the first season ends on a laugh. The bank manager (Hugh Dennis), who denied Fleabag a loan necessary to save her café in the first episode, happens upon Fleabag at her lowest point. After hearing her break down, he reopens her loan application on the spot. “Let’s start over,” he says, about the application he found “funny” because he thought it was a café for guinea pigs (it’s actually “guinea pig themed”). Hearing her loan application read back to her, Fleabag laughs, too. The bank manager delivers the last line of the series by saying, “See? I told you it was funny.”

Despite its tilt towards tragedy, Fleabag is a funny-sad comedy about a lonely woman who has lost her best friend, that makes a convincing case for laughing with each other about the fact that everything is not fine, until maybe it starts to be fine again.

Holly McKenzie-Sutter is a Vancouver-based writer, journalist, and graduate student. She recently graduated from the University of Toronto with a double major in English and Cinema Studies, and is currently working on a Master’s of Journalism at the University of British Columbia. Follow her on Twitter @hollerdoller.

Interview with First-Time Web Series Creators Ilana Rubin and Lana Schwartz on Comedy Thriller ‘Secrets & Liars’

[Web series are] “the best opportunity we have to express our voices, because we can use any type of format we want. I think it’d be great to see more shows that represent different viewpoints and experiences than are typically seen in comedy…” “The internet has been great for creators to get their voices heard! … I think having a diverse writer’s room isn’t just essential but should be mandatory.”

Written by Katherine Murray.

Secrets & Liars, a seven-episode comedy about a texting serial killer and the less-than-motivated friends who try to track him down, is the first web series from comedy duo Ilana Rubin and Lana Schwartz, available on their website. Not only did they create and write the series, they also star in it as the leads who are best friends. Schwartz and Rubin kindly took the time to speak to us about the process of creating their first series, and the projects they’d like to see more of, now that there are fewer barriers to production.

Bitch Flicks: What inspired you to make a web series? What drew you to the idea of making a comedic thriller?

Lana Schwartz: Ilana and I have been working together, writing and filming sketches for a few years now, and we felt like now was the time for us to do something a little more ambitious. There are so many different ways to tell a story and we wanted to do something that we felt represented our comedic voice. We were interested in doing a comedic thriller because we both love dramatic teen shows, and these dramatic situations seemed like such a sharp contrast to being a regular person.

Ilana Rubin: I think we were enticed by the idea of committing to something a bit bigger than a sketch where an idea begins and ends in 3-5 minutes. Longer narratives are the kind of entertainment we both enjoyed, so we wanted to try our hand at that. Personally, I love acting. It’s my favorite part of creating something of your own, and I was excited to play someone very different from who I am in real life.

I think we were drawn to this specific genre because we both enjoy those kinds of shows. Lana is a huge fan of Pretty Little Liars while I really enjoy shows like True Detective. With Secrets & Liars we were able to bring the absurdities of both shows under one umbrella, while really emphasizing the ridiculousness of teen thriller tropes. There was so much to play with!

Bitch Flicks: What was the most challenging part in making the series? What was the most rewarding part?

Lana Schwartz: The most challenging part was getting all of the details together. It was hard to bring together so many different people, and coordinate with our locations and crew. But I think that’s also why it was so rewarding – because we got to see everything come together in a final product.

Ilana Rubin: I will save the best for last and start with the most challenging parts. I think the most difficult thing was having our hands in every area of the production. While we did have a wonderful and talented crew (Brittany Tomkin) producing and directing (Jorja Hudson), we really were involved in every aspect when it came to the logistics. We sought out the locations, [did the casting], and had input on cinematography as well. Logistical planning is my least favorite part of any production because there’s so much that goes into it. I have so much admiration for the production managers and line producers whose literal job is to make sure that’s all under control.

The most rewarding part was actually shooting everything and doing it and at the end of the day having this thing that we wrote and created and could show the world. I’m still so proud of us. It’s just a drop in the bucket of what we will create in our lives, but I think it’s a really big testament to our work ethic. It was also pretty great to be able to shoot in the high school we went to and see some of our old teachers in the process and know that we have their support as well. Shout out to Francis Lewis, one of the best public high schools in Queens!

Bitch Flicks: How long did it take to film? What kind of equipment did you use?

Ilana Rubin: The process was a little stop/start. Our first shoot day was before Christmas and then we took a bit of a break because of the holidays and started back up in January and then we finished around March, I believe.

Jorja used a Canon T3I, and we rented an Astra Light Panel but shot without a tripod. It was mostly handheld because we wanted a more gritty feel to it. For audio, we used lavalier mics and our sound operator (and editor), Carina Jollie, was also using a boom. She is a superwoman.

Bitch Flicks: It seems like web series have opened a lot of doors in terms of the type of stories people can tell, and the number of people who can produce their own shows. What kinds of opportunities do you see for performers online? What kinds of shows would you like to see getting made?

Lana Schwartz: It’s been really great to see the opportunities and recognition a lot of our friends have gotten for their web series. The Other Kennedys is a really great one, and Life, After is another series that recently came out that also centers around two best friends under unique circumstances. It’s the best opportunity we have to express our voices, because we can use any type of format we want. I think it’d be great to see more shows that represent different viewpoints and experiences than are typically seen in comedy, and stuff that delves deeper into people’s real experiences.

Ilana Rubin: I definitely agree. The internet has been great for creators to get their voices heard! The world obviously always needs improvement, but I think this has been a great thing to come of this digital age we’re living in. I think having a diverse writer’s room isn’t just essential but should be mandatory. This is tricky coming from a straight white woman who writes with another straight white woman, but I would love to see more web series with different voices being heard. I also write for a web-talk-show, Deadass, and our writing team is one of the most diverse I have ever seen. I don’t believe you can create a dynamic story/concept without the minds of people from different backgrounds and experiences.

