Previously in Femslash Friday: The Devil Wears Prada.
I’m not proud of this one, exactly. There’s been no rush to write it, in no small part because I cannot possibly encourage you to watch The Big Bang Theory. It isn’t a very good show. It hasn’t been unfairly overlooked by critics, there are no hidden gems. It’s a predictable, unpleasant show and you probably shouldn’t watch it.
And yet, I do. Not, you know, live, like some sort of wizard, and not consistently. But if I’m watching TV, and it comes on, and nobody is around, I don’t change the channel. I’ve been not-changing the channel sometimes on The Big Bang Theory for nigh-on eight years now, with no signs of stopping.
Something about it must channel some form of pleasure to my lizard brain, as I continue to watch despite heartily disliking each and every character and their loathsome catchphrases. So while I am not proud of this habit, I cannot quite bring myself to be ashamed of it either; nothing that brings me pleasure is a waste of time.
I am, I will admit, not proud of my crush on Kaley Cuoco, whose beauty is obvious like the sun; she looks like every popular girl I tried to make laugh on the bus in eighth grade/fell in love with. There is nothing interesting about it. She looks like the god Apollo, and her character’s defining trait appears to be “seeming deeply irritated with every person she is friends with or dating.”
And yet! And yet. She reminds me of every straight girl I have ever uselessly pined for! (CAVEAT THE FIRST: PLENTY OF GAY WOMEN CAN LOOK OR ACT STRAIGHT, CAVEAT THE SECOND: WHAT DOES LOOK OR ACTING STRAIGHT EVEN MEAN, MALLORY, CAVEAT THE THIRD: WHAT’S WRONG WITH GAY OR BI WOMEN, ANSWER: NOTHING, WE’RE WONDERFUL, I DON’T FALL FOR STRAIGHT GIRLS HARDLY EVER, THAT STACEYANN CHIN ARTICLE WAS MOSTLY INACCURATE BUT I ALSO STILL HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS ABOUT IT? BUT ALSO I WOULD NEVER TRY TO MANIPULATE A FRIEND INTO LOVING ME, THIS DIGRESSION IS GETTING OUT OF HAND) That girl! What is it about her? The messy bun, the constant smudge of black eyeliner around her lids, the ex-boyfriend’s black sweatpants she inhabits like a goddess of the hunt, the burgeoning drinking problem – she is a slovenly Siren, and kindles long-dead feelings in me. She is essentially and vitally cute in a way that feels piercing and painful and not in the least diminutive. The kind of cute that hurts, even in the memory of it.
(Ah, I should have told her how I felt, then! In my defense: I didn’t know.)
Anyhow. All you really need to know about Kaley Cuoco’s character on The Big Bang Theory is that she is The Girl, and she is lovely, and she is sharp-tongued and throaty-voiced, and the writing is not especially good and her relationship with the main Boy is so atomically opposed to compelling that I do not choose to name him here.
Also, this season, she got a Short Haircut. (Here are my muddled feelings about a TV character who is not real; here is my strange and embarrassing heart.)
If nothing else, please do not think I am attempting to draw a parallel between straight women and Chuck Lorre shows. Straight women are wonderful, like Deadwood or a beautiful opera. Straight women, you are prestige television drama and critically-acclaimed satires, and don’t let anyone tell you different. I am only trying to explain myself to myself.
There is another woman on The Big Bang Theory, and her name is Amy, and she has brown hair and wears heavy clothes and doesn’t know what to say around people (it’s not a good show), and she’s so astonished and starstruck and heady on her burgeoning friendship with Penny that sometimes she loses her mind, a little.
(I did not say it was love because I was young and I thought some friendships just ached like that. I would say it now, because I know how to call love by its right name.)
Amy is dating Jim Parson’s character, for which he has won four Emmys. Jim Parsons seems like a perfectly nice person, but this is an absurdity. But Amy is as enamored – if not more so – of Penny as she is of him.
Sometimes Penny likes her back, and sometimes Penny doesn’t. Amy never changes.
Penny [speaking of a third party]: You can’t force somebody to like you.
Amy Farrah Fowler: What if you just hang around and act like her friend until you wear her down? I mean, next thing you know, you’re in her house, you’re eating her food and drinking her wine.
