Have you ever had a crush on a girl?
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power had just ended. I knew this not because I watched the show but because it was all over Tumblr. More specifically, my feed was being flooded with photo and gifsets of the finale. Well, one moment from the finale. Over and over again I was stumbling across the image of the evil cat girl telling the good blonde girl that she loved her, that she’d always loved her, and the blonde girl whispering, “I love you too.”
Oh, and then they kissed.
I was kinda stupid impressed. She-Ra was a kid’s show; my young cousins watched it, and it was gay now. Canonically gay. It wasn’t subtext or queer coding, it was full on two girls confessing their love and kissing on screen gay. The main character and her rival of five seasons were in love and by all accounts going to have a happily ever after.
They’d really pulled it off.
And I was intrigued. I’d been toying with the idea of watching She-Ra for a while, curious as to how something as campy as the original source material could be remade in a modern context. And even though I didn’t know her yet, I was kind of obsessed with the cat girl. From the little I’d seen online I’d come to love her look, her saunter, and biting wit. She was the villain, but she felt like someone I would understand.
So a few weeks ago when, trying to cope with the chaos that the world had been thrust into, I was flipping through Netflix lists looking for my new hyperfixation,I decided, rather than watch Avatar: The Last Airbender for the fourth time, on She-Ra.
I watched the whole thing, five seasons, fifty-two episodes, in two and a half days.
It’s good guys. It’s so good. It’s hopeful and warm. It’s about forgiveness and growth, becoming the best version of yourself. It’s about self-love and the things we deserve.
But most importantly, it’s about everyone.
Arguably, one of the most valuable things about She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is how masterfully it handles representation. There are characters of every skin tone and body type. Every character is a person, with individual flaws and strengths and personality in spades. If you’re looking you will find yourself somewhere on screen.
But one of the most important things the show represents is the LGBTQ community. Bow has two dads. Double Trouble is nonbinary. Kyle has a crush on Rogelio. Spinerella and Netassa are married.
Catra and Adora are in love.
Without meaning to I ended up having a conversation with a relative recently about LGBTQ representation in children’s shows. Entirely on accident I found myself in a corner I never wanted to be in, anxious to defend an idea I was only just starting to really understand the importance of, and my nonconfrontational ass floundered. They were definitely against it and actually had just gotten rid of their Netflix account because they felt it was going unchecked. They said that they were avoiding the birds and the bees talk with their child and that they didn’t need them seeing two boys kissing on screen. They didn’t want to deal with the wave of questions that would lead to.
I didn’t quite get that because I was sure their child had seen a boy kissing a girl on screen before and no one needed the sex talk after that, but I didn’t argue. I should’ve. I should’ve said “That’s kind of the thing about kids. You tell a five-year-old that boys can marry boys and girls can marry girls and instead of jumping right into the mechanics of how the sex would work they say ‘Cool. Come push me on the swing.’”
But I didn’t. It was an argument I’d heard before.
As a society we tend to hypersexualize homosexual relationships, especially sapphic ones. My entire life I was surrounded by the joke that all straight guys dreamed off a threesome, that nothing was hotter than two girls kissing. In fact, two girls kissing was almost always represented as some male sexual fantasy. It wasn’t romantic, it wasn’t emotional, it was hot and it meant nothing. Two girls could kiss without being gay. Sometimes girls just kissed because they were bored, and because it was “hot”.
So, when I, at twenty-two, had a crush on a girl I wouldn’t call it that. I was just attracted to a girl. It was purely physical. Any sapphic impulse I had was obviously sexual, had to be. It wasn’t allowed to be anything else.
I mean… what else could it be?
Her name was Alexis. She had long brown hair that was heavily highlighted, a soft upturning nose and a full bright mouth. She was hands down the prettiest girl I had ever seen.
We worked together at the movie theater. I was a manager and she was floor staff. The first time I saw her I knew I wanted to be her friend, and when she applied for a management position, I championed her. I believed in that girl, had unprecedented faith in her, and I had no idea why.
Maybe I had a little bit of an idea why. I just liked her. Alexis wasn’t just the prettiest girl I had ever seen she was also one of the most fun to be around. She was full of enthusiasm and always laughing. She was funny and smart, competent and responsible. She was loyal and trusting, and the highlight of my week was the nights we would work together.
I have a video on my phone that she sent me one night over snapchat. I had convinced her to watch Gossip Girl, my favorite tv show, and she was eating it up, which I was eating up. She’d made it to season four and was frustrated by a love triangle. She, like me, wanted Chuck and Blair to be together at all costs, and she wasn’t having any of this delay. “Well, Ariana Grande said God is a woman,” she said, high on her own cleverness, “and I am a woman, therefore I am God, and I say Chuck and Blair need to be together!”
I remember laughing so hard I cried.
I hadn’t admitted to myself before Alexis that I was bisexual, though the signs were there. When I came out to my mom a little less than a year ago I’d said that it was as though I had a box in the back of my mind, and every time I felt attraction to a girl, or anything like it I would pick the feeling up and walk it back to the box. I simply didn’t want to deal with it right then, the implications or the weight, so I put it off. I could go off and list all the little things that I threw in that box, but by the time I finally dealt with it, the day I realized I wouldn’t mind kissing Alexis, it was overflowing.
