The Invisible Likeness of Being: Agnes DeMille as a Queer Coming-of-Age Allegory
(a.k.a. Invisible Girls II)
Alright, pull up those chairs again, because it's going to get long. I could write volumes about youth and queer culture (real world, pop, etc.), but I do have other things I need to be writing. Feel free Ask or continue the discussion in Comments.
Invisibility as Queer Adolescence
Agnesâs refrain of being invisible maps onto one of the most recognizable queer experiences. A lot of isolated queer kids start here: unseen by their families, unacknowledged by peers, and unsure of how to even recognize themselves. Invisibility is both protection and prison. For Agnes, it is painfully literal. She tells Orloff and the body parts of how she feels, but later tells Wednesday (and Enid) why: that her mother has left her behind for a new normie family, either unable or unwilling to deal with having a "mistake" of a daughter who can vanish as she does. Ignored (though also monitored) by her father, she does not exist at home, so she struggles to exist anywhere else.
This invisibility hits harder because of her age. At 13/14, Agnes is right where identity exploration begins to press forward. These are the years when crushes, attachments, and first attempts at self-definition take shape, and when figurative social invisibility can feel unbearable.
Projection: The First Step Toward Identity
Agnes latching onto Wednesday means more than just âpsycho fangirlingâ because Wednesday embodies what she cannot claim for herself: unapologetic difference (and indifference, since it's Wednesday). This projection is the first step of queer coming-of-age: Queer kids at 13 or 14 often idolize or obsess over figures who seem to live openly/freely not because they want to consume them, but because they see in them the possibility of their own reflection.
This is why her fangirl obsession isnât just comedic exaggeration. It dramatizes that awkward, desperate stage of identity-seeking where admiration, envy, and desire blur. At this age, those feelings are especially heightened: Too big for the child self, not yet shaped into the adult self. This can be said of any of the three girls, by the way.
From Invisibility to Recognition
The heart of the allegory comes when Agnes admits that she feels more invisible than ever at the Some of Your Parts support group. This is the hinge moment of queer coming-of-age. Invisibility is no longer sustainable. The longing shifts â from projecting onto others to demanding recognition for the self. It is the step between hiding and claiming. Agnes embodies that fragile, formative stage: when the invisible child starts insisting on being seen.
Finally Seen by a Peer: Preceding the Dead Dance
Technical nitpick: I wish Marshall had included a close-up of Ortega's face in its shocked expression. We can barely see it from this angle.
Agnes spends most of her arc trying to be seen through mimicry: first by orbiting Wednesday, then by attempting to âbecomeâ Wednesday with her full-on Single White Female stunt. In Episode 7/âWoe Me the Moneyâ, the cycle breaks: Enid stumbles upon a crying Agnes, the failure of her costume transformation laid bare.
Instead of ridiculing her or dismissing her obsession, Enid does something Agnes has never received from a peer: She listens and acknowledges her. She pushes Agnes not to vanish into someone elseâs identity, but to embrace her own. Even though Enid doesnât phrase it as directly as âI see you,â the sentiment lands with equal force: a peer finally recognizing Agnes as more than an invisible shadow. It's fertile ground for queer exploration and is only amplified in the next few scenes where Agnes asserts herself to Wednesday by telling her that she no longer cares what she thinks about her, echoing a queer coming out moment: The defiant shift from craving approval to claiming oneâs own visibility, the instant when a young queer person stops begging to be validated and instead begins to live their truth.
These moments matter because it reframes Agnesâs invisibility: Recognition doesnât come from authority figures, but from a peer struggling with identity herself (as Enid fears for her future as a possible Alpha). The Dead Dance becomes a symbolic rite of passage: a queer allegory where one girl tells another that itâs okay to exist in her own psycho, messy, searching self. For Agnes, it is the first flicker of visibility that doesnât rely on projection or imitation, but on being acknowledged as who she is.
Experimentation: Orbiting Enid
In the last episode, Agnes didn't fully mirror Enidâs bright style or extroverted warmth, but she edged toward it. After the disastrous attempts at trying to be âseenâ by Wednesday, she then orbits Enid after the dance, testing out what belonging might feel like without fully crossing into imitation. This is another recognizable queer stage â the blurred line between âI want to be like herâ and âI want to be with her.â
At 13/14, queer crushes often start here (and a lot of times, earlier). Admiration and attraction fold together, leaving the young person unsure where one ends and the other begins. Agnesâs near-glomming onto Enid captures that confusion perfectly. (If you watch her after Enid kindly rejects her offer of a list of boys, you can see acceptance and a glimmer of curiosity; as if she's still trying to figure out how to be valuable to Enid. Old habits, as they are.)