Their friendship, like all these kinds of friendship, is never even-sided. Amy is alternately territorial, adoring, put-upon, and obsessive; Penny is just beautiful and drunk and wanted. There are jokes, to be sure, about how funny it would be if Amy really liked Penny like that (“The internet suggests that slumber party guests often engage in harmless experimentation with lesbianism,” she offers one night at Penny’s apartment). And it’s an uncomfortable reflection of both the awful, old predatory lesbian trope – a woman who wants a woman wants too much, wants the wrong thing, can’t think properly for wanting – and, sometimes, reality.
There are times, especially when you are young and do not yet know the right names for things, when you might joke and suggest and imply in case you’re not imagining things, but you seek plausible deniability before you seek reciprocation of your feelings, never asking anything that could be answered in a flat No.
Amy: I’ll let you in on a little secret. Originally, we were painted nude. But I had him add clothes cause I thought it was an unnecessary challenge to our heterosexuality.
Penny: Yeah, good call.
Amy: But, if you ever change your mind, all it would take is some warm, soapy water and a couple of sponges.
Penny: You’re talking about the painting, right?
Amy: Sure.
There are, sometimes, friendships with a straight girl that make you feel lumpy and misshapen and leaden in comparison, as if she exists only to be adored and you exist only to feel things in her direction. Those hurt, but you (usually) grown out of them, and learn how to say things like “I love you” or at the least, “Will you go out with me?” and meet women who want to adore you right back.
But you still, usually, don’t commission an artist to secretly paint the object of your affection with you, then present it to her with the announcement that you were both originally painted naked.
(That part stings, because it makes you think about what your wanting looks like to other people. How inappropriate, how excessive, how out-of-bounds. Can you believe it, people could say about you. She might as well hire someone to paint a nude portrait of the both of them, it’s so obvious.)
It also makes it clear just how much the prospect of a woman loving another woman isn’t real, doesn’t matter, couldn’t actually be addressed or accepted or rejected as a legitimate option. There’s no male character on the show who could present Penny with a beautiful, wall-sized portrait of the two of them, painted while she was unawares, tell her it was originally done in the nude, and then just carry on with their friendship. She’d have to say yes, I like it or that’s awful, get away from me. You couldn’t ignore it, or pretend it hadn’t happened.
You’d acknowledge that it was real, even if you didn’t want want anything to do with it.
It’s not a very good show; I don’t think that you should watch it.
*slowly hides my traditional Mayim Bialik/neuroscience ladies rant*
Probably not the time and place for that…
(I might have kept watching this show if Amy had been a rival for Penny’s affection instead of being instantly paired of with Sheldon, who I always read as asexual. MAYBE.)
Sheldon reads as asexual SO STRONGLY to me, and it’s played for laughs and it’s terrible. He and Amy are just the worst couple possible WHY DON’T THEY BREAK UP every interaction they have as a ‘couple’ (as opposed to interactions they might have as friends) is just uncomfortable and awful and if the genders were flipped it’d be unacceptable even for CBS but because it’s the man who’s being aggressively pressured into things he doesn’t want to do we’re all supposed to laugh.
I agree he seems asexual BUT ALSO he makes the occasional offhand comment about having children or whatever and he was raised in a strict Christian environment so MAYBE he’s “saving himself” (I do not believe this, I think he’s just not interested in sex) and all this is JUST tantalizing enough to keep Amy thinking that maybe one day…. But it’s really sad because Amy clearly wants to bone and she doesn’t handle it super well but then again would I do any better if someone was making tantalizing remarks every so often, I don’t KNOW but yeah, I totally shipped her and Penny because I too have awkward feelings sometimes and anyway, I wish the “gay/bi = nonexistent, gets big laffs” trope would die in a fire.
Aromantic but assumes there is some heterosexual future because that’s how he was raised, and outside his own limited zone of genius he’s not very bright.
I’m aromantic ace and don’t watch the show, but I was mildly annoyed when I learned through pop culture osmosis that he had gotten a girlfriend. Only a handful of aces on the screens in the first place–the Doctor, Sherlock, Sheldon, that guy from _The 40-Year-Old Virgin_–and sooner or later, the showrunners CAN’T RESIST pairing them off. That’s us aromantic folk; we hold out for a while, apparently out of snobbishness or something, but *everyone* falls in romantic love eventually. It is mandatory.
(Don’t even get me started on the sex-as-a-rite-of-passage thing.)
my family don’t understand why i hate sheldon’s character, because of this. they say “no one’s making fun of you for not being interested in dating” (which is how we word it in my family, because delicate southerners) but then they laugh at jokes about sheldon being aro/ace and i’m supposed to not think that they’re laughing at me behind my back, also???
