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.
Wait, which one is this from????
Gotta Kick It Up! (the exclamation point is part of the title, because Disney Channel)
Yes! Yeeeees, someone else remembers that movie!
Wait, is this the one with the side plots about a quincaenera and saving the dad? Or am I conflating two movies together?
I beliiieve you’re conflating it with this, but there’s no wikipedia page for that movie for me to confirm the plot. But I remember a party involved…
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0241953/?ref_=fn_al_t…
I finally just googled it after half-remembering the name and it’s Sweet 15 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_15. So all the things I thought were Gotta Kick It Up! side plots are actual main plots of a completely different movie.
I loved Gotta Kick It Up!
…Oh my god, that’s why I was obsessed with that movie
And what about K.C. undercover lesbian dancing? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j01rZeYBuAw
I recognize and respect that this is classic disney channel movies, but would also like to throw out there that the more recent introductions Teen Beach (and Teen Beach 2) are Incredibly Bisexual and if Disney had ANY RESPECT FOR GENRE they would make the lesbianism endgame.
Came here to say Mack and Lela 5EVA. Also, all those boys are super queer.
I watched motocrossed approximately 100 times during the 7th grade. It took me about 12 years to understand why.
It’s a lot newer, but: the entirety of the Princess Protection Program.
YES and i also firmly believe Hannah Montana and Lilly had a bit of a vibe going on too
They 100% definitely did.
omg, i love that clicking “bisexuals everywhere” will lead me to search google for “bisexuals everywhere”
Ron Stoppable is the beardiest beard to ever beard; Kim and Shego are the textbook fucking example of lesbian girlfrienemies. I’ve felt this in my bones (not spoken it- my heart had not the words) since I was like 7.
EXHIBIT A, YOUR HONOR.
I feel weird about how vehemently I ship this, given that I was only ever a casual Kim Possible viewer.
I put the Kim Possible ringtone on my first phone and it was probably one of the best decisions in my life. I was also really upset that Kim and Ron got together and it took me years to figure out why.
Kim/Shego was my very first femslash on ff.net way back in the day. I thought looking up M rated fics might be fun, and then there was Kim kissing Shego and everything was suddenly amazing.
Man, I’m pretty sure even my mother sensed it in Kim Possible.
Cadet Kelly though.
That is the apex right there. (Pseudo)military gayness is the best gayness and the Disney Channel realized this.
Also, did anyone else notice that they were doing “meaningful rifle dancing” WITHOUT THE RIFLES? If that’s not symbolic, I don’t know what is.
Throwing it waaay back: the scene in Suzie Q when Amy Jo Johnson rips off the top layer of her prom dress started puberty for me, and I have no idea how I am straight today because of that.
I don’t know when it came out but I firmly believe a strong argument can be made for Wish Upon a Star. I was obsessed with that movie as a kid and looking back the one scene that really sticks out in my memory is when the older sister in the younger sister’s body like wears leather and dances on a table in the school cafeteria?? That probably says a lot about 8 year old me that I wouldn’t realize for another 12 years but anyway the point is at least one of the sisters probably grew up to be queer in someway, maybe both of them, and for me personally this movie is the highlight of Katherine Heigl’s career.
Yes! I remember wondering how that ended up on tv but I think they edited it out later? Sad times. I’m still obsessed with Heigl’s purple outfit with the horrible frosted lipstick
oh my god, same that outfit was everything
I had forgotten this movie existed until now, and weirdly all I remember is the montage of the sisters’ different getting ready routines, because I was like 10 and was like, “Am I going to be expected to take baths and shave my legs EVERY DAY in order to be a girl?”
Not a Disney Channel movie, but I feel like Stick It should be gay. I just. I feel like it really should, y’know? For no particular reason other than the movie is ALL ABOUT BADASS GIRLS DOING INADVISABLE COOL-LOOKING THINGS, and teenage delinquent Missy Peregrym, and teenage delinquent Missy Peregrym’s abs.
I would like to point out that Missy Peregrym wasn’t given a male love interest in this movie, so I’d argue the filmmakers agreed with you~
Friend, you make a compelling point.
MANNNN I was waiting this whole movie for her inevitable lesbian romance, but was at least consoled by the fact they never made her end up with a dude.
Haley will later credit the vaguely butch judge for saving her from a life of ill-worn heterosexuality. The vaguely butch judge (VBJ for short) will then invite Haley to her wedding, at which VBJ will look dapper in a white tux and her partner will look lovely in a long flowy dress and a set of fairy wings.
Motorcrossed was a perfectly adequate movie! And also apparently a “loose adaption of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night ” according to wikipedia.
Ahh, hence the “disguised as a boy” deal! Not having seen the Disney movie, I was wondering: “Is motocross really that gender-segregated, that a girl would have to disguise herself as a boy in order to motocross?” (To do motocross? Have motocross? Of a motocross; to a motocross; O motocross!)
omg
IIRC, she had to pretend to be her brother who hurt himself for the Big Race to win the moneys for the family, and also to prove to her pops that chicks can motocross, too.
