Lesbianism isn't scary...

© Image courtesy of BBC

Lip Service and me

*disclaimer, I make no promises that this will be a concise and detailed look at identity, but then who really knows 100% how they came to be them?

I imagine that every blog under this lesbian sun (based in the UK at any rate) will do a write up on ‘Lip Service’ and its new place in the history of Lesbians on TV and in pop culture. This is all well and good, but as I was trying to explain the show to a straight friend who tends to walk slowly backwards whenever I suggest a TV show (she didn’t take kindly to One Tree Hill and now forever takes my opinion with a pinch of salt), I realised that I needed this show more than just an excuse to watch hot women on TV. I needed it more than just a good tick in the right box for the BBC’s representation of lesbians. I needed this to find my identity.

That might sound like a strange sentence coming from a 25-year-old lesbian who’s been out of the closet for the past 6 years and is currently enjoying being a newly-wed. But my chat with my friend got me thinking, I have a very involved relationship with lesbians on TV, my partner seems to think it’s really just me looking at them, but it’s more than that, and somewhere in this blog post I hope to try and explain it.

Before all that though, ‘Lip Service’ has managed to break into the mainstream, yes I am fully aware that it was on at 10.30 on BBC3 but for the first time in I don’t know when, newspapers were covering the show (The Guardian Guide did a very good article on 09.10.10) and the BBC seemed almost, dare I say it, proud of their new show. This show was needed. FACT! Any lesbian, bisexual, gay, transgendered person who is struggling with coming out, struggling with the fact that they now think they are less than normal, need a show that showed a day, a normal day, in a normal city, where life just happened. I know for TV situations were heightened, angles were cleverly shot, and the ladies just a little bit too hot, but this was predominantly a show about a group of friends, who happen to mostly be lesbians. The upsetting thing is that this is the first of its kind. When the next show comes along (I hope along side Lip Service not to replace it) I hope it sits along side Eastenders, or Emmerdale, not because it’s a show about lesbians, but because it’s a drama show, that everyone should watch.

So, back to me, for as long as I can remember I’ve sought out role models, not the pretty models or girl group singers who people aspire to be, I’ve sought after someone on TV, a character, or a real life person, who hints at a life I could lead. And so, since the age of 16 (without me really understanding why), I’ve wanted to watch something other than the normal straight couple, and their beautiful rom-com relationship. Even when it got gritty, and the realism hit, I still didn’t connect. I needed something gay. I’d like to point out now that I do not watch lesbian shows just to look at the women, I watch it for the interactions, the relationships and the persona, if you were a straight lady, you would not enjoy watching a drama about two gay men, as much as you would like watching one about a woman and a man, not because you don’t want to know their story, but we all have a requirement to watch something that connects to our own lives.

At 18 I came out, to a few people, but I did it, out of the closet and into the big wide lesbian world. I knew I was gay, I knew that I fancied women and men did nothing for me, but up until then, I’d never met another lesbian, never seen anything on TV (Tipping the Velvet came out when I was 16 and opened my eyes to a world I knew nothing about but at that point it was just a horrible experience of sitting and watching it with my twin sister) I was the typical middle class suburban lesbian who didn’t know a lesbian if it bit her on the nose. But I knew I was one, and I knew that I needed a little bit of help finding out just who I really was. For me (and for many lesbians of my generation) TV was the way you found out who you were, pop culture, TV dramas, soaps and documentaries offered a depiction of life that we were meant to gobble up and not question. If someone was a chef, it was ok to like cooking, If someone rode a motorbike, it was cool to want one, that’s how society works these days. But where did that leave this little lost lesbian. Stranded!

Because I couldn’t be a lesbian, to the public eye at least, for the majority of my relationship with my first girlfriend, I threw myself into finding other lesbians on film and TV, I discovered a wealth of identity and confusion that I could pick apart and weave myself into, without ever having to leave my lonely little student bedroom. It was at this point that I found some courage. I bought Diva. So many people could probably tell you the horror they went through when secretly ducking into WH Smiths on the high street and finding the lesbian magazine, and then going to buy a really gossipy magazine to cover it with so that you could hide it on the counter, and not look the shop assistant in the eye. I went to university in a very small town, and I was petrified I’d meet someone I knew who would out me most publically, bringing shame on my girlfriend and me. I needed to grow up. But at the time I didn’t know that. So I took my lesbians home and devoured all the copies I could find. I needed to see what other lesbians looked like; Diva probably helped me more than I’m currently able to admit. I walk up to the counter now with pride, no more hiding, I only ever buy diva on its own, or at the supermarket, and always wish that the checkout assistant notices it, and looks up, and comment, in a positive way. They never do, but I like quite how far I’ve come.