Suna in Ore Monogatari (which just finished) also reads as Ace, which was just really … refreshing, maybe is the word I am looking for?
Oh, hey! I keep hearing things about that one that make me think I should check it out. Guess I’ll put it on my list for next week.
I aggree even if I am neither aromantic nor ace, just a viewer who likes seen different things onscreen not only for the sake of diversity but also for the sake of not being bored to death by constantly listening to the same stories.
But also to point out that the Doctor was married and had grandchildren, so pairing him off was not exactly an attempt to make an aromantic person romantic out of the blue. Just another facet of a person who has countless.
SPOILERS
they broke up in this week’s episode!!!!!!! except it feels like the show will get them back together so i’m only cautiously happy about this. also the new Designated Creepy Friend hit on her right away.
Yeah, I mean, it’s Femslash Friday, not “Bad Opinions Actresses Have Friday,” but if it WERE, we could really talk about this show for a while.
o w w w
</3 I just want someone to love Amy Farrah Fowler the way she deserves to be loved. Amy, waste not your passion on those who will not return it.
Also, Penny, you have chosen the people you surround yourself with. You can make different choices, but you must own your ability to do so.
I have a lot of feelings about the characters in this terrible show that I absolutely watch. :/
I have never watched the Big Bang theory ever and don’t plan to but I have been a teenager in love with a straight girl so this is beautiful and perfect
We’ve all been teenagers in love with straight girls. Mine loved me back and I’m the only girl she’s ever fancied and I died when I found this out when we were 20 and both over it.
Haha, I briefly fantasized about messaging my ex-crush like …? But I definitely, definitely, extra super will never do that.
Mine moved in with another girl we went to highschool with, after we graduated.
I’m over it. Totally. Yup, I sure am.
“(Ah, I should have told her how I felt, then! In my defense: I didn’t know.)” made me gasp in a breath like someone had STABBED ME.
God, I felt that knife too. She later came out to me as pan and I later left the boyfriend I’d had since the ninth grade (I’m 22), but it was already mostly over. She’s dating a lovely young man now, who’s better for her than I could be.
You know, if the Big Bang Theory were about a bunch of super smart science ladies and some dressed like they’d just emerged from their winter hibernation but some were also mildly fashion conscious and they entered into relationships maybe with each other but maybe with outside people (men or women or both) who maybe didn’t always get their smarts but certainly appreciated them… maybe then I’d want to watch the show.
“(I did not say it was love because I was young and I thought some friendships just ached like that. I would say it now, because I know how to call love by its right name.)”
oof
This line plus “There are, sometimes, friendships with a straight girl that make you feel lumpy and misshapen and leaden in comparison, as if she exists only to be adored and you exist only to feel things in her direction.”
This tone worries me, because I have definitely had *feelings* for straight girls that I later discovered were queer… Did I call them “straight girls” to make myself feel better about not being a match for them? Did I assume, like so many dudebros, that if a girl is not into me that they are [not] gay? uuugghhhh
And for that matter, same-sex friendships are not the only ones that create that same sense of longing and unlovableness… Not every friendship makes your heart hurt, but oh there are those…
I think, for me, it was about… girls who had things figured out. Girls who were unattainable, and sure. And since I didn’t even know I was queer, myself, I didn’t even know I was ‘into’ them, or what them being into me would look like and… uuuuugh it’s complicated and awful and I wish I hadn’t read this article at work I NEED A MOMENT.
That line really killed me, I remember feeling so flat and unlovable around a few girls, (not even all straight just…more. Better? I don’t know) that I was reduced to this cartoonish lump of WANT. And the awareness of my want made these women into paper dolls in my brain. And all of a sudden the horrible weirdness that culturally surrounds queer women has reduced us to nothing.
This article messed me up man.
And the bit about how your wanting must look to other people? Like on the one hand, thank you Mallory for showing me other people fear this too. On the other hand, if we all fear it, god, then it must be true.
Am I really having tears in my eyes bc of an article on TBBT?
I’m a disgrace.
