Feminist Underwear

Where the FUCK is my “will-they, won’t-they?”

Lesbian issues are plentiful. blah blah marriage inequality homeless queer youth trans* life expectancies are terrible dan savage ruins everything so LET’S TALK ABOUT SOMETHING THAT REALLY MATTERS. TELEVISION.

Specifically, television couples. Great television couples. Do you know who the greatest television couples are? Sweet, shut your mouth and listen up because your opinion is irrelevant: The greatest television couples are the “will-they won’t-they?” couples. The couples who spend season after season making dumb mistakes and having unnaturally nice hair after waking up in the morning and eating an awful lot of junk food for people who remain so thin, who spend episode after episode flirting and developing an adorable rapport and getting jealous over love interest rivals and kissing but then regretting it and crying and ultimately, getting exactly what it is they deserve: each other. You know the ones. You’re naming them now, in your head. (If you didn’t immediately think of Jim and Pam, I question your commitment to humanity.)

Some would argue that the “will-they won’t-they?” trope is so beloved by viewers because it reflects the way real people fall in love in the real world: it’s complicated, messy, and takes time. Fuck that shit. The “will-they won’t-they?” trope is hardly a depiction of real life. It’s so much better than real life. It’s like a romantic comedy that you can picture your actual self starring in. It’s the version of your life if all the weird shit that happened to you was endearing, instead of miserable. It’s what we wish we were.

In short, the “will-they won’t-they?” is everything that’s great about television. So where the motherfuck is mine?

Where the lesbos at, bro? Where’s the lesbian Fry and Leela? The lesbian Booth and Brennan (if you say Rizzoli and Isles I will laugh pityingly at you because I adore Benson and Cabot so I get it, I really do, but it’s NGH)? The lesbian Jack and Liz? The lesbian fucking Sam and Diane or Ross and Rachel?

I’ll tell you where they are. There’s on the after school specials. They’re on Glee, where they sing their feelings and feed into weird male-privilege nonsense about what lesbianism is. They’re on Pretty Little Liars, where they’re sixteen years old and they have to come out to their moms and everyone weeps. They’re on Grey’s Anatomy where it takes several deaths and the autopsy of a deer before we start to think, okay, a lesbian wedding would be a nice change of pace.They’re on the L Word, where everyone wears power suits and utters what can only be described as the worst dialogue the world has ever known and OH MY GOD STOP SAYING YOU’RE A SHANE NO ONE IS A SHANE I HAVE NEVER MET A REAL LIFE SHANE YOU WEIRDO.

But they’re not on my NBC Thursday night comedy lineup. They’re not fighting crime or working in an office or sharing an apartment together. They’re too busy being fucking dramatic, all over the place, to make me laugh or make me cringe or most importantly, make me ship.

That’s what I want to do. I want to ship a lesbian couple so bad it physically pains me. I want to light up like a fucking Festivus pole whenever I see them smile at each other, because ohgoddidyouseethattheyaresoinlovewilltheykissidon’tknowwhatisHAPPENING. I want to get sad when they date someone else, because we know who’s really right for them. I want sitcom cliffhangers. I want angst. Not lesbian angst, with angry families and hate crimes and political speeches, but straight people angst, with misunderstandings and high jinx and so much bad timing it’s unreal. I want their wedding to be 90 percent hilarity and 10 percent heart and rival Jim and Pam Halpert’s. Just once I would like a lesbian couple whose sexuality is an awesome incidental thing and not a battle of cultural ideologies. Not because we don’t need those but because we have them already, and I think a Jane and Pam would be a refreshing change of pace.

And that’s what I want.