TextualDeviance

I guess this has been airing elsewhere for a long time (it has 35 eps already!) but we’re only now getting it in the US. Am only 4 episodes in, so bear in mind my limited amount of stuff to look at (and no spoilers, please!)

This show? Is messing with my feminist sensibilities liek whoa.

OK, so first off, there are some very big pros:

-Female lead with a female sidekick. This pretty much never happens, especially in genre entertainment (we get a fair number of female leads, but the Xena-and-Gabrielle type of thing is unicorn territory.)

-Said female sidekick is a full character in her own right. And though she does fit a type (the wise-cracking streetwise kid—see: Claudia Donovan, et. al.) she’s given a lot more to do than deliver funny lines and look adorable.

-Lead is bi. And actively so. Also basically unheard of. Plenty of queer women, but few true bisexuals, and virtually no leads (with the exception of Helen Magnus, who wasn’t confirmed bi until very recently.)

-Female sidekick, however, is straight. There’s plenty of femmeslash fodder, but I actually think it’s refreshing for them not to be doing the obvious pair-up there.

-Sexuality (at least in the uncut On Demand version) isn’t shied away from—even the same-sex stuff. You see this with pay-cable shows, of course, but it’s rare elsewhere.

-Lots of other female characters. I’d actually venture to say there have been more women than men with speaking parts on this show so far.

But, there are also some big cons:

-Lead has a bad case of Hot Bi Babe syndrome. It’s nice that she’s actively bi, but she’s also framed as basically a nympho. The Anything that Moves thing is annoying.

-Lead’s main love interest is opposite sex. As yet, she’s not shown any interest in having actual relationships with women, as opposed to just having sex with them (this may change; there are hints of something going on with the doc.)

-While the two female leads regularly pass the Bechdel test, there’s also a LOT of girlish chitchat about the male love interest. Yawn.

-As yet, all female characters with more than a few lines are young and/or conventionally attractive. There are older/non-conventionally-attractive male regulars, but no women.

-So far, only one male regular (the love interest) has been framed as eye candy, but virtually all of the female regulars have been—scantily clad, sex scenes, lascivious shots, etc.

-Some rather icky body-negative language from both the lead and sidekick.

-A fair number of PoC characters, but only one that’s a true regular. (And, I’ll just be shameless here for a moment, and say how much I wish they’d add him to the gratuitous male eye candy tally.)

-Plenty of queer women. As yet, no queer men.

Bo unfortunately kind of represents one of the big fails with female characters in genre entertainment: the badass babe. She’s smart, competent, has some ass-kicking skills, etc., but she’s tarted up like a streetwalker in virtually every scene. She’s not allowed to be unattractive. Even when she’s hanging around her house, she’s still dressed like she lives in a Frederick’s of Hollywood. Her sidekick gets to cover up a bit more, albeit in a fairly stereotypical cute goth kid way, but our lead seems to be required to be eye candy in every single scene. And that kind of cancels out all the good stuff about her.

There’s nothing wrong, of course, with female characters having active sexuality. That’s a good thing. But in real life, women aren’t sexually “on” 24/7. Our sexuality is part of us, often a big part, but it’s not 80% of our waking hours. Throwing in the other character traits is pretty much meaningless if most of what you’re featuring about a female character is her sexuality. You can’t just point to her list of vital statistics and say, “see! we also made her a doctor/lawyer/stamp collector” and expect that to count if those aspects make up only 1% of her screentime.

That one big fail also makes it clear who the target audience is: fanboys who think girl-on-girl action is hot. The bi chick’s sexuality is there for cheap thrills, not to be part of a balanced, complex character. And let’s face it: fanboys get pandered to enough already. They don’t need yet another show full of fap material.

Now, like I say, I’m only four eps in, and at the moment, there’s definitely enough good stuff to keep me watching to see if the bad stuff improves. Hoping it does. The good stuff is so rare to see in genre entertainment that it would suck if it was ultimately rendered pointless by the cheap porn aspect. Speaking as a bi chick, I WANT to see more representation of us onscreen. But I also don’t want that representation to be little more than the same old tired stereotypes about who we are.