I didn’t know I needed this article but I so did. I think Amy’s crush on Penny is also, in addition to its queer (not at all sub)text, a longing for the beauty and ease of being a pretty and popular girl. She’s been shunned by girls like Penny all her life and now is friends with one and doesn’t know how to handle it. And it’s weird that the show displays this nakedly and honestly and doesn’t show Penny shunning Amy for it, but then also leaves Amy unable to win.
Not that I overly identify with Amy or watch this show or anything.
ME NEITHER, I ONLY WATCH PRESTIGE TELEVISION, LIKE “I’M THE DRUG MAN” AND “MAN BOSSES” AND “HELP ME IT’S THE PAST AND WE CAN’T HAVE FEELINGS HERE”
Ah, prestige television! I am a big fan of The Muddy and the Zombied, Upstairs Downton-stairs, Game of Tits, Terrorist or Not?, and Pyrrhic Victory in Baltimore.
Wait, which show is “Man Bosses?” I feel stupid.
All the shows are Man Bosses. But probably they meant Mad Men.
This is very timely for me because I watched my first episode on a transatlantic flight about a week ago, and it’s on TV reruns here in England too, so now I watch it to hear American accents and because by happenstance it became my homesick security blanket. Eventually I plan to wean myself off. Maybe during #stoptober?
tell me more about #stoptober please
It’s an anti-smoking campaign designed to help people quit with some positive peer pressure: https://stoptober.smokefree.nhs.uk/ (once you’ve gone 28 days without smoking, it’s much more likely that you’ll quit for good) I’m an ex-smoker, and my wonderful friends gently bullied me into stopping, which I really appreciated since I was having no luck on my own. I’ll explain it above too, since I notifications only seem to go through to one person at a time.
Ooh, I need to know about #stoptober, too! I will happily talk at length in an American accent in exchange for this information!
It’s an anti-smoking campaign designed to help people quit with some positive peer pressure: https://stoptober.smokefree.nhs.uk/ (once you’ve gone 28 days without smoking, it’s much more likely that you’ll quit for good) I’m an ex-smoker, and my wonderful friends gently bullied me into stopping, which I really appreciated since I was having no luck on my own. [repeating here, so you get the notification] I’m going to read your comment in a John Wayne accent, now, if that’s OK. Or really anyone with a nice strong twang.
Yew looked awful purty when yuh told me about that thar campaign, secondursula. Right purty indeed.
Much obliged, Heathered.
awww it’s so sweet to me that you watch it for the American accents, because I occasionally look up Finnish things to hear the language/accents -which-are-IMPOSSIBLE-to-imitate, (we lived there for 2 years) and I feel like a silly nostalgic American who has no right to feel nostalgic about things which aren’t from my culture.
but hey. it’s fine. 🙂
As an American who lived in Finland for a few years, I do literally exactly the same thing. I just wish it was possible to find moomin cartoons online… 🙁
I’m sure you won’t see this, and you probably weren’t looking for the English dub anyway, but here: http://kisscartoon.me/Cartoon/Moomin
I hadn’t read that Staceyann Chin article and it made my head explode.
it feels S O R T O F (very) trolly and super tongue in cheek, and part of me is like “STACEYANN, don’t rile them up” and part of me is like “StaceyANNNNNN” and part of me is like “Staceyann!!??!?!”
When I saw your link and clicked, I was immediately transported back in time to my undergrad days when Staceyann came to my college and ALL THE FEELS came rushing back to me on this dismal Monday. Unsure if these are good or bad but NOSTALGIA!
Mallory, this is more beautiful and painful than even the Amelia Bedelia thing, _how could you_ (thank you).
I’ve always thought the greatest appeal of this show is how insanely colorful it is… the saturation is so amped it’s like watching real-life cartoons. I often find myself not-changing the channel as well, just because it pleases my eyes at a very base level. Queer undertones on point tho
oh my god thank you for explaining why i first started watching it
TV is so starved for colour. Prestige shows are the worst, they’re so black and grey and visually dark that sometimes I can’t even tell what’s happening onscreen because every beardy man is the same dark grey smudge as every other beardy man.
Say what you will about black and white TV but at least they understood contrast was a good thing.
One of the longest-running jokes in the Hannibal fandom is that the creators never paid the electric bill. Favorite show, but only about 1/4 of it is visible to the human eye.
My favorite prestige show is True Detective, and I definitely know what you’re talking about with many scenes in muted tones of gray and beige — but I think they balanced it out, especially toward the end, with the gorgeous sweeping shots of verdant Louisiana countryside. So much green!