I think I’d like to see more series with heart. There are incredible ones that are just plain silly and joke-filled, and those are great too. A good mixture is healthy! But some of my favorite ones are Clench and Release, Under the Table, Awkward Black Girl, and Triplets of Kings County, where you can invest in the characters while also enjoying the goofs.

Bitch Flicks: Is there going to be a second season of Secrets & Liars? What other projects do you have coming up?

Ilana Rubin: Yes! As of now, we will be doing a season two, but we have some other things we want to work on first. I just had a play go up at the Annoyance Theater called Phat Camp. Lana has a sketch show that I’ll also be acting in going up at The PIT called The Best Part. We have a couple of videos that we’ll be releasing in the meantime and some that we plan to shoot before we start writing season two. We also host My Hometown, a monthly comedy show about the places people are from, so there is a lot to be excited about!

Lana Schwartz: Everything Ilana said! Plus, also, my sketch team Deathbird has a second spank (an audition for a run) going up at Upright Citizens Brigade.

Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies, TV and video games on her blog.

Why Meredith and Cristina Redefined Sisterhood on ‘Grey’s Anatomy’

Meredith and Cristina reach for each other consistently for 10 seasons, never allowing a male relationship to supersede their friendship. … Watching ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ depict such a powerful female friendship consistently inspires me to improve my own relationships with women, looking to Meredith and Cristina as a model for how sisterhood really should be.

This guest post written by Olivia Edmunds-Diez.

I am currently on my third rewatch of Grey’s Anatomy. It is a series to which I return when I need a good cry or when I need to feel inspired. With a dynamic and diverse cast that features a plethora of well-developed female characters, I am repeatedly drawn to Dr. Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) and Dr. Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh). This time around, I can’t help but notice that the theme of sisterhood follows them consistently. I shouldn’t be entirely surprised that creator Shonda Rhimes would feature a prominent female friendship, given the nature of the show. Although Meredith and Cristina are not related, they might as well be. Dubbed the “Twisted Sisters,” they spend 10 seasons side by side and grow tremendously not just as individuals, but as a pair. Meredith and Cristina’s friendship withstands motherhood, men, and their careers.

Meredith and Cristina earned the nickname “Twisted Sisters” for good reason. Particularly in the early seasons of Grey’s Anatomy’s, both women experience and recount plenty of hardship. They each know what it’s like to pursue work over family, to have mixed and mostly negative feelings about their mothers, and they both have a tendency to assume the worst. But where others might find fault, Meredith and Cristina bond. After all, Grey’s Anatomy epitomized the definition of “my person.” Meredith and Cristina reach for each other consistently for 10 seasons, never allowing a male relationship to supersede their friendship. They can relate to each other in ways that their friends and boyfriends (and eventual husbands) never fully understand, which to me screams sisterhood. I know I can communicate with my sisters and anticipate their feelings in ways that even our parents never quite understood. Sisters know that going to “the dark place,” as Meredith calls it, is sometimes necessary. But it is far less scary when you’re not going alone.

Meredith and Cristina spend early seasons of Grey’s Anatomy with mixed feelings about children and motherhood. Cristina is consistent in her refusal to become a mother and Meredith eventually embraces her fear of turning in to her mother in order to start a family of her own. But even though these two women ultimately take different approaches to motherhood, each enthusiastically supports the other in her choice. Cristina supports Meredith emotionally and physically when Meredith and her husband adopt Zola and then later give birth. Meredith supports Cristina through two pregnancies, with the latter concluding in an abortion. As each woman exercises her right to choose, they affirm each other’s choices and provide them the support that their male partners do not always understand how to give, just as a sister would. In the show’s tenth season, Meredith feels conflicted about her dual roles as surgeon and mother. As Meredith begins to lash out, Cristina is the one to explain that neither of them are “better” for their life choices. But their choices are different and that will continue to lead them down different roads, which ultimately results in Cristina leaving the world of Grey-Sloan Memorial Hospital. And though it’s difficult for both Meredith and Cristina to separate, they can each understand that Cristina puts her career first and they are each supportive of these life choices, in ways that only sisters can be.

Meredith and Cristina also support each other through their relationships with men. Cristina is even the first to dub Derek Shepherd “McDreamy.” Whether dating men, marrying men, or having sex with men, Meredith and Cristina know not to judge each other’s choices. Meredith stands by Cristina throughout her almost first marriage and then again through her hasty actual first marriage. Cristina is sympathetic to Meredith’s on-again and off-again relationship with “McDreamy” and helped her emotionally be ready for their post-it marriage. A sister knows when to gossip about cute boys and when to hold her sister’s hand through a break-up; a sister knows when to encourage meeting someone new and when to suggest a quiet night at home.

Meredith and Cristina met as surgical interns and continue to work together as residents and attendings. They push each other, steal surgeries from each other, inspire ground-breaking research, and question each other’s judgments in operating rooms. For me, this is the most sibling-like that Meredith and Cristina can ever hope to be. Anyone with a sister knows that sisters know just how to push and prod your buttons. Sisters know when to tattle to mom or hold a grudge. But sisters also know how to celebrate your accomplishments, and that is exactly why Meredith and Cristina are so amazing. They are just as likely to be seen fighting over a case as they are “dancing it out” or drinking to celebrate.

