Compared to the depressing brutality of other tropes, MLs enjoy the freedom to be absolutely miserable on their own terms. They reject the expectation that lesbian media should educate the masses or make the case that queer people are worthy of books, shows, and attention. MLs demand attention and don’t waste time catching anyone up on their lives, language, or identities—nor do they justify their choices. They do, however, feed into the convention that women simply can’t be happy together—but not because they’re lesbians or dykettes. MLs are unhappy because, at least on some level, they enjoy it.
Meanwhile, MLs are the drama. Sasha in Dykette, for example, pretty much is the problem—and she delights in the vicious cycles of gossip, desire, vanity, and manipulation that create even more problems.
The path to representation is often narrow and demanding. First, queer people show up to confirm the ideas of the majority or serve as a cautionary tale against straying from the norm, à la Bury Your Gays. Then there’s the respectable representation that attempts to convince the audience that marginalized people are worthy of sympathy and conditional acceptance (here, I shudder at Ellen Degeneres, now definitely miserable, and her “love is love” ethos). In 2023, we find ourselves in a pop culture moment in which queer and trans people are allowed to be messy, decadent, and richly flawed (although need I remind you that this grace does not extend politically). MLs are combative for a deliberate reason: They reject the usual path and force their audience to witness their full, complicated humanity.
In this way, the popularity of MLs is an encouraging sign. And while it’s possible this media is partially successful because it uses familiar queers-as-miserable tropes, it also reflects a demand for new types of misery. MLs stridently push past clichés and challenge the audience: Why shouldn’t they be the main characters, in all of their wretched glory?
But now, there’s an appetite in mainstream media for lesbian main characters who are not just grappling with ambient misery caused by random life circumstances or even external homophobia but are actually, gleefully bringing the suffering down upon themselves and others.
Often in queer and lesbian media—that is, storytelling from inside the community—characters are made miserable by oppression and marginalization. Think of the melancholic ending in the historical romance Portrait of a Lady on Fire or the kind of conditions the characters on Pose navigate during the AIDS epidemic of the ’80s and ’90s. The drama of these stories often centers around characters trying to find community and fulfillment within and in spite of these obstacles.
Almost always, MLs seem, from the outside, to have it all: a wife or partner, a solid career, and limited exposure to bigotry. They have money but not morality (they believe that morals are for other people, certainly not them). They have the resources to change self-destructive patterns but they simply choose not to. Often, MLs are bored with the reality of dyke oppression. Instead, they are fascinated with performance, anecdotal asides on gender politics, and becoming their own worst enemy. MLs are intelligent, irreverent, and cruelly funny. They are, of course, a major departure from the kinds of queer dissatisfaction that used to show up on the periphery of hetero plots or even in other queer-centered stories.
The measure of meaningful cultural presence doesn’t always have to be joy. Maybe there’s power in being just as nasty as the straights.
Maybe you’ve seen her flirting with women just for the thrill of rejecting them. Maybe she’s viciously gossiping about the new neighbor but only because she secretly wants to f*ck her. Maybe she’s married but sulking about her life of comfortable domesticity. Meet the Misery Lesbian™ (yes, I’m coining the term), who isn’t so much a person as she is a phenomenon—and lately, she’s everywhere in pop culture.
Sara Youngblood Gregory is a lesbian journalist and writer. She is the author of THE POLYAMORY WORKBOOK and former staff writer for POPSUGAR. She covers sex, queerness, disability, culture, and wellness. Her work has been featured in Vice, Teen Vogue, HuffPost, Bustle, DAME, Cosmo, Jezebel, and many others.