This mainly just makes me miss ‘Pushing Daisies.’
Hasn’t Raj engaged in some Amy-esque line crossing over the years that is ignored as well? Not that I’ve ever seen the show. Nope, never.
Now let’s talk about Bernadette.
PLEASE CHECK THE TAGS
Someday Leslie Winkel is just going to shoot the lot of them in the head as part of her plans for world domination and that will be it. She will probably spare Amy, who will become her henchwoman.
headcannon headcanon.
I loathe the show so much that I consider it one of my good points that I don’t watch it.
Sorry, sorry, I realize this is not the point of the piece.
Never read Mallory on the train. Oh god, I’m cringing at the memory of all those straight perfect white blonde athletic girl crushes, and there’s one right across from me and can I crawl back under something now, please?
But what about Bernadette? She’s the one I want now.
This is making me realise what a relief it was to turn 30 because now those perfect blonde young women just see me as ‘older lady’ (I KNOW but honestly) and it doesn’t have to be so fraught when I’m sitting near one on a train.
I am so far past thirty I can barely remember it, and I still cringe at the memory of those crushes. I don’t get all fraught on the train (mostly I get annoyed because, my god, do people never shut up? ever?), but there was one who looked like this one girl I knew way back when, and well.
Basically all the nerd girls I know are queer so like, it doesn’t even make sense to me that there are no queer girls on this show. As a demographic, we are Pretty Gay.
Ugh, this reminds me of the way that I feel about How I Met Your Mother, another not-very-good show that I definitely watched and definitely had a lot of thoughts and feelings about, mainly regarding the characters and the played-for-laughs queer (not sub)text. Oh, Alyson Hannigan, forever playing the Bi Girl Who is Not Actually Bi Shut Up That’s Not a Thing You Have to Pick a Side What Kind of Monster Are You.
I had the worst adult realization about my middle school straight girl crush: Sarah Palin mentioned her in a book as a very helpful campaigner in my state. I almost died on the spot.
THAT IS THE BEST STORY I HAVE EVER HEARD.
Ugh, right in the feels. I immediately remembered that exact ache that was totally just a friend ache what are you talking about. My middle school BFF whom I’ve mostly fallen out of touch with got married recently (damn you facebook) and I don’t know if I had acknowledged to myself that I was in love with her when I was 12 until I tried to think of how to say congratulations.
How old were you when you realised that’s not just how friendships feel?
I might have been, like… 25. Idk.
Oh man, I mean… I was 18 when I realized I was bi, but I think to this day I still have an occasional moment of “oh..ohhhhhh. that’s what was going on” when I think back to certain friendships.
It is not a good show. I still watch it. I do not know why.
I watch for Raj, because he’s my favourite.
“Why!? Why do I drink my own urine? Because it’s sterile! And I like the taste.”
I watch it sometimes just to yell at the TV.
That’s what I watch Star Trek ToS for.
((not meant for posting but ofc post it if you want but sorry about the finger malfunction that just made me post about six times it wasn’t spam I promise))
Mal, I love you. But why oh why do you keep breaking my heart like this? This post led me down memoryscapes I’ve left behind so long ago and suddenly I’m plunked there, right in the very middle of all those feelings again.
(If only parentheses had power in real life…)
Whoof. Yep, this one went right through the ribcage. The ladies I would run to the family computer to ICQ chat with the SECOND dinner ended. The college friend I wrote a passionate letter to as soon as I got on a plane home from freshman year. The closeted housemate! Whoof.
WHOOF.
See, I totally think Leonard could present Penny with a similar portrait and note that they were originally naked and then they’d just carry on as usual. There would be A Painfully Awkward Conversation That’s So Awkward I Need To Mute The TV To Prevent My Own Embarrassment At The Character Who Did The Embarrassing Thing, but they’d survive it with no real change.
Howard doing that to Penny, however, would result in her snapping him in two like a twig, setting him on fire, and dancing on the ashes.
I NEED TO TELL MY BEST FRIEND I LOVE HER
i wrote a love poem for her on my fridge in french this could go nowhere
please tell me how this went
*very quietly*
*quieter*
*scarcely a whisper*
i like the big bang theory and also himym and i don’t care who knows it except i totally do. i will watch them on purpose and buy the dvds.
i don’t think i’ll ever be able to say that out loud in front of god and the toast and everyone, though, without a thousand disclaimers
SHAME! SHAME! [rings handbell]
If himym had ended at like season 3-4 it probably would probably be widely discussed as excellent. It just kept going and so all worst aspects.of the characters kept building and building and the whole show flanderized.