I grew up racing go karts and motocross and was always irked at that, since motorsports are completely coed, always. Well, they’re segregated by weight class, which means that the light division tends to have more women but yeah, not necessary.
i remember when i watched the Suite Life of Zack and Cody reruns on Disney and spent the entire summer writing fanfiction where London hooked up with both Maddie and Mr. Moseby.
i found the fan fic a few years later in my old room and i read them, and then i had to burn them because they were terrifying
…but London and Maddy tho? HELLA GAY.
And speaking of Ashley Tisdale and DCOMs, Sharpay/Gabriella please and thank you.
I feel… I feel as if I have been waiting for this article my whole life. As if a certain destiny has been fulfilled, as if the stars themselves have, in their billion-year arc away from one another and towards the brink of infinity, have crossed paths in the night sky, for all of us to see.
I don’t think I ever truly recovered from watching Flight of the Navigator as a very, very young gay. I yearned to fly off with that slightly nerdy boy in that perfectly minimalist spaceship with our tiny hairless pet alien-chihuahua. I just googled that movie and it turns out Sarah Jessica Parker was in it, which makes the whole thing that 1400% gayer.
SAME
Was she the nurse with purple hair or something? I loved that movie!
A+ Gif usage, everyone.
It was not a Disney channel original movie, but can we talk about my FAVORITE* childhood film, Gold Diggers: The Secret of Bear Mountain? Because, uh… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fceoHzj2MMI
*okay, favorite aside from Never Been Kissed and The Halloween Tree
omg yes! one of the many reason 90’s Christina Ricci is my patronus.
Right? ALSO Anna Chlumsky stopped acting for a while, but then started again to do In The Loop/Veep. The first time she came on screen in In The Loop, I literally gasped.
WHOA I did not know that’s who that was! I’m gonna have to rewatch that like yesterday. Actually, I think I’ve avoided doing so because I was afraid it wouldn’t hold up but watching that trailer it looks like a totally great movie still!
Also the girl who calls Anna Chlumsky “really trashy” at 0:49 is Krissy from Now and Then!
AND ONE OF THE OTHER SNOBBY GIRLS IS JEWEL STAITE, I learned today from the internet. Oh my god oh my god.
No, it is totally worth rewatching, it is excellent. Let me know when you do.
Sad note: that actress died a few years ago. 🙁 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashleigh_Aston_Moor…
Now and Then is like, a top 10 film for me. Maybe top 5.
That movie had my best and favoritest crushes when I was 13. Vada Sultenfus AND Christina Ricci?! YES, PLEASE!!!
This movie! I saw the beginning, when I was 10 or 11, and my parents made me turn it off! I think they were concerned I was going to develop a crush on a girl who was into caving. They were right. I mean, it took a few years, but, yep, that is exactly what happened.
I remember discovering that at the library and watching it repeatedly. Then I had to answer the question “What person would you most like to meet?” or something like that at school, and had to explain to my 4th grade class who Anna Chlumsky is (stumbling on the last name).
My lord. This is a movie I never heard about that my elementary school self would have DIED over (and not understood why for over a decade).
Now “making people lesbians by argument” should be a real tag, I KNOW you’ve used that before. In fact it should be upgraded to a series.
Stuck In The Suburbs didn’t even PRETEND to give them male love interests.
Fortunately the architectural profession has taken a firm stand in opposition to the bigoted, harmful practice of conversion therapy for gay houses.
The blond theater dude in High School Musical! I’m like 90% sure he was supposed to be wink-wink gay, he’s the only one who didn’t end up with someone at the end of the movie, etc.
This seems like as good a place as any to bring up my one – very specific but very large – complaint with High School Musical: there is a throwaway line about how Sharpay and her BROTHER played Romeo and Juliet. What?!
this has distressed me for years! also the fact that they apparently always play the lead roles? so that it’s basically a foregone conclusion that Ms Darbus will offer them the leads in her new musiCAL, which she wrote, which is ostensibly about a young couple???
In the High School Musical 2 they sort of after-the-fact paired him with a tertiary female character (at least they were dancing at the end, so I thought it was implied?), and that was *after* he taught the super-hetero baseball jocks that baseball and dancing are pretty much the same. (Which, incidentally, is something my mother has been saying for years, because baseball is a fluid sport that requires lots of coordinated movements and no collisions.) I think he was supposed to be wink-wink gay (my friend once called him “Disney gay”), but maybe they threw that in so people wouldn’t complain? I remember being upset that they implied a pairing, though in retrospect dancing != romantic attachment.
I have a lot of feelings about the HSM series of movies, and I was 16 and older when they came out.
