The Spectacular Rise of the Misery Lesbian™

From: Cosmopolitan Oct-18-2022 03:40:am

If you have trouble viewing this email, view it in a browser.

The Spectacular Rise of the Misery Lesbian™

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.

Once upon a time in Hollywood, there were hardly any lesbians at all—only the classic Gay Best Friend, a man who exists solely to deliver sassy quips to a gaggle of straight women (Stanford Blatch, etc.). Then there was the Lesbian Best Friend spin-off, who is usually less cosmopolitan and more broke than her GBF counterpart but relevant to the heterosexual main character because she reinforces the idea that a roller-coaster life with a man is better than whatever she’s got going on. (Here, a moment of silence for long-suffering butch LBF Susie in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.) On the more tragic side, there was the Bury Your Gays trope, which basically demands that once any queer character is happily in love, one or both dies, implying that while queer people themselves are disposable, their misery is worth including. A recent example? The sudden death of Villanelle in BBC’s Killing Eve, happening just moments after lesbian love is acknowledged and requited.

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.