I unashamedly like Big Bang Theory. And I totally identify with Amy.
I don’t think the jokes at Amy’s expense are funny. They make me feel sad for her. But I think they are supposed to. I think the show is about more than its jokes. I think it’s kind of about that sadness.
(I would say the same for HIMYM. It’s supposed to be sad, with a layer of dark humor over the sadness. Barney is the saddest, for reasons totally different from Amy, but maybe not that different? I mean, in terms of wanting too much…)
I don’t watch much tv anymore but I like Will and Grace and watched that on purpose, as well as other shows like that, so… sad fistbump? I know it’s not good and some parts of it are terrible but I like it, so.
This is fantastic and really great and well done and made me both feel and think many things. Thank you for writing it.
I always hated the Amy->Penny thing because Penny is such a terrible person and I wanted better for Amy. But then it turns out that Amy’s a pretty terrible person, too, so #shruggy
This post is doing pretty weird things to my head, though. I sometimes had intense one-way friendships, a side effect of autism spectrum social awkwardness amongst other things, and I can see where they would have read as crushes according to this description of Amy. Maybe they were???
My boyfriend likes this show, so we watch it sometimes. It has its moments, but I agree it’s not a good show. I don’t have the heart to tell him that, so I mainly just enjoy the David and Darlene reunion moments it provides.
“What is straight acting?” might be the thing you wrote that resonated most with me ever. Not my favorite thing you ever wrote, but just the thing that I agreed with so deep to the core. Straight acting is a plague the LGBT community unleashes upon itself and we need to stop. If “straight acting” is a thing, and it’s not, I don’t ever wanna be it.
Mallory how do you know teenage me better than I do
I’m not queer in the least, but I’m a fat girl, and can I tell you, fat girls aren’t allowed to feel feelings about anyone, because it is hilarious and gross that a fat girl in middle school or high school might feel love. I feel this article.
Oh so much this! And if you’re fat and tall and a bit nerdy it’s a joke for you to feel love or be the object of anyone else’s. So much teenage sadness. 🙁
<solidarity hugs>
I’m fat and queer and so much pain right now.
It is probably not a coincidence that Kaley Cuoco announced her divorce mere hours after this was posted. If Mallory expressed a crush on me, I’d bolt from matrimony too.
“I did not say it was love because I was young and I thought some friendships just ached like that. I would say it now, because I know how to call love by its right name.”
I wish I had found The Toast, and the community, back in college. I grew up so strictly religious that I didn’t even consider looking who I was in the face until I was married to a very nice man, with babies.
The few times I was caught vaguely leaning outside my boundaries I was jerked back . I made a giant poster collage on my dorm room wall freshman year of women, beautiful women that I cut out of magazines. I didn’t even consider why I was doing it, and before I could really begin TO consider it, mom came by for a visit, and gave me that look and asked what it was, and I took it down and pushed that part of me back back BACK again. I first noticed in my best friend because at a party she had another woman’s head in her lap while watching a movie, with her arm draped over that friend’s shoulders, and I thought it just looked so *nice,* but nothing ever happened and I realized she was straight and there are more more dozens of moments like that that I remember all my life, and it just squeezes me down into nothing.
Reading things like this, it’s so beautiful and exactly right, it kills, because I’m living the life I committed to, and I just ache. And I don’t know why I’m saying this buried in this comments section, but this is my favorite place online, and I feel a part of everyone here, and this article has brought me to tears, and it just needed to be said, even whispered in anonymity.
Oh sweetie. I hope there is joy in the life you committed to too.
Joy and regret, all twisted together. Places like The Toast help immeasurably.
There’s also the fierce determination that my kids will always know they’re free to be true to their own selves, with the complete and total love & support of their parents.
This article had me weeping, but this comment made me cry harder. I have so much empathy for you my faceless friend. I ache for you. There are many of us who are living a life that’s not so bad a life…it’s just not…living. Living right? I don’t know. You have all of my prayers and good vibes and white light and all.
And I wish you every little comfort you need as you muddle through.
“There are many of us who are living a life that’s not so bad a life…it’s just not…living. Living right?”
