'Franchaela' and the girl-on-girl paradox
Does feminism only accept one type of lesbianism, and has our relationship with female sexuality been centred around men?
It seems that Bridgerton’s season 5 storyline announcement has left many shaking their heads in disapproval. The distaste appears to be twofold: annoyance that the next season follows Francesca's storyline rather than Eloise's, and that Francesca’s love story is a lesbian one.
Ultimately, many are also disappointed that Francesca is the sapphic lead rather than Eloise, the show’s very own proto-feminist. While it is understandable that viewers don’t want to see the woman who has been so unabashedly opposed to the marriage mart settle down into the domestic sphere, framing lesbianism as her only escape from patriarchy is both problematic and telling.
What it reveals is that, yet again, girl-on-girl action is viewed only through a male-centred lens.
Lesbianism has long been fetishised by men who get aroused at the thought/sight of two women making out, as well as men who see lesbianism as the ultimate sexual conquest: turning a gay girl straight. Thus, female sexuality has been transformed into something that sidelines women themselves.
Ironically, the insistence that Eloise is the ‘true’ lesbian of Bridgerton ends up reproducing the very logic it seeks to resist. By interpreting her rejection of patriarchal structures as a rejection of heterosexuality altogether, female desire is once again removed from the discussion surrounding female sexuality. Again, it’s all about men.
This is a familiar pattern.
We see it when heterosexual women, after a nasty breakup, will often jokingly exclaim something along the lines of ‘That’s it, I’m done with men!’ or ‘Ughh, I wish I was gay, men are awful!’.
We saw it in the famous Vogue article Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?, where couplehood was transformed into a political statement. A boyfriend now means conformity. A boyfriend now strips away your ability to be a ‘girl’s girl’. Again, sexuality becomes less about attraction and more about proximity to - or distance from - men.
We see it in the backlash Bridgerton is receiving: some women don’t want to engage in a story that doesn’t centre around a male love interest.
The contrast becomes even more striking when placed alongside the widespread celebration of stories like Heated Rivalry. Some straight women fawn over and romanticise the gay male couples of these shows, even claiming them as ‘my boyfriend’ or ‘my husband’.
Gay men, then, become symbols of a diluted, more sensitive masculinity.
That is not to say that this is a new phenomenon.
It started with the birth of the ‘gay best friend’ and continues with the fetishisation of sad gay films - Brokeback Mountain for instance - whose protagonists have been rendered star-crossed lovers by their less than accepting societies. In the 1998 comedy The Object of My Affection, Jennifer Aniston’s Nina even falls in love with her gay best friend George, played by Paul Rudd.
But, however you view this engagement with gay male love stories, you cannot deny that it helps them prosper. After all, most straight men wouldn’t watch these shows and movies - women help them survive.
Lesbian storylines, on the other hand, are often cancelled or, as evidenced by this ‘Franchaela’ controversy, receive a lot of backlash.
Perhaps this is because there is no ‘eye candy’ in them for a heterosexual female viewership. Perhaps not.
Perhaps it is because only a type of lesbian is celebrated: the loud, anti-male kind, the kind Eloise would be were she a lesbian. Because Francesca does not embody these traits, her story is rejected.
Instead of seeing gay women as symbolic of an existence outside the patriarchy, and gay men as a palatable version of it, we should treat their love stories as what they are:
Stories about love.