That’s how it happened. It was beyond inconvenient. I was in the scullery, the room behind the concessions stand where dishes were washed and soda syrup towers sat, with her, talking about something nonconsequential and I was struck by an intrusive thought. An intrusive thought, if you’ve never heard the term, is a thought that you have, usually unpleasant, that comes seemingly out of nowhere and is hopefully gone just as quickly. You think things like “I could totally just sucker punch the person I’m talking to in the gut right now,” or “Remember that dead bird we saw on the lawn last week? And how it was bent and covered in blood?” They’re a token of most anxiety disorders, but in people with where anxiety is more acute, like those with OCD, they linger, coming back over and over with more and more force. I’ve had intrusive thoughts most of my life, and almost always of a sexual nature. It’s not uncommon for me to be walking around with someone and all of the sudden be struck by the image of the two of us making out. Usually I hate it, but that day out of nowhere my imagination was torn up over the idea of kissing Alexis, and I didn’t mind.
In fact I kind of liked the idea.
But it was sexual, just sexual, I told myself. Because it was easier to think of myself as a bit depraved than to admit that I had actual romantic feelings for a girl.
Have you ever had a crush on a girl? Until about a week ago I would’ve answered that question no, no I haven’t.
I told my mom specifically that my attraction to women was purely physical. I was trying not to worry her. Yes, I like girls but I’m not gonna date a girl. I don’t like like girls, I just think there pretty. It’s not a big deal. I’m basically the same as I’ve always been. Don’t fuss about it. I used the term heteromantic, explaining that I was only emotionally attracted to, or interested in relationships with, men. And I genuinely believed that, because even though I’d sifted through the box it was really easy to pretend that I’d only every like liked boys. Alexis was just really pretty, anyone would’ve been starstruck when she smiled. It didn’t mean anything. Besides, I’d only ever been in love with boys. It was boys that had broken my heart and made it skip. Boys. I was only romantically interested in boys.
I was allowed to like boys. It was easy and expected of me to like boys.
But I liked a girl, and my friend Mereht knew it. She would make fun of me, poking at my crush. But I’d remind her time and time again, “I don’t have a crush on Alexis. I’m just attracted to Alexis. I wouldn’t date her; I don’t like girls like that.”
I couldn’t even imagine how that would work, what that would look like.
I’ve always had a hard time seeing myself in media. For some reason leading ladies weren’t often brunettes with brown eyes, or know-it-alls, or kind of mean. They weren’t shaped like I was, and they weren’t crippled by extreme emotional highs and lows that led to the outbursts I was prone to. None of them were violent, or tormented by the same demons, and none of them had to come to the realization that good was not their natural inclination.
Then there was She-Ra. Then there was Catra.
Catra, riddled with abandonment issues and crippled by the need to prove herself. Catra, the girl loyal not to a cause but to herself. Catra who got excited and wanted to blow stuff up. Here was a girl I could see myself in; angry and cynical, defensive and bitter. Funny, and vital, complex, a survivor. And she was in love.
She was in love with a pretty blonde girl, and she didn’t know how to cope with that.
Most of She-Ra is about love, and about learning to love well. Catra doesn’t know how. She’s jealous and easily frustrated by her own feelings. But she learns, she grows. By the end it’s Catra’s declaration of love for Adora that saves the world.
That’s right, a cat girl learned how to properly express her emotions and that saved the world.
It’s a really great show.
And as I watched that scene, for the first time in context, I was crying.
When Catra kissed Adora, she cupped her face. She smiled softly and kissed gently. Because it wasn’t sexual, it was romantic. Because Catra wasn’t just attracted to Adora, Catra loved Adora, and she was kissing her to tell her she loved her.
Girls can kiss girls because they love them.
Girls can love girls.
And I felt about twenty pounds lighter.
A few years ago, the last time I was in love, I came to the conclusion that to be in love was the closest a person could come to seeing someone else in their entirety. It’s to see a person not just as they are but for everything they could be. It’s to see the miracle of a living being in full light. When you’re in love with someone you see them as strengths, you see their good before all else, and you believe in it.
It’s never a bad thing to see someone like that. It is never a bad thing to love.
I was embarrassed for how I felt about Alexis. Worse, I was ashamed. It was easier to write it off as physical, easier to pretend it was some carnal failing than admit that Mereht was right, I had a crush on a girl.
Because I didn’t know what that was supposed to look like. Not for me anyway.
Then She-Ra did that.
I’d had a box. I still liked boys. Not every kid does, not every girl does. All over the world there are girls crushing on girls who think they’re must be something wrong with them, because they don’t know what that’s supposed to look like. They don’t know that it’s good.
But it is good. It is always good to see someone else wholy, to see someone shining.
Have you ever had a crush on a girl? I have. She was pretty, and funny, and I loved being around her. And I can say that now. Thanks to some Netflix show aimed at children I’m comfortable saying I’ve had a crush on girl. A few actually. I like blondes with bright smiles. I like girls who are funny and who know how to laugh.
And it’s nice to know that, to say that. And I can now. She-Ra unblocked my chakra. She-Ra put a part of me on the screen that I hadn’t been comfortable with and told me it was okay. It’s okay that I have abandonment issues, and that I’m bitter. It’s okay that I’m mean sometimes, and that I desperately have to be important. It’s okay that sometimes I like girls. I can feel however I feel, and those feelings, positive or negative, can help me grow if I let them.
“[I am] worth more than what I can give to other people.” That’s what She-Ra said. I am made of so many pieces and all of them, traditionally good or bad, have value that adds to my own. I’m bisexual and that’s not just okay, that’s good. It makes me more.
I have the right to complexity. I am not some kind of monster, I’m a person capable of the ultimate good. I can love, and I can be loved.
I kind of wish someone had been explicit about that sooner.
So give children She-Ra. Give them the chance to be heroes no matter what shape, color, orientation or bundle of flaws them come in. Let them learn to love.