That’s exactly it. And thank you. I was afraid to say anything here, because I’m not sure how this community would respond to someone who is keeping their essential self hidden. I was afraid of being told I wasn’t welcome, or didn’t belong. And stories like this are why I need The Toast- because I can read about experiences shared (like this article) and experiences that, had I looked into myself sooner, I might have shared. And both speak to the deepest part of me.
This is a good place…possibly the best place on the internet I’ve found.
If you ever need to talk, really really, my email is fairly easy to find thanks to IntenseDebate.
Be well.
Cheers, from another who was similarly late to the self-knowledge party and found herself with husband when she arrived. (Gee, the fact that every time I get drunk I try to kiss her can’t mean anything substantial, right? And that when I’m sober I still feel this blistering insecurity and this excessive, embarrassing joy? Nope, nothing to see here. Best continue in a string of heterosexual monogamous relationships, and never speak of it in daylight.)
Good on you for deciding to whisper here. In my experience, finding people you can be honest with, online or in person, is a tremendous gift. It needn’t be a stepping stone toward anything, and I suspect that ‘sexual authenticity’ can be a false and disappointing idol for some… at least it falls far short of a moral imperative… but things that are hidden take up so much space.
Being the self you think you’re supposed to be at the expense of the self you really are is so very human it hurts. Anyone who treats you as less than human for that experience is so lacking in empathy and experience that I both pity them and want them to stay far the hell from me.
Good luck charting your course to the happiest you there can be.
I watch it too. We started when there were more physics jokes and my husband was pining for his grad school days, and now that it’s less science and more generic internet-nerd pop culture I guess we just watch it out of habit. Kaley Cuoco doesn’t do it for me in the slightest, but I’ve definitely been the Amy in a friendship too many times to count. The jokes about luscious lips and gorgeous hair juuuuust kiddddinggggg no lesbians in here definitely no homosexual content in this conversation so how was church?? hits pretty close to come. In general I strongly empathize with Amy’s complete inability to just be cool and normal around female friends. I get just like that when I hang out around women now since I spend my days mostly working with and socializing with men.
But yeah I wish the show would stop being on cause I kinda hate watching it. In my headcanon literally none of the relationships on the show exist. Sheldon is his happy ace/aro self, Howard and Raj are together and pretty adorable, Penny obviously just completely ignored the nerds across the hall and continued dating a neverending series of meatheads…not sure what I’d do with Leonard…and Amy, dear Amy, bags Leslie Winkle who despite her prickly exterior is genuinely kind to her, and lives happily ever after.
I like your version so much better….
Your version is amazing! I have just completed wiping my memory of all of canon TBBT have replaced your superior version. And we also add some nice things for Bernadette? She is adorable and smart and way out of nasty Howard’s league! Check Lorre shows a severe unfamiliarity with reality if he thinks that a real woman like Bernadette whatever and up a man like Howard.
I kind of liked the doctor that Leonard dated briefly, she was funny and fun and handled Sheldon well. Leonard asked if they could take things a little slower and the show just dropped her entirely.
I always liked to imagine he was able to be extremely supportive of her hectic schedule while she was able to understand but not get sucked into his nerdy interests while helping him feel more grounded and relaxed when hanging out with less nerdy people.
In fifth grade I asked one of my friends, thinking of a third party who I wasn’t friends with, “Have you ever, like, really wanted to be friends with someone?” because that was as close as I could get to understanding how I felt. My friend gamely came up with examples from her life, like “Well I have a cousin about my age and I don’t see her very often but I wish I knew her better,” and I didn’t know what I was looking for but I knew it wasn’t that, so I kept saying, “No, not like that…” and she’d come up with another example and I’d say, “Not like that either…” And I wondered why no one else seemed to have ever felt the way I was feeling. And then our other friends decided to start a fifth-grade version of a lit mag and wanted us to write poetry for it. It was divided into chapters by theme, one of the themes being love/romance, and I wrote a LOVE POEM FOR THIS GIRL who I “wanted to be friends with,” and I STILL didn’t realize what to call those feelings until I was in high school.
Oh god you have just brought my first crush flooding back in technicolour detail. I was 9, she was 11 and we were in the same Brownies pack. (Do you have Brownies in the U.S? Like girl guides but younger.) She was clever and quiet and interesting in a pale, waiflike way, and I wanted desperately to be her friend but I felt brash and lumpish and completely inferior in her presence, so I just pined from a distance and daydreamed about her. On her last day of Brownies, when her age group were moving up to Guides, I seized my chance and sidled up to her, pushed a heart shaped cookie into her hand, mumbled something about how much I was going to miss her, and ran away.