Through Grey’s Anatomy, Shonda Rhimes teaches us that our sisters are not always related to us. Sometimes we marry into a family and discover a sister-in-law and sometimes we start a new job and find a new best friend. ‘Sister’ is so much more than a genetic link. ‘Sister’ is a job description, a kinship, a love, and a friend. Watching Grey’s Anatomy depict such a powerful female friendship consistently inspires me to improve my own relationships with women, looking to Meredith and Cristina as a model for how sisterhood really should be.

Olivia Edmunds-Diez is a Northwestern graduate, where she studied theatre and gender and sexuality studies. Her current favorite finds are Stranger Things, Big Little Lies, and the Waitress cast recording. You can follow her on Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr.

Meredith Grey’s Woman Problem

Now that Dr. Meredith Grey’s husband, Dr. Derek Shepherd, has dearly departed ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ we can focus on the real relationships that drive the show: Meredith and the women in her life.

This is a guest post by Scarlett Harris.

Now that Dr. Meredith Grey’s husband, Dr. Derek Shepherd, has dearly departed Grey’s Anatomy, we can focus on the real relationships that drive the show: Meredith and the women in her life.

Of course Dr. Cristina Yang was Meredith’s one true love, not McDreamy. Cristina was there for her when she broke down over the execution of a death-row patient even though they were fighting about the intern self-suturing debacle of season five. Cristina helped Meredith with newly-adopted Zola when Derek left her for tampering with the Alzheimer’s trial even though Cristina was having her own relationship and motherhood issues. She was there for her again in season 10, despite Cristina’s resentment toward Meredith for leaning out of work to focus on family. Cristina supports Meredith through her tumultuous life which includes multiple near-death experiences, the death of her husband and mother and sister. (Seriously, how many tragedies can one person handle?!) Despite the actress who plays Cristina, Sandra Oh, departing the series in season 10, she left an indelible mark on Grey’s Anatomy and its title character.

In addition to Cristina’s impact, you’ll notice a recurring thread throughout Meredith’s most trying times: women were involved.

Meredith’s very existence is in the shadows of her famous and brilliant mother, Ellis Grey, to whom she was never good enough. Her dementia colors the first season of the show and how we come to know Meredith. Ellis’ death in season three also throws Meredith for a loop and reverberates throughout the following seasons, culminating in the arrival of Meredith’s previously unknown half-sister, Maggie Pierce, in season 11, bringing with it a whole host of sister issues Meredith has to work through.

Which brings us to Lexie Grey, yet another half-sister, this time on Meredith’s father’s side. Introduced at the end of season three as an intern at Seattle Grace (now Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital) before her aforementioned death (and one of the reasons for renaming the hospital) in season eight, Lexie had her fair share of tragedies that in turn affected Meredith.

While Meredith was working as her doctor, Lexie’s mother died which put further strain on her difficult relationship with her estranged father. Lexie also struggled with the Seattle Grace Mercy West (yes, yet another formation the Grey’s hospital took!) massacre that claimed the lives of several fellow surgeons and threatened Derek and Alex’s, Lexie’s partner at the time.

The repercussions from Lexie’s death in a plane crash made the following season one of the most emotionally interesting. Meredith became known as Medusa for her ruthless treatment of her interns while Cristina took off to Minnesota to work at the Mayo Clinic. Meredith also discovers she’s pregnant, without her sister and best friend there to support her through what’s supposed to be one of the happiest times in her life.

And let’s not forget the most recent woman to shake up Meredith’s world: Callie’s girlfriend, who also happens to be the doctor who treated Derek prior to his death and is a new resident at Grey Sloan to boot! In one of the best episodes of the show’s 12-season run, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” Meredith attempts to swallow her grief over her surprise dinner guest and not tell Amelia, Derek’s sister, or Callie that the new woman in the fold is actually one of the last people to see Derek alive.

If these examples aren’t enough to convince you that women influence Meredith and the trajectory of Grey’s Anatomy as a whole, remember the season one cliffhanger that succeeded in throwing Meredith’s life even more off course than her mother’s illness had?

Addison Shepherd’s—that’s right, Derek Shepherd’s wife!—arrival set the tone for many of the aforementioned women’s introductions into Meredith’s life. They sneak up on her unawares, throw her already messy life into total disarray, but are then accepted into the fold. In a community as close knit as the doctors at Grey Sloan it’s not really surprising that enemies soon become friends.

What is surprising is how close women like Lexie and Maggie have become to Meredith despite the fact that she kind of treats people like shit. Yeah, we know she’s “dark and twisty” to say the least but, apart from Cristina and sometimes Callie, the interactions she has with these women are usually tense, when she’s speaking to them at all.

But can you really blame her? Everyone she’s ever gotten close to, with the exception of Alex and Dr. Weber, has left her. Meredith doesn’t easily open up to people, but there is some disconnect between how she’s portrayed and the characters she’s supposedly written to be close to. She’s the quintessential unlikable female character.

Grey’s Anatomy, like all of Shonda Rhimes’ creations, is a lesson in depicting people from all walks of life, warts and all. Meredith and her relationships to the women in her life can be tense at times, but Grey’s succeeds in portraying them as the result of many strong personalities and highly skilled surgeons attempting to coexist in a high pressure environment, not because women can’t be friends. The women Meredith does get along with passionately she makes “her person” and will go to bat for them under any circumstances, as we saw in recent episodes when she supports Cristina’s ex Owen in his vendetta against new doctor Nathan Riggs because she told Cristina she would.

Many new small screen offerings, such as Orange is the New Black, Broad City and Playing House, take a page out of Grey’s Anatomy’s book and center on the close and complex relationships between women. Sure, Grey’s may have started out as a romance gone awry but, as in real life, relationships evolve and sometimes the most intense and long-lasting ones can be between female friends.