What cements Agnesâs allegorical weight is how her arc parallels Wednesday's and Enidâs. Season 1 centered around mother-daughter tensions: Enidâs yearning for maternal (and pack) acceptance, Wednesdayâs struggle under Morticiaâs shadow. Agnes belongs in that same framework in Season 2. Her invisibility and maternal abandonment position her as a peer in the showâs meditation on what it means for young women to come of age under pressure, rejection, and difference.
By placing Agnes alongside them, we recognize her not as a joke or a side plot but as a crucial figure in the larger allegory of visibility. Her arc insists that queer identity is forged not only in flamboyant declarations, but in the quieter, painful journey from erasure to recognition.
Media Literacy and the Importance of Reading This as Queer Allegory
Why does this matter? Because media often disguises or misdirects queer longing. Characters like Agnes get written off as creepy fangirls or comic relief when beneath those surface tropes lies allegory and to stop at the surface is to miss the point. Media literacy â the ability to read subtext, to ask what invisibility and queer longing might represent â is the tool that transforms Agnes from a caricature into a symbol.
For queer youth around Agnesâs age (13/14), this practice is more than analysis; itâs survival. It gives them permission to see themselves in characters not explicitly labeled queer, and to recognize that invisibility, awkward crushes, or clumsy attachments arenât pathology, but part of the universal arc of queer becoming.
Actual media literacy teaches us that Agnesâs story isnât disposable or comedic background; itâs an allegory of identity-in-motion. It shows that visibility often begins in longing, projection, and the painful confession of being unseen, and for queer kids watching, that allegory can provide the mirror they may not find anywhere else.
Sidebar, with Enid: A Popular Example of Adolescent Identity Exploration
I'm gonna interrupt here for a minute to tell you all that queer TV has been showing us this queer youth questioning identity for 25 years, and I can think of one winding link back from the current day media that we have: Ryan Murphyâs Popular (his cackle-worthy YA comedrama precursor to Glee) which aired on the WB during Y2K. It featured not one, but several episodes featuring LGBTQ+ youth (and adults) and the identity issues that they faced back in the day. Character Harrison Johnâs mother was a lesbian, whose relationship he wanted to hide from his friends. There was a đĽdecidedlyđĽ gayđŚ ânew kidâ Adam Rothchild-Ryan portrayed by Wentworth Miller; there was an episode devoted to a trans shop teacher who was transitioning from male to female (and in other episodes, LGBTQ+ and gender identity issues were explored).
But the one relevant example Iâd like to use is Lily Espositoâs journey to self-discovery, because the heart and tone of Agnesâs journey made me remember this particular scene (which is what the scene between Enid and Wednesday in the lupin cages also reminded me of):
Two things: Lily Esposito was an excellent character (they all were, they had a perfect ensemble cast) and excellent Latino (Mexican) and social justice representation (she was a raging SJW a decade before the term became pejorative). Secondly, the hilarious little bitch who asked about tongues being involved in the kiss is Nicole Julian, portrayed by Tammy Lynn Michaels who, right after Popular ended, went on to film the short film D.E.B.S. in 2003. The original D.E.B.S. short film was Angela Robinsonâs USC film school project that was her way of breaking into the industry and planting a queer narrative in mainstream genre film. As many of the queer fans know, Robinson directed âHyde and Woe Seekâ and âWoe Thyselfâ, the body switch episode that is beloved by a lot who have watched.
This wasn't allegory, it was explicit, but for queer kids watching, they could certainly feel that confusion and frustration of not knowing whatâs up or down or where they belong. Invisibility isn't just literal, as it is with Agnes, but it's spiritual as well, and Lily was, as she admitted, just exploring her identity. Everybody wants to be seen, but all teens are struggling to find their identity at that age, and this struggle also includes Enid Sinclair coming to terms with her possible Alpha wolf status. (And for the record, the girls in this video were mostly a lot older than 16 and 17; cosplaying high school aged teens is not at all new. A few of them were pushing 30, like Hunter Doohan was in Season 1. There was a joke about older people playing teenagers in-universe.)
The de Mille Echo: Her Name is Deliberate
Agnes de Mille was a woman asserting power and artistry in a masculine sphere in 1940's WW2 wartime America. In her memoirs, she often reflected on how she was dismissed or underestimated, forced to carve out her own space to be taken seriously; not only as an artist, but as a woman working in a field dominated by men. Sound familiar?