ALLEGEDLY (meaning I’ve seen it on tumblr but don’t have a real source) the director and actor agreed the character was gay but Disney execs wouldn’t let them say so and insisted on having him attend prom with one of the female characters. But that’s why if you watch the outtakes of HSM3 there’s one of Ryan at graduation jumping on and kind of kissing Zeke. The director wanted to include that “outtake” as a nod to the fact that the character was meant to be gay.
(I type this as if I don’t know the name of the characters, actors, and director off the top of my head. :cough: I do.)
I haven’t seen HSM3. I was in college at that point and kind of missed the boat. BUT, that is awesome, tumblr and “real sources” aside 😉 Also, of all the other characters that might or might not be gay, Zeke would be the one. Not that wanting to bake (“Creme brulee!”) means you’re gay, but, you know, I just got that vibe.
(Psh. I would not fault you. I obviously remember far more names than I admitted, too. :cough:)
I mean, he taught one “super” “hetero” basketball jock that baseball and dancing were the same thing (hilariously, because Corbin Bleu is the only person who can actually dance in that movie) and then in the next scene they had inexplicably swapped clothes and were sitting like this:
So I’m not sure the implied pairing of Ryan and his tiny lesbian gal pal Kelsey is very effective.
I’d like to add that the last line Chad says to Ryan before they go into the locker room and are then in each other’s clothes is “[W]hat would you have me do?”
I feel like there has to be an argument to be made for Zenon but I don’t know that I remember it well enough to make it myself.
Even though Zenon’s aunt ends up with a dude, for most of the movie, she is basic stock character Hippy Lesbian Aunt. Also that sad rich girl from Earth who was Zenon’s frenemy was totally a proto-lez.
“Anyone who is wearing a bowling shirt is at least 30% a lesbian.”
Why do I love this? Is it because I love bowling shirts but yet, don’t even own one? Is my brain weirdly referencing it to old reruns of “Laverne and Shirley”, a TV show so terrible but which 8 (9? 10?) year old me adored?
Damned if I know (slinks back into the internet ether…).
Is it me or is the lip synch way, way off on the Cheetah Girls video? I know it says “official” in the title but I really feel like this was dubbed in over a different song.
When I was still identifying as a 100% girl instead of genderfluid, I got my first haircut by showing the stylist a picture from Motocross and going “Like that, like hers, that’s what I want.”
YEEEESSS Motorcrossed is probably at least 20% of my root.
Coming across it again and being like oh, there’s why I liked it so much.
I forgot that Cheetah Girls existed and considering that I was maybe 8 when the last movie came out, I have no idea what the plot was. NYC girls who got rich at one point maybe? I think once they sang while riding elephants? Also might’ve slept with each other? Willing to believe your version.
I feel so not alone reading all of this; it’s striking so many chords for the movies I loved when I was a kid. I’d also have to add Stepsister from Planet Weird and Zenon to the list.
On a non-Disney note, a kid I was babysitting introduced me to Barbie & the Diamond Castle and …….. yeah (if you’ve seen it, you know). The subtext in that movie seemed so intentional that it gave me hope that the day we see actual *text* in these kind of movies is not far off.
Sooooo Mallory’s tweet about Moticrossed maaaaaay have inspired me to go back and rewatch it mast night… And it make so much sense that 11 year old, feminist, dirt-biking me (who in fact win a motocross trophy!) who also later cut her very short and has played men in numerous operas, loved this movie. And I ended up as the glorious bisexual I am today, so…yeah. Nothing has ever made so much sense, basically.
ok but have you seen How To Build A Better Boy????? Let me spoil it for you: it’s gayer than all of these. Do you doubt me? Ok, but you’re wrong. Two brilliant tweens build an android boyfriend together and it RUINS their FRIENDSHIP because you know why boys don’t like these two girls????? BECAUSE NO ONE COULD EVER BE AS PERFECT FOR THEM AS THEY ARE FOR EACH OTHER. 11/10, please watch.
Oh so deliciously gay.
Um you and me watched every single one of the same Disney shows and movies. And yes to all of this, especially Motocrossed and Smart House, and obviously Cadet Kelly because YES, OBVIOUSLY.
Little Secrets with Evan Rachel Wood made me queer. I’m so proud of eleven-year-old me for picking a girl who (unbeknownst to me at the time) was also queer.
Princess Protection Program is the gayest of the gay. Carter totally became Rosie’s royal consort.
Is this movie about golf? I’ve always thought it was about golf.
I always liked to imagine that Alec Baldwin just randomly walked on set while taking a break some other shoot and started shouting at the actors, and everyone was so freaking method that they just went with it
Gayest moments I’ve seen on Disney are pretty much from Teen Beach 2 (Lela sooooo had a crush on Mack. Anyone who thinks her and Tanner had chemistry are just fooling themselves) and two scenes from K.C undercover. Especially the truth serum episode where her friend drunk it and told her everything she thought of her. “When I’m sad I just think of you and it makes me happy again, etc.” it got really gay to the point where I’m like “wooooooooow!”