The gamechanging show first premiered 20 years ago. To celebrate we’ve made this feature penned by Eleanor Noyce in November 2022 available online
IMAGE BY SHOWTIME
Season three of iconic reboot The L Word: Generation Q streams on Showtime from 18 November, and we have so many unanswered questions. Are Finley and Sophie going to be ok? Are Bette and Tina going to get back together? There’s so much to unearth.
Putting queer women on the map when we had little to no media depictions, The L Word introduced us to some seriously strong characters when the first episode premiered in 2004. From Shane’s entrepreneurial, forward-thinking hairdressing business to Bette’s highflying job in the art and museum sector, we became well acquainted with the 21st century power lesbian. And that concept has continued to shine through in Gen Q.
From the first introduction we have to Dani Núñez in season one, we witness her successful career as an influential, high-up PR executive. Using the power she has as an employee of her father’s morally questionable company for good, she is so driven by her career that it seems to come before everything. Sadly, that includes her fiancée Sophie who, in the run-up to their wedding, airs concerns that Dani isn’t as present as she could be. Forever working, the pair end up going their separate ways after (spoiler!) Sophie dramatically cheats on Dani with Finley.
But then, we see Dani befriend Gigi, the fiery ex-wife of Nat. In herself, Gigi is another powerful, career-driven figure working in real estate. After Dani moves out of the house share post-break-up, Gigi sells her a flat and helps her to rebuild her life. Eventually hooking up after a string of lustful scenes, the collective lesbian power is epic.
And of course, Bette continues to shine with her mayoral campaign. Alice has her own TV show, taking her sex-positive, LGBTQIA-inclusive chatterings to primetime TV. Positive media representation aside though, things still aren’t perfect for LGBTQIA women and non-binary people career-wise. Preliminary findings published by the Social Science Research Network in April found that, one decade after graduation, college-educated workers in the US identifying as LGBTQIA earn 22% less than their heterosexual and cisgender counterparts. HRC Foundation further found that LGBTQIA workers earn around 90 cents for every dollar earned by the typical non-LGBTQIA worker, even more so for queer people of colour and transgender or non-binary people.
However, according to the Institute of Labor Economics, between 1991 and 2018, lesbian women in Europe, North America and Australia earned 7.1% more than their heterosexual, female counterparts (the opposite is true for gay men). Despite this, paper author Nick Drydakis argues that the reasoning might be that lesbians are stereotyped as being more career-focussed or more “manly” than heterosexual women – which in itself isn’t the most positive-driven progress.
Statistics aside, The L Word’s representation of powerful, career-driven women like Bette, Alice and Dani is so important because it dismantles all of those systemic beliefs that LGBTQIA people are set out to fail. The L Word, despite its fiction, provides hope: LGBTQIA people of all ages can envisage that shining career progression is possible for them. We just need to work on closing the gap in real time.
Looking for more The L Word goodness? You can still get your hands on a copy of our 2023 cover story with Jennifer Beals.
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