Like you, it took me years to realise that my feelings towards this girl weren’t simply an intense wish to be friends.
(My skills in approaching a crush haven’t improved since then – I’d probably be just as awkward if I met her again now.)
This is exactly why we need more representation of queer affection for younger aged people! If I had seen it, known it was a beautiful possibility when I was a child, it would have changed the entire trajectory of my life.
Mallory this is BY FAR the most utterly horrifying thing you have every written. Thank you.
One of the reasons I get so ranty about representation is because of these kinds of feels. In high school, I knew I wasn’t doing friendships right (I went to a Catholic all girls’ school A-yup) but I didn’t know why. And I knew I wasn’t a lesbian because I knew that lesbians wore dungarees and had buzzcuts and all that. And I didn’t look like that and I didn’t feel SURE like lesbians seemed to feel sure, and I knew I liked boys too and… well. I just thought I was bad at being a human.
Ok I kind of AM bad at being a human BUT ALSO I am queer and it was a very confusing decade. It would have always been confusing but it didn’t have to be as confusing as it was, if only there had been any examples of people with more complicated sexuality, who were just characters and not The Gay Character Stereotype.
Yesssssss, everything. Thank you so much for this!
My standard line about the show is, It’s a mirage. All the jokes are about how the men aren’t manly enough, and the women aren’t womanly enough, this one is so queer, that one doesn’t know how to girl right, etc. It’s not about how nerds are people too. Nerds and queers, we are clearly not people, according to this show.
So no, I don’t watch it. It leaves too much of a bad taste in my mouth. I already get told I’m not a person enough by popular culture. I’m full, man.
But yes, it was sorta fun for a while, I agree. And thank you for this heartbreaking article.
Yes and all of this too.
“It also makes it clear just how much the prospect of a woman loving another woman isn’t real, doesn’t matter, couldn’t actually be addressed or accepted or rejected as a legitimate option. There’s no male character on the show who could present Penny with a beautiful, wall-sized portrait of the two of them, painted while she was unawares, tell her it was originally done in the nude, and then just carry on with their friendship. She’d have to say yes, I like it or that’s awful, get away from me. You couldn’t ignore it, or pretend it hadn’t happened.
You’d acknowledge that it was real, even if you didn’t want want anything to do with it.”
This. This had me weeping in my coffee. As a queer woman who married a man, who LOVES that man so fiercely but still feels a little broken because…a man? Really? For real though? Why with the betrayal of your tribe? This bit destroyed me. I feel so invisible. Felt so invisible. Those of us who (to borrow a phrase from a lovely straight girl who didn’t know what to do with me) “play infield and outfield” blend in so well and I’m beginning to wonder if it’s intentional because it hurts so much to want.
None of my response made sense did it? Sigh. This was glorious and I’m shocked I had big feelings about a stupid sitcom. Well done Mallory. As always.
I’m just starting at my screen unable to think anything but IT’S NOT JUST ME over and over. I so completely get you.
And on a completely unrelated note, is “Megling” a reference to A Wrinkle in Time? I have a deep and abiding love for that whole series.
It is INDEED! A college nickname that stuck…much to my very great delight.
Also plus…there is very little better than immediately connecting with someone over something so fundamental. Heart eyes for you!
It is the First-and-Twentieth Century. We have pocket video phones. Mars is solely inhabited by robots. A puissant psychodelic is cunningly available in grocery store seed bins. Mandatory silver jumpsuits are unaccountably absent, but there is NO EARTHLY REASON FOR ANY SHOW ON GOD’S GREEN EARTH TO HAVE A LAUGHTRACK. Kill it, kill it with fire.
When I was a kid I had a crush on Blossom. THAT IS NOT RELEVANT TO LOATHING BBT.
Totally off topic:
I’m not a regular on this site, so I didn’t know Mallory crushed on the ladies; guess that explains why she doesn’t think Chirs Kimball is a raging hunk of beef tenderloin. And that’s my way of saying I’m eagerly awaiting the next parody letter. (Those brilliant letters are how I recently found this site & Mallory’s awesome writing/humor).
Reminds me of my first semester in Physics. There where so many Sheldon shirts. So many…
i wrote a love poem for her on my fridge in french this could go nowhere