As a Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies and American Studies
double major in college, I spend my time analyzing and critiquing pop
culture as a cultural text and artifact. I tore apart Showtime’s The L
Word (2004-2009) for its gender-normative White-washing of queer women’s
lives. Over its six seasons, The L Word presented a Hollywood
stereotyped version of lesbian and bisexual women who were extremely
wealthy, femme, generally White, and almost all cisgender-identified.
 The show portrayed a wide spectrum of sexual expression, but
almost always fetishized that sexual expression and enforced monogamous
relationships. While I know The L Word does reflect a reality for some
members of the LGBTQ community, it displayed a limited lens into the
intersectional identities and deep diversity of LGBTQ people. Plus, it’s
kind of corny.

As a theorist, The L Word will always have a place in my
heart as a text rich for critique. But as a baby dyke, a queer cisgender
woman, The L Word will always hold significance for its role in my
process of discovering my identity. No matter how corny it may be, I am
proud of the show because I relate it with my own coming out, my first
girlfriends, and my own sexual enlightenment.  I am also white and
mainstream LGBTQ representations speak to a dominant (read: White)
narrative. I know that my Whiteness made the show more accessible for
me.

It is through The L Word that I connected with my
girlfriend of four years when she first came out (in fact it was playing
while we first kissed). The L Word helped me learn important lesbian
language and history, as well as stereotypes held by or about lesbians
and bisexual women. It gave me a lexicon, like “dyke” as more than a
hateful word, “U-Haul,” “butch,” and “spaghetti girl” (straight until
wet). The show also introduced me to a culture, the music of Tegan and
Sara, of Peaches, of Goldfrapp, of Heart. Sure, it’s a limited culture
and a limited world, but it was a new and exciting world for me.

A TV show may not be able to change the world, but The L
Word rocked my high school world and invited me into a new culture and
community. Sure, many of the characters were built around stereotype,
but they also had compelling desires that connected me to them. I
connected to Alice Piezecki, a White bisexual writer and bubbly internet
personality. I connected to Jenny, a Jewish woman struggling with
coming out at first and battling mental illness. I connected to Bette, a
woman constantly redefining labels for herself as a multiply
marginalized woman.  It is Alice who drafts The Chart, at first a
hookup map, and later, a tangible textualizing of human connections.

Three years after The L Word ended historically (and with a
whimper, and in a murder mystery), the show feels more distant and less
relevant. However, The L Word is still relevant to my own coming out
narrative and to so many of my relationships (both romantic and
friendships). And it is for this that I will always appreciate it, will
always smile when I hear a Betty song, and will continue to watch,
re-watch, analyze, critique and savor The L Word.