Scarlett Harris is an Australian writer and blogger at The Scarlett Woman, where she muses about femin- and other -isms. You can follow her on Twitter here.

Mining the Feminist Messages of ‘Crimson Peak’

In fact, she genuinely began to feel “depressed” from playing Lucille. However, when she confided this in on-screen brother Tom Hiddleston, who has famously played characters such as Marvel villain Loki, he shared that “you only have fun when your character is having fun,” and, as Chastain explains, “Lucille hasn’t had a fun day in her life.” As the victim of intense patriarchal oppression, it’s no wonder.

(Contains SPOILERS for Crimson Peak.)

When filming Guillermo del Toro’s most recent film, Crimson Peak, Jessica Chastain felt surprised that playing the villain, Lucille Sharpe, wasn’t as “fun” as other actors describe playing villainous roles to be. In fact, she genuinely began to feel “depressed” from playing Lucille. However, when she confided this in on-screen brother Tom Hiddleston, who has famously played characters such as Marvel villain Loki, he shared that “you only have fun when your character is having fun,” and, as Chastain explains, “Lucille hasn’t had a fun day in her life.” As the victim of intense patriarchal oppression, it’s no wonder.

As patriarchal values are all Lucille has known, those are the tools she uses to attempt to gain and maintain control over her own life and to protect her beloved younger brother, Thomas. By adopting patriarchal means of action, even while being miserable doing it, Lucille becomes a “formidable” antagonist to Mia Wasikowska’s protagonist Edith. This is despite Lucille being entirely (and sympathetically) driven in her actions by profound love and a deep-seated fear of being alone. Turning on other women, including Edith, leads to Lucille’s ultimate downfall, and at Edith’s hands, who was only trying to defend herself and others. As Lucille’s sad life portrays, oppression, such as that from patriarchy, cannot be combatted by becoming an oppressor oneself.

Like many of del Toro’s films, this film deals with knowing and learning about the past in order to move forward and not repeat past mistakes or crimes. Lucille experiences abuse, internalizes it, and then takes it out on other women. Edith, meanwhile, suffers minor abuse, is supported in her efforts to rise against it, and attempts to support other women herself. Though the men in the story make many mistakes in their attempts to be allies to Edith, some of their actions aide Edith when her strength and determination need a little boost. However, it is largely due to the help of other women, albeit none still living, that Edith is able to accomplish what she does, whether it is through the role model of “Frankenstein” author Mary Shelly, or the female ghosts that warn and aide her.

It is only when Edith chooses to listen to the messages that these female ghosts have for her, whether through old wax recordings or their own spectral presences, that Edith learns what she needs to know in order to move forward in her own life. Through joined female effort and learning about what came before her, Edith and the audience can effectively move into the present and take the most effective action in efforts to support the lives of women. With the help of other women, the occasionally non-burdensome help of male allies (again, the men make a number of dangerous mistakes – usually by underestimating both Edith and Lucille), and a lot of her own effort, Edith succeeds in getting through danger, not unscathed, but alive. She then publishes the fruit of her labor, her novel, under her own name – quite something for a woman to do in 1901. (The date is not provided in the film, but was given by Tom Hiddleston in this interview.)

Lucille is strongly compared to and contrasted against Edith throughout the film. Edith is an ambitious writer who defends her career choice and preferred suspenseful genres against patriarchal and condescending men and women alike. Edith marries the baronet Thomas Sharpe, who is “a dreamer” like her, in part because he is supportive of her writing. Edith continues to work on her novel after their marriage, just as Thomas continues to work on his mining invention (Yes, the “Sharpe Mines” – I see what you did there, del Toro). Lucille could have made a career as a marvelous composer and pianist, but lacked the supportive upbringing that Edith received, and rarely writes or plays (or, indeed, lives) except for her younger brother. At one point, Lucille throws Edith’s manuscript, page by page, into the fire, saying dismissively “You thought you were a writer….” Meanwhile Lucille never takes credit for the beautiful lullaby she seemingly wrote – for Thomas, naturally.

This reflects the internalization of her years of neglect and abuse, a childhood alternately locked away upstairs or physically beaten with a cane, forced to care at an early age for her abusive mother after her father “snapped [Lucille’s mother’s] leg under his boot,” and then sent to and locked away in a mental institution in continental Europe, away from her only comfort – her brother. So internalized is the abuse and pain, Lucille even thinks she is doing her female victims a favor by killing them, as shown in the scene in which Lucille feeds Edith (poisoned) porridge while speaking about her relationship with her mother.

Throughout her life, Lucille protects Thomas both from oppression and from becoming much of an oppressor himself, keeping him from having to “get [his] hands dirty.” Thomas therefore comes out of a patriarchal past relatively less broken than Lucille, and is able to maintain a bit more of his humanity. It is this humanity, which Lucille made sure to help him preserve in himself, that leads him to experience guilt for what Lucille and he do – exploiting and poisoning vulnerable women for their wealth. It is this guilt that Edith, the protagonist, inadvertently exploits when she encourages him to not live “in the past.” Edith does not seek out to reform Thomas, unlike in so many “romances” that glorify toxic and abusive relationships – he himself makes the choice to help and defend Edith against Lucille. In fact, when Edith finds out what he has done, she understandably does not hesitate to attack him in self-defense. Heartbreakingly, it is revolutionary even today that Edith is not a Bella Swan or a Manic Pixie Dream Girl used by Thomas to feel better about himself. Edith is romantic with Thomas only when she is unaware of what he has done, and then defends herself from her would-be co-murderer.