Even though now I am happy, with my wife and my possible career change, there is always going to be a bit of me that needs to see lesbians on TV. I need to know that there are others out there, having normal lives, and normal days, they aren’t just the token character, who goes through the coming out period (more stressful that giving birth!!) and then just change their mind. We need characters that walk down the street holding hands, behind the main characters, characters who find that they’ve fallen out or in of love but its not some dramatic storyline. This matters to me. My identity has been formed now. I know that. But I need to know that one day, I won’t be shouted at in the street, that I won’t be told to go to the men’s changing room, that when I take my kids to school in the future I’m not going to be looked at in a funny way.

When I was trying to find my identity there was nothing there, I had to form my own idea of what a lesbian should be like, and now its constantly changing, I’m learning what it’s ok to be, how I should make myself just be the exact person I want to be, and I’m learning how the world sees lesbians, TV warts and all. And now, for newly outed kids, who need an idea of what life could be for them, they need to know that we’re out there, to support them, but also just living our ordinary lives. Let’s hope Lip Service can keep delivering the honesty and realism that it seems to be hinting at.

For more information here are some links:

Diva – www.divamag.co.uk

Lip Service - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00tq4d9

Tipping the Velvet - http://www.bbc.co.uk/drama/tippingthevelvet/

LGBT Support - http://queery.org.uk/StaticPages/Advice.asp Numbers and contact details

What is in a name? The surname argument

'Names, once they are in common use, quickly become mere sounds, their etymology being buried, like so many of the earth's marvels, beneath the dust of habit.'

~Salman Rushdie

As many people do in the run up to their wedding, I have been thinking a lot about names, their meanings, and their connection to our identity. It's always the way that when something is due to change you realise your relationship with it as it exists then.

Is your surname your identity? or just just a small part of the bigger sum?

As a woman, from a young age you tend to accept that your surname will inevitably change, you might even be one of those kids that scrawls across their notebooks with the new name you would have if you settled down and married (at the age of 14) the boy you seems fascinated with at the time. I did it. I'm not going to hide from it, my pencil case was covered in every imaginable version of all my could be names. But then the questioning came along. The 'was I different', and then the names stopped. I had enough problems identifying myself for me, let alone adding a new name into the equation. Questioning your identity from the inside is an enlightening experience, and nearly 10 years on from the first questions, I like the person I have become, and my name has been along for the ride.

Even if you weren't going to become the straight woman who would marry the 'prince' names are still a huge part of your life. I stopped looking at my name as something that would change for a while, and it made it feel much more like it was part of me, a little ink scrawled across me, but for a lot of people, their name has a negative effect.

Bad childhoods, sucky parents, no parents, divorce, realisation that you are in a marriage that isn't right, realising that to become the better person you keep inside you need to change the outside, running away, starting again... all very good reasons to change your surname, but does it make you a new person? or just a stronger you?

I've often wondered if changing your name creates a new version of yourself, or just a re-labeled old copy? Maybe next year I'll be able to tell you. I bring this topic to you as a few things are starting to arrive through the mail in my new 'married' name and its exciting, but a strange concept to get your head around.

I am proud of my surname, I like the sound of it, I like the history of it, maybe that's why I am just adding stuff onto my name, instead of re-writing myself, I'm just making a new addition, and its quite calming. I don't need to be a new person, I can just have a nice new bit, all shiny and special. Other people don't change their names at all when they get married, for them I guess their name is much more of their identity. A part they aren't quite willing to give up, and I feel like that's a very brave thing to do, it's much easier to give up, instead of staying resolute in your wishes.

I've often wondered if your name becomes more of your identity as a gay woman? because it's part of you, and you're proud of the person you've become? Maybe I need to do a straw poll, find out if there are people who use their names as their identity, or their identity as their names.

"Is your surname part of your identity? Largely so,yes. Having been married b4 i came out, I immediately wanted to revert to my maiden name when divorced - felt more me.(Sarah Watts)"

Don't we judge people on their names all the time? Like we assume that we have to 'improve' our names to be famous, and we think that we could never been exciting if we have a plain name. I think it was about time that a Jane Smith, or an Adam Edwards took to the stage and changed it all. (I am fully aware that this will probably never happen and fancy names will forever be connected to fame.)

I am fully aware that this blog has no real thread, just lots of questions. But isn't that what an identity is, just a lot of questions you spend your life answering?

Names are part of your identity, it makes you want to fight for or against what it represents, but it's not everything you are, its a small part of the massive sum, its like one tiny decimal in a very long division sum. So don't let the name that you were born into shape your life, use your soul, and mind and body to shape your life, and just let your name be the tag, scribbled across the bottom corner, almost out of sight.

What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.
~William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet