They Should Have Never Given You the Word âQueerbaitâ
Itâs been 5 years and Iâm still thinking about this, so now I am going to vent a bit. I hate when there is a Black female protagonist who is queer coded and seemingly in a slow burn setting, and the viewers flag it as queerbait and disengage.
I feel like I have seen so many shows where people can take a character who is never even suggestively queer and nit pick even the smallest glimmers to validate reading them as such and they will be able to ship and create and support all of the ways this is a queer character and trust the writers to possibly give more.Â
But, when there are Black women in these areas, it falls down as soon as they arenât given overt displays of wlw actions. I said its been 5 years, because Iâm specifically thinking about Kiss Me First, but I also want to hit on Crazyhead, while Iâm here because I feel like it got paid the same treatment in this regard. And both of those shows had such good writing, and as a Black queer woman WITH mental illness, both of these characters spoke to me and seeing them have potential for love stories for wlw stories was so rewarding, only to see the journey get bashed and the shows get cancelled.Â
So. Let me talk a minute. Starting with Kiss Me First. If you havenât already watched it, you probably arenât going to, so Iâm not sparing potential âspoilers,â as Iâve said, its been 5 years.
Kiss Me First centers around this dynamic of an orphan, Leila, who recently lost her mom and is getting attached to a woman, Tess, that she met in this computer universe, who she also has befriended irl. Leila and Tess start off with some mystery, as you canât tell what Tessâ intentions are for this woman, but you see very early on that Leila doesnât necessarily trust people that are in Tessâ life. When Leila realizes that the person who Tess seems to care about the most is a dangerous and manipulative person, she does everything that she can to protect her.
The criticisms of the show were that people were âqueerbaitedâ with the relationship between them because of the romantic and sexual relationships that these characters had with men and not with each other...
This is what is frustrating to me: So much of this series is realistic, INCLUDING the story arcs where these women are in relationships with men that donât really serve them best. Real life queer people frequently have relationships with partners that they donât really belong with before finding the love that they had been seeking. But, the moment it happens in media, especially with a Black woman, it is unbearable for audiences. They gotta see her eating box, or it ainât real.
And itâs aggravating, because there is this fairy tale happening in which Leila literally is on a quest to save Tess. She knows that this guy is dangerous and her entire goal becomes making sure she rescues Tess from him. He lifts Tess on a pedestal and makes her feel like she is the most important person, but he is actually an abuser and preying upon this group that idolizes him, so Leila spends episodes working to get Tess out of his grasp.
In the end, they arenât IN a queer relationship, but she has absolutely freed Tess and Tess is helping her to escape being framed by the enemy. They are âfriends,â but if you have a queer eye, and are not racist, youâd be able to see that this is and was the entire time a fucking love story between these two women! If anything, they tossed in some dudes for the straights to pay attention. Iâm livid every time somebody suggests that Kiss Me First is queerbait. To you, but not my Black, gay, bipolar ass. I loved it. I wanted to see them flourish. I wanted to be given the payoff, yes. But, I loved being able to see a beautiful love story between two fucked up people who were side by side at the end.
This happened in Crazyhead, as well.
Raquel is a target for an apocalypse and do you know how Amy saved her and the world? By telling her she loved her and giving her a kiss that brought her back from the brink of destruction...
Now... I will admit, the writers did a âno homoâ type thing at the end... but the homo in me seen the homo in thee, so I wasnât bothered by that.Â
I just think that it is an unfair measurement, to expect everything to be served up for you in order to support representation, and not being able to detect subtext or to envision the potential coding shows a huge amount of privilege. I adore the fact that so much queer content as of late gets spoonfed to you, but I also enjoy a slow burn, and itâs not right that Black queer women rarely get one because you give up if thereâs not an automatic tonguing and huge declarations. And in the cases of these two shows, there were very clear expressions of love and several moments of intimacy, but I guess they needed to trib for true love.Â
Anyways, I love Kiss Me First and Crazyhead, and I consider them representation FOR ME.Â