I love to make things at home that would be way easier to just purchase in the grocery store, and today’s version of that is: making homemade guava paste.
Queer as in F*ck You
Whereas mainstream studio releases of rom-coms centering gay men have been quite en vogue lately, there’s still a dearth of contemporary lesbian rom-com films. A piece for i-D magazine — Queer Women Are Still Overlooked in Rom-Coms — looks at this disparity from a bunch of different angles and even brings up the question of whether we should even want lesbian or nonbinary rom-coms when so many of them are in service of promoting and reinforcing heteronormative expectations and standards of marriage and family. I’m not a person who particularly desires Happily Ever Afters from my queer cinema, but I’m also a lifelong lover of the rom-com genre, so I have quite a few feelings about this topic! The article does bizarrely miscredit Alice Wu as the director of Crush, which was directed by Sammi Cohen, but let me just use this as a moment to tell everyone to go rewatch my personal favorite lesbian rom-com of all time, Saving Face.
Brands Actually Can and Should Stand Up to Anti-Trans Backlash.
An Australian Gymnastics Organization Just Approved New Trans-Inclusive Guidelines.
Sex Workers Say Mastercard’s Adult Content Policy Is Making Their Jobs More Dangerous.
Saw This, Thought of You
A fitting longread for the day after Labor Day: What Happens When Mom And Dad Go On Strike.
Another Labor Day read: Want a Thriving Arts Scene? Build More Housing.
How Inequality Was Redefined as “Poverty”—Letting Capitalism Off the Hook.
California Promised Reparations to Survivors of Forced Sterilization. Few People Have Gotten Them.
Dispatches from California’s tropical storm: ‘It Feels Horrible’: Amazon Workers Delivered Packages During Destructive Tropical Storm.
After Jacksonville Shooting, Some Floridians See Connections Between State’s Education Laws and Anti-Black Racism. (I understand journalistically why the 19th News has to couch this headline this way, but yes, the connections here are undeniable and should be emphasized emphatically.)
And a follow-up, from The Atlantic: A DeSantis Speech Too Dangerous to Teach in Florida.
Is Tradwife Content Dangerous, or Just Stupid?
Political Snacks
A Federal Court Ruled That Alabama Republicans Illegally Diluted Black Voting Power. Again.
One More Thing
Happy September.
Rom-coms are probably my favourite film genre so I’ve been bemoaning the lack of queer women and NB leads for a long time. Definitely a worthy question to ask whether we want these representations in a genre that can and often does reinforce so many limiting and damaging narratives, but a) my answer is still yes! and b) I’d like to think queer romcoms that feel authentically queer and don’t reinforce the same issues are possible.
Yes! Give me my queer anti marriage rom-coms, my tired poly parent rom-coms, my friends with benefits that stay fwb for decades rom-coms, my meet-cures that meet-cute again in other genders rom-coms!
Haha these are great pitches, would watch especially the first two!
The community shat all over Happiest Season, what do you expect. It was a good movie, but the purist in the community had to have a go and complain. Support queer media.
Happiest Season was a “love to bitch about it” moment for sure, but also was a huge success for Hulu iirc. They got a lot of sign ups from it and it was really popular when it came out–everyone who complained about it watched it first. So I don’t think the response to it is to blame, or at least not the main culprit.
That is a beautiful poem. The article on the striking miners was really interesting – this was the first time I’d heard about it. It’s a damn shame they had to go back without a new contract but their kids have the values
I love romcoms! I am still waiting for a lesbian romcom that:
– is about adults (HS movies are a different subgenre)
– has two characters who both know they are queer from the beginning of the film
– is not about coming out or leaving a man for a queer relationship
Now that there have been a few gay male ones I’m crossing my fingers that we get ours in the next year or two!
Give me all the fun, lighthearted, silly “heteronormative” lesbian rom-coms please!