11 Absolute Lies Pop Culture Tells You About Lesbians

They're all psychopaths who hate men.

21 March, 2018
11 Absolute Lies Pop Culture Tells You About Lesbians

1. They are psychopaths who hate men. I'm not saying that Monster wasn't a cool movie, but after years of lesbians being painted as mentally ill psychos who hate men (and having a serious lack of lesbian movie/TV characters in general) showing a lesbian serial killer depicted in a big-budget film definitely doesn't help the case against small-minded dicks who are like, "See? Lesbians are insane man-hating uggos."

2. They're all predatory and spend all their time seducing as many women as humanly possible. It's not that lesbians like Nicky on Orange Is the New Black don't exist (because god knows plenty of them do and some of them are truly terrifying in their pursuits), but there are a lot of cases in pop culture where the lesbian is a threat to humanity because she's taking all the straight women and seducing them with her unparalleled sexual skills that no man can match. Truth is, a lot of lesbians are just people who sit around watching Netflix eating snacks. 

3. They aren't really gay. I love OITNB so much but it kills me when Piper's character was referred to as an "ex-gay" because she was with a man now. I know that later Piper said she was bisexual, but the idea that lesbians can change their minds and be with men one day like it's some form of victory definitely comes up in pop culture way too often and makes me slow-motion vomit. 

4. They don't exist. Do you know how long it took me to make a list of squarely lesbian characters in movies most people have seen? A really freaking long time because there are, like, three of them max. Lesbians exist, yo. 

5. All lesbian couples are two super-hot femme women kissing gently near a fireplace. Look, Santa and Brittany are adorable, Alex and Piper are … well, pretty annoying most of the time, but occasionally sexy, Marissa Cooper and Alex Kelly are both very attractive, but not all lesbian couples look like Victoria's Secret models who teamed up on a photo shoot and then decided to French. 

6. Every lesbian is a badass butch. The idea that most lesbians look like Big Boo from OITNB is ridiculous, partly because a lot of butch lesbians prefer women who look more like Alex Vause, which brings me to…

7. Every lesbian is a super-hot femme. Not every lesbian is a hair-flipping, you'd-assume-she-was-straight-unless-she-told-you woman like Emily on Pretty Little Liars or Santana on Glee, though lots of them are. Still, Hollywood sure does love to show you lesbians who look Maxim-cover ready instead of the ones you bump into at Trader Joe's while you're both reaching for coconut milk. 

8. They're super into witchcraft. Actually, this is often pretty true. Queer women love crystals, man. 

9. They're just pretending to be lesbians to seem sexy and cool. Marissa on The OC was maybe one of the most eye-roll-y cases of this, since she pretty much dated Alex to piss off her mother, and then ditched her and went back to Ryan, her true love, blah, blah, blah, whatever. 

10. They love sleeping with straight married women. Speaking of Emily on PLL, not every lesbian is going around sleeping with women who are married to men, even if Talia Sandoval was super hot and makes me faint just by looking at her, so honestly who can blame her?

11. They have incredibly complicated, "how would I even do that?!" sex. Countless lesbians I know sat down to watch Blue Is the Warmest Color while silently gritting their teeth and thinking, Come. On. No one has time or the flexibility to do that and also does that come with a manual? We're going to need a manual.

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Credit: Cosmopolitan
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