The choice to name her Agnes resonates beyond coincidence. Agnes George de Mille (1905â1993) was an American choreographer who revolutionized Broadway by weaving ballet and modern dance into musicals like Oklahoma! and Carousel ; she was a key advocate for the creation of the National Endowment for the Arts, and by her name and profession she becomes a meta-shadow here in both Enid and Agnesâ identity arc.
Enidâs brief solo ballet sequence before her first Alpha wolfout invokes that same tradition of movement as character revelation: Dance as a language of becoming. Later, the namesakeâs own moment of visibility arrives when she dances with Enid at the Venetian Masquerade Gala. In queer terms, both moments stage choreography as a connection between repression and release: Enidâs solo dance preludes her transformation, Agnesâs joint dance is a dance of freedom for recognition. Together, they fold de Milleâs legacy into a queer allegory of visibility, desire, and self-making.
Striking a Pose at Nevermore: Queer Visibility from Vogue to The Dead Dance
The whole gala sequence doesnât exist in a vacuum. Its visual language borrows from a decades-old lineage of queer-coded pop culture spectacles, most famously Madonnaâs 1990 MTV VMA performance of âVogueâ.
Madonna orchestrated the performance with the same type of 18th-century court styling as the gala: justaucorps/frock coats, panniered gowns, and baroque poses transformed into voguing choreography. It was a queer reclamation of aristocratic aesthetics, channeling drag and ballroom culture into the mainstream.
Although Madonnaâs performance was styled in a Marie Antoinette-inspired French Rococo mode and the Venetian Gala draws on Italian masquerade tradition, both share the exaggerated silhouettes and theatricality of the 18th century. For queer readings, the distinction in geography matters less than the shared act of camp reclamation.
For queer young adults in 1990, Madonnaâs âVogueâ was more than a hit single: it was a lifeline, both a psychic salve and a call to arms to cast off one's inhibitions and to live freely as who you really are. At the height of the AIDS crisis when gay identity was stigmatized and often invisible in mainstream media, Madonna took the drag ballroom culture born in Black and Latin queer communities and elevated it unapologetically for the mainstream media on a global scale. For countless young queers around the world, seeing voguing presented as art, beauty, and empowerment meant recognizing themselves in a culture that had previously been underground.
The lyrics of âVogueâ mattered, too. Lines like âIt makes no difference if youâre black or white, if youâre a boy or a girl â spoke directly to those who felt marginalized for their identity. The song reframed difference as something to celebrate: âStrike a pose, thereâs nothing to it.â For the queer teens at the time (myself included, as I was the same age as Enid is), those words became a mantra: a call to visibility, to step into the light even when the world tried to erase them.
Visually, Enidâs and Weemsâs dresses in particular at the gala evoke that same mix of Madonnaâs 18th-century styling with camp theatricality. Their looks rhyme with Madonnaâs court-drag styling and two generations later, with Lady Gagaâs own citations of the performance in her video. For queer viewers, the connection is immediate: opulent historical fashion being queered through performance, exaggeration, and parody.
By placing our invisible girl Agnes into this visual and lyrical tradition, the dance aligns her allegory with this longer queer history. Sheâs not just dressing up to be seen; sheâs moving through a space coded by queer artistry, from ballroom vogue to pop spectacle. To read the dance (and her arc) this way is to understand that visibility is never neutral: itâs forged and sustained through the resilience of queer culture across generations.
This is why the dialogue between Madonnaâs performance and the Venetian Gala/"The Dead Dance" is more than visual; itâs spiritual. Enid and Agnes are framed in baroque poses and voguing gestures that visually cite Madonnaâs legacy, but the deeper connection is a reawakening and a convergence that carries her original message forward, turning queer invisibility into presence.
The scene thus becomes not just a masquerade, but a queer-coded ritual of recognition, summoning the spirit of Madonna when she told queer youth everywhere: Screw the haters. You are seen, you are beautiful, now let your freak flag fly. In the biology lab before the dance, Enid all but conjures that same spirit for Agnes, reminding her that visibility doesnât require imitation: it requires the courage to stand as yourself.
Closing Thoughts On Agnes (also a TLDR;)
Agnes is the invisible girl who wants to be seen, much like queer kids who feel unseen and long for recognition and validation; choosing to read that subtext is an act of queer media literacy, and a lesson in how stories like this can reflect truths that, for a lot of queer kids, mainstream narratives written by straight cisgendered people still leave unsaid.