Meanwhile, while Edith moves into the future after learning from the past, Lucille is “entrenched” in the “history” of the house and the family, and does not “progress.” Lucille grew up in Victorian England and continental Europe being abused by patriarchal society, patriarchal figures, and patriarchal values. Much of what she does is in keeping with these values, clinging to “the past” and the “shadows” as the Edwardian era begins. Patriarchal values are all she has known, and her actions in the film reflect that, whether she is playing the role patriarchy expects her as a woman to play, such as caretaker, or when she emulates patriarchal violence in order to sustain the way of life she and her brother share, such as when she brutally murders Edith’s father Carter Cushing (played by Jim Beaver).

Patriarchy makes many demands on women. It demands that women internalize sexism and abuse, then take out their anger and frustration on other women in horizontal/in-group violence. Lucille fulfills this requirement of patriarchy many times and in many ways, as did her mother before her – and against her. Patriarchy demands that women lack confidence in themselves, and predominantly define themselves by how they do or do not look. Lucille implies that she feels that she “lack[s] beauty” and youth, while women are still fighting against confidence-destroying beauty and age standards today. Patriarchy demands that women value men more than other women, and more than themselves. Lucille centers her brother, Thomas, and her family’s history above all else, and even seems to blame her mother more than her father for the family’s suffering and destruction. This is especially sad, since it was her father’s abuse of her mother that made her mother take out her anger at him in abusing her children. Patriarchy demands that women compete with each other for the little that is offered them, and so Lucille preys upon other women to uphold the life she has created for her brother and herself.

In some ways, Lucille opposes patriarchal ideas of women, but only as manifestations of her role as protector for Thomas. Del Toro describes Thomas as “a stunted man, an adolescent,” and Lucille fills the roles of both mother and wife to him. As depicted by Katherine Fusciardi on Bitch Flicks, violence by women is seen as justifiable by society if it is committed by a mother to protect her child. Lucille takes on the role of violent protector for Thomas, the masculinity of it being emphasized when she crossdresses in order gain access into a men’s club. There, she violently kills Edith’s father, who was “coarse and condescending” to her beloved younger brother. Her role as protector, her clothing, and her violence in that scene are all culturally seen as masculine. When she emulates patriarchy, it is in order for her and Thomas to maintain a place in it, thereby attempting to be free from patriarchal oppression themselves. However, as stated in Alize Emme’s review of Heathers, “the power” of patriarchy to oppress others “is not something to aspire to.” Instead, female friendship creating support systems are all important. In order to gain true power and freedom, patriarchy must be overthrown in a group effort lead by women, not emulated by the individual. Though Lucille gains much needed money by oppressing other women, it hardly relieves her misery from years of external and internal abuse.

Not only does the story of Crimson Peak have many messages that can be mined (I would say the pun wasn’t intended, but that would be lying) for feminists, but del Toro’s casting choices reflect the feminism of his piece, with Jessica Chastain and Tom Hiddleston being open feminists. What is disappointing is that hardly any women were involved at all behind the camera, not even on the script, with the notable exception of Kate Hawley’s beautiful costume design. Del Toro then, unintentionally it seems, highlights his theme that men can make mistakes as allies, even when they have the best of intentions. Jessica Chastain is particularly vocal about the need for all women and all People of Color to be hired for work behind the camera, and for “all stories” to be told, not just that of “the few.” Hopefully del Toro and the other men onset learned these lessons while filming Crimson Peak, and they continue in learning how to be better allies.

‘Living Single’ and ‘Girlfriends’: The Roots of Sex Positivity for Black Women on TV

There were never any shows that centered happy, single, child-free Black women that prioritized good sex as part of successful living. That is until two television shows came on the scene, ‘Living Single’ (1993-1998, created by Yvette Lee Bowser) and ‘Girlfriends’ (2000-2007, created by Mara Brock Akil).

Women in the African diaspora have had a hard time claiming healthy ownership of their own bodies. From slavery to the present, Black women (and Black girls) have endured the stigma of having their bodies shamed and sexualized in ways that have been physically, psychologically, and spiritually damaging (see the history of Saartjie “Sarah” Baartman). They had not been afforded healthy representations of Black female sexuality. The Black female body has been viewed as naturally wanton, lascivious, or “fast-tailed” because of sexual exploitation during enslavement. If the sexual revolution of the ’60s and ’70s liberated White women to explore their bodies with abandon, this sex positivity didn’t free Black women from the baggage of their inhumane body history.

Historically in U.S. film and television, Black women have never been allowed to have sexual agency without stigma. If Black women actually showed up in the media, typically she was boxed into several known stereotypes— the Mammy (the asexual being who fixes white people problems while neglecting her own), the Sapphire (angry Black woman or Sassy Black woman), Tragic Mulatto (the light-skinned Black woman who can’t seem to fit into the White world because of the stain of Black blood), or a Jezebel (the hypersexual, loose woman, known today as a THOT—that hoe over there), and even the Respectable Negro (a Black woman who is married/widowed, often pious, and successful based on selfless motherhood. She often places judgment on other Black women who don’t fit her mold).

From the earliest days of television featuring Black characters, shows like Beulah, The Amos ‘n Andy Show, Julia, Sanford and Son, Good Times, The Jeffersons, and right on through Gimme A Break, and 227, Black women have played riffs of the traditional stereotypes. The emergence of Claire Huxtable, the successful attorney and mother of five children on The Cosby Show, fashioned a new type of Black woman we hadn’t seen before (although low-key, she could be sassy and gave off a whiff of subtle respectability in some episodes), and yet she was still bound up in family life. There were never any shows that centered happy, single, child-free Black women that prioritized good sex as part of successful living. That is until two television shows came on the scene, Living Single (1993-1998, created by Yvette Lee Bowser) and Girlfriends (2000-2007, created by Mara Brock Akil).

