I have long regretted that one of my first lesbian-antennae moments wasn’t the result of a better movie. It was the scene where Andrea cuts her hair off to disguise herself as a boy in Motocrossed, a Disney Channel Original movie that ran continuously during the summer of 2001 that I saw, conservatively, four hundred times. Since then, I have been unable to help noticing that Disney Channel Original movies have more than their fair share of lesbotic moments. Here are some of them.
Pixel Perfect
There’s…I don’t know quite how to describe it, but there’s an actual scene where Loretta joins Sam inside her own body and they temporarily share a consciousness, and while I’ll refrain from the tired “lesbian urge to merge” joke, it’s pretty gay. It’s got that sort of classic “do I want to be her or be with her” gay conundrum (the answer is both).
Also, this movie takes place in a universe where EVERYONE wears puka shell necklaces and apparently hates bands that don’t have dancers?
Smart House
Most of these movies, I can make a strong argument. Smart House…all I have for you is this.
I feel like the house is gay.
No, I know how that sounds. I just…I feel like the sentient house is gay?
Let me try again: there is a thesis in here, somewhere, I think, about how her weird 1950s-housewife getup and her extreme jealousy and deadly smothering nature and inability to get little details of the heterosexual nuclear family right totally dovetails with mid-century thinking about the causes of lesbianism? No, I know, it’s a fucking stretch. Still. I feel that way, and feelings are never wrong.
Brink!
It works if you read Erik von Detten’s character as a lesbian, which I do. Also his butchy best female friend as a lesbian, which is obvious, and his evil rollerblading opponent as a lesbian, which I also do, because look at him.
Alley Cats Strike!
Girls who like girls also like bowling shirts. Anyone who is wearing a bowling shirt is at least 30% a lesbian.
The Entirety of the Cheetah Girls Movie
“But Mallory, The Cheetah Girls wasn’t about lesbiani–” NOW WHO’S BEING NAIVE, CHARLES
Kim Possible
COME. ON.
I’m not going to talk about that WNBA movie about the basketball-playing twins, even though it was called DOUBLE TEAMED because I have to draw the line somewhere and that line is twin sisters.
Motocrossed
The whole movie counts, obviously, but there’s something about a romantic-comedy-montage of two people racing dirtbikes as a first date (to, I want to say a Fastball song?) that feels like the most lesbian thing ever put on screen.
Cadet Kelly
COME ON. COME ON. THIS IS ONE SECOND AWAY FROM BEING THAT L WORD EPISODE WHERE ALICE AND TASHA MAKE OUT AFTER DEFEATING DON’T ASK DON’T TELL. THEY ARE DOING *MEANINGFUL* RIFLE DANCING IN FULL MILITARY DRESS AND THAT IS THE QUEEREST THING TWO WOMEN CAN DO TOGETHER, INCLUDING SEX, THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME.