These two shows revolutionized Black female sexuality on television by giving Black women sexual agency without falling back on tired tropes. They also opened the door to later shows featuring Black single women who embraced sex as a part of good living without stigma (Half and Half, Single Ladies, and Scandal). Two characters in particular stood out from both series that became the precursors for sexually carefree Black women:

Maxine Shaw (Erika Alexander) and Lynn Searcy (Persia White)

Living Single

Living Single followed a group of four female friends and their two male neighbors living in a Brooklyn brownstone apartment. They were upwardly mobile in their careers as lawyers, magazine owners, stockbrokers, and independent building maintenance handymen. The show gravitated around rap star Queen Latifah’s character, Khadijah James, and each week found the crew in various complications related to their jobs, love lives, and each other. It was rare to see a show dominated by Black professionals. Finding “Mr. Right” is often the end goal for women-centered shows, but thankfully Living Single didn’t spend too much time having the women lament about not having found “the one.” One character, Régine (Kim Fields), was painted as a gold-digger, but she was the only one who had a hint of desperation in terms of having a relationship based on material comfort. Khadijah’s cousin Synclaire (Kim Coles) was the naïve, sweet-natured friend who dripped with positivity and wholesomeness. But it was Maxine, the high-powered attorney who was the standout favorite.

From her shaved head with braids, gorgeous dark skin, and power suits, Maxine had healthy sexual relationships without strings. She dated often, and was typically the one to cut relationships short when men wanted more serious (and more monogamous) relations. Some women who watched the show faithfully wore their hair like Maxine as well as imitating her fashion sense. She lived her life on her own terms (she was not a roommate with the other women because she had her own place), and she had the income to do as she pleased. She was verbally assertive, and was quick to challenge men, especially her epic battles with Khadijah’s neighbor and friend, stockbroker Kyle Baker (T.C. Carson). Their verbal spats underscored the sexual tension and attraction they really had for each other. When they get drunk one night and slept together, they choose to keep the relationship a secret, with Maxine pushing to keep the hot sex in the realm of platonic fuck buddies.

Unlike Black women from previous TV shows, pleasure and freedom was the goal for Maxine. This didn’t mean that marriage or motherhood, or some form of connection wasn’t a possibility for her, it just wasn’t the ONLY goal in her life. Her career and her friendships meant just as much as having a man, or dreaming of a family. After finally revealing their sexual connection to their friends, Kyle accepts a job in London and asks Maxine to join him. Kyle was the best sex partner Maxine ever had. He was successful, gorgeous, and her equal in every way. And yet Maxine turned him down because she valued her autonomy and wasn’t willing to give up her life and lifestyle to follow him. She didn’t try to convince him to stay (even though she really wanted him), and they parted as lovers who respected each other’s decision, even though it was a difficult one. Maxine had such a sense of self that she allowed her dream man to leave without a fight. That was a revelation to the core audience.

Unfortunately, in the last season of the series, Maxine was shown to miss Kyle, and had the wild idea that her life would have meaning if she had a baby. She goes to a sperm bank and inadvertently gets inseminated with Kyle’s sperm. In the series finale she reconciles with Kyle and we are left to believe that they will be happy raising their baby together. It is a cliché happy ending, especially since Maxine had been presented as the ultimate carefree Black woman. However, the fans loved it, and on some level, it was nice to see her get the partner she deserved, one who was as sexually uninhibited as she was, and one who respected her choice to be that way. She owned her beautiful Black body. Maxine offered Black women watching the show an opportunity to embrace their sexual sides with humor and much needed positivity.

Girlfriends

Much like the template of Living Single, Girlfriends followed the humorous trials and tribulations of four young success driven Black women living in Los Angeles. In this world, attorney Joan Clayton (Tracee Ellis Ross) was the main protagonist who set the pace for her three friends– Maya Wilkes (Golden Brooks) her Compton hood girl personal assistant, Toni Childs (Jill Marie Jones) her college roommate and a high end real estate agent with a taste for expensive things, and Lynn Searcy (Persia White), another former college roommate with several post graduate degrees and counting, but no real job because of her unsettled bohemian lifestyle.

All the women on Girlfriends were sexually active and enjoyed good sex (although Joan had a ninety day waiting period for her beaus prior to sex which became an issue with some), but it was Lynn who was the most sexually experimental. She openly discussed her sex toys and personal sex tricks (The “Lynn Spin”), ménage à trois, group sex, sex swings/chairs, and same-gender hook-ups. There was no sexual experience she hadn’t tried or was afraid to engage in. She even had her own fuck buddy arrangement with the clique’s mutual male friend, the lawyer William Dent (Reggie Hayes).

Lynn essentially stepped up the sexual freedom of Maxine on Living Single, and overall, the women of Girlfriends were a little more nuanced in their performances than the characters of Living Single (except for Maya, who took some time to lower the hood shtick she displayed in earlier episodes). Both Maxine and Lynn brought a refreshing and openly accepted sexuality that had never been present in Black female television characters. These two women were the ones viewers like me wanted to sit around with holding glasses of wine and listening to the details of their sexual exploits.

None of the women from either show carried the stigmas of the past that haunted the Black female body. They revealed to the world the Black Female Gaze in sexual matters which upset some critics (including Bill Cosby, and Spike Lee who accused them of being oversexed embarrassments). Like most new shows, it did take time for Living Single and Girlfriends to hit their stride, and each had their corny struggle moments to figure out their voice. However, in the end, they brought forth Black women with positive and healthy sexual pursuits. They left the sexual baggage and shaming in the past in order to present Black female sexuality in a healthy new light.

Staff writer Lisa Bolekaja co-hosts Hilliard Guess’ Screenwriters Rant Room, and her latest speculative fiction short story “Three Voices” can be read in Uncanny Magazine. She divides her time between California and Italy. She can be found on Twitter @LisaBolekaja lurking in the hashtags #SaturdayNightSciFi and #FridayNightHorror

Yas Queen!: In Praise of Female Friendship and Sex Positivity on ‘Broad City’

As emerging adults, Abbi and Ilana are free to explore their sexuality as they choose. Choosing to be sexually active means the women have the possibilities of exploring love and sex, casual or within a relationship, in a way that best serves them as 20-something single women. Although Abbi and Ilana each explore their sexuality differently, the women share a common mentality- that they will embrace the many sexual adventures they embark on and support and empower each other every step of the way.

This guest post by Alexandra Shinert appears as part of our theme week on Sex Positivity.

In the pilot of Comedy Central’s hit show Broad City, we meet Abbi Abrams (Abbi Jacobson) and Ilana Wexler (Ilana Glazer), two women whose idea of friendship has no bounds. Throughout the series, which is executively produced by Amy Poehler, Abbi and Ilana’s friendship not only takes precedent in their lives but it is also at the core of the show, intentionally placed at the center by the female comedy creators, Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer. As a show that focuses on the lives of two 20-something (mostly) heterosexual, single best friends who are navigating life in New York City, it’s their friendship that shines brightest and makes a significant impact on the landscape when it comes to female-centric media.

At the Paley Center for Media’s New York Comedy Festival panel featuring Broad City, Glazer spoke about the central focus of the show saying, “It’s just a romance between two friends…platonic, for now.” Acknowledging the romance between the two women, Poehler also emphasized that the relationship viewers should care most about is Abbi and Ilana’s as the show is really “a love story” between these two friends. We get the sense that the women truly care for each other and this love can be best expressed in their own words in a scene from the pilot episode (“What a Wonderful World”).

Ilana tells Abbi, “Dude, I would follow you into hell, brother!” A sentiment Abbi would replicate without hesitation by telling her friend, “I would take you on my shoulders, like I’d strap you up and I’d be like, ‘let’s go through hell.’” This declaration that illustrates the women’s true devotion for each other is also extremely visible throughout every episode of the series’ two seasons. Whether Abbi is saving Ilana’s life after a serious allergic reaction to shellfish or the women make time to catch up with each other in the middle of sex via FaceTime, at the core of Broad City’s slap-stick comedy are two women who would do anything for each another.

Central to the nature of friendship, and a key characteristic of female friendship is the role of conversation. For female friends to engage in activities that allow them to talk, open up, and discuss every aspect of their lives, women not only bond but in the process create closeness through self-disclosing of personal information. In the case of Abbi and Ilana, the women comfortably discuss any and all topics (from pooping to pegging); due to this level of self-disclosure, they’ve created a bond that is incredibly close. Abbi, in particular, vocalizes the kind of self-disclosure and closeness they’ve established by emphasizing to Ilana in the season one finale, “You text me every time you take a dump, I know about the pimple on your nipple, and I’m, like, the holder of your social security card.” This dialogue reinforces the important role each of the women play in each other’s lives and further establishes the kind of friendship Broad City portrays. It is within Abbi and Ilana’s friendship that sex positivity truly exists, and due to the nature of closeness between the women and the levels of self-disclosure they’ve established, discussing sex happens most visibly through positivity and empowerment on Broad City.

As 20-something women who are both comfortably content with this particular moment in their lives, the women have no sense of urgency when it comes to finding a partner to marry or deciding when or if they want to have children. These cultural attitudes not only connect to larger generational traits of Millennials but are also characteristic to the stage of their lives the women are experiencing: Emerging Adulthood. As emerging adults, Abbi and Ilana are free to explore their sexuality as they choose. Choosing to be sexually active means the women have the possibilities of exploring love and sex, casual or within a relationship, in a way that best serves them as 20-something single women. Although Abbi and Ilana each explore their sexuality differently, the women share a common mentality- that they will embrace the many sexual adventures they embark on and support and empower each other every step of the way.

In the season 1 finale (“The Last Supper”), the women celebrate Abbi’s 26^th birthday by going out to a fancy restaurant for dinner. While dining, the women discuss the sexual adventures Abbi has been enjoying as a way to celebrate her birthday. Ilana is truly overjoyed to learn that Abbi had “slightly above average sex” “twice in one week.” However, after Abbi pees out a condom, she shares a realization with her best friend that she likely had unprotected sex with one of her partners. Ilana’s reaction to Abbi’s dilemma illustrates both the kind of friendship the women share and the importance of having safe sex. “Not only are we talking STDs here, I can’t even imagine how many dudes would love to lock you down with an unexpected pregnancy! I mean, your body is a temple. You’ve got to respect it.” To respect one’s body means taking on the responsibilities that come with the act and to practice safe sex extends into a larger dialogue about sex positivity on Broad City. Abbi and Ilana will continue to celebrate and praise any and all sexual experiences the women enjoy, but this scene clearly emphasizes the importance of being safe above all. Moreover, Ilana’s honesty and openness to tell Abbi how she really feels continues to normalize the kind of friendship the women share and the significant role conversation places within their relationship.

From a simple conversation about sex to experiencing the act and pausing to seek out a friend for advice, Broad City’s depiction of sex positivity exists comfortably within Abbi and Ilana’s friendship. It is extremely present within “Knockoffs” (season 2, episode 4), an episode where Abbi finally gets to date her long-time crush and next-door neighbor, Jeremy (Stephen Schneider). Despite experiencing sex with Jeremy, Abbi is thrown for a loop when he asks her to penetrate him with a strap-on in an act of pegging. Confused by this suggestion, she excuses herself into the bathroom to call Ilana. Abbi seeks out Ilana’s advice, by explaining her situation to her friend: “So we were doing it and I was like ‘we should switch positions,’ and then he throws me a strap-on.” It is Ilana’s guidance and support in this moment of confusion that helps Abbi regroup and eventually partake in this sexual act. The way the women discuss sex and talk through Abbi’s dilemma continues to further establish how sex positivity exists on Broad City within the women’s friendship.

When Ilana gets the call from Abbi, she is overjoyed for her friend, calling the situation “a dream come true” and a “once in a lifetime” experience. She even pauses the conversation to twerk against a wall to express her enthusiasm. Abbi’s lack of confidence as she deals with how to execute the act is fully supported by a knowledgeable Ilana, whose reassurance is exactly what she needs. The women’s conversation continues to demonstrate the strength of their friendship, which connects to the depiction of sex positivity displayed within this scene.

This kind of celebratory praise of sex positivity can be extended to the conversation the women have post-pegging while attending Ilana’s grandmother’s shiva. When Abbi admits to pegging Jeremy, Ilana exclaims, “This is the happiest day of my life,” causing a scene at the somewhat somber event. Ilana praises Abbi for choosing to peg by calling her “a pegga” and “peggasus,” beyond thrilled that she would get to experience that sexual act. Ilana’s reaction is both humorous and extremely heartfelt, as she’s genuinely thrilled for her best friend. What is most significant about this scene is the way Abbi is praised for choosing to have sex, as Ilana never shames her or makes her feel weird about her decision to peg Jeremy. This further exemplifies the portrayal of sex positivity on Broad City that, I’d argue, can also be extended into a larger narrative about the way Abbi and Ilana celebrate each other in every aspect of their lives.

Broad City’s portrayal of sex positivity connects to constructs of sexuality and identity that must also be considered to truly understand the impact of these depictions. For instance, the pegging scene in “Knockoffs” illustrates that Abbi is open to the idea of engaging in an act that challenges heteronormative constructs/roles. In doing so, Broad City exemplifies the fluidity of sexuality. This is also visible through the depiction of Ilana, someone uninterested in labels or monogamy, comfortably content with having a stable “sex friend,” Lincoln (Hannibal Buress) and interested in sex for the sake of her own pleasure. This portrait of sexual fluidity and sex positivity on Broad City is emphasized best and most notably in the episode “Coat Check” (season 2, episode 9), where Ilana engages in sex with a woman, Adele (Alia Shawkat). Adele, who bares a striking resemblance to Ilana, helps her realize her sexual preferences and orientation.

In the middle of her same-sex encounter with Adele, Ilana stops her after realizing she may be too similar to her in appearance (not because she’s a woman, but instead because they’re nearly identical) for this relationship to continue. This instead results in a declaration of Ilana making sense of her own sexuality, as she openly tells Adele, “I have sex with people different from me, you know? Different colors, different shapes, different sizes. People who are hotter, uglier. More smart, not more smart. Innies, outies. I don’t know, a Catholic person.”

For Ilana, someone so eager to discuss and explore her sexuality, this scene emphasizes liberation. She feels comfortable with her choices and owns them, giving us a glimpse of sex positivity rooted in knowledge. Jenny Kutner discussed this scene as she saw the significance of Ilana’s declaration with respect to labels. She wrote, “Ilana’s same-sex encounter gives us the closest thing to a ‘definition’ for the character’s purposely ambiguous sexuality we’re likely ever to get, and it’s still not entirely clear.” By highlighting the significance of this scene she argues, “Broad City’s giving us what is real, and what we often experience as real people who exist in the world.” Furthermore, Ilana is someone who is liberated by this identity and is proud to experience her sexuality in any way she chooses, further demonstrating Broad City’s take on sex positivity.

Ilana comfortably discusses with Abbi the prospects of having a relationship with Adele, even if she considers it “mostly sexual.” Ilana feels the need to reassure Abbi that their friendship will continue to take precedent, by telling her “she [Adele]’s not replacing you.” There is never any worry for the women on Broad City that a relationship, a job, or a responsibility will come between the friends and the bond they share. As Abbi learns about Adele, we see someone who just wants to support her best friend in any way she can. This means being able to support Ilana the way she supports her.

As illustrated, sex positivity on Broad City directly connects to the friendship Abbi and Ilana share. Regardless of the kind of situation the women find themselves in, they would truly do anything for each other. Above all, Jacobson and Glazer’s series is about celebrating women, specifically 20-somethings as they experience this moment in their lives. This celebratory praise of women begins with Abbi and Ilana’s friendship, where two women’s love and support for each other extends into every aspect of their lives. If Broad City is a love story between Abbi and Ilana, it is one that is adding an incredibly powerful portrayal and narrative about women to the landscape. For women to be supporting women and empowering one another above all, Broad City gives us not only an amazing depiction of sex positivity but one of the greatest portraits of female empowerment that is beyond worthy of praise.

References

Fehr (1996). Friendship Processes. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications Inc.

Johnson (1996). “Friendships Among Women, Closeness in Dialogue.” In J. T. Wood, Gendered Relationships (pp. 79-94). Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.

Alexandra Shinert holds her M.A. in Media, Culture and Communication from NYU. She has spent time studying media portrayals and narratives, most notably on Girls and Broad City. She is genuinely interested in understanding 20-somethings and Millennials and appreciates a great TV reaction gif. You can connect with her on Twitter @AShinert