TV's Mythical Lesbian Bar

Kat and her chic friends in The Bold Type sip cocktails at a packed lesbian hot spot in Manhattan. In the Brooklyn version of "Almost Family," Tiffany lamps adorn a retro sports bar, crowded with athletic queer women. In the East Los Angeles version of Vida, queer folks call the neighborhood dive bar home, hosting elaborate theme nights in a multi-generational space. Meanwhile, the characters in The L Word: Generation Q frequent a recently renovated lesbian gastropub in Los Angeles. In Younger's New York City, ex-lovers sip glasses of wine in bars filled with attractive women.

The problem: None of these places exist outside of our screens.

Bars and restaurants have long been fictionalized for serialized TV dramas ("Central Park" in Friends, "Home Base" in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend), but in popular queer shows, the trend-setting bar is a reality we experience It's a big departure. For lesbians like me who want a dedicated space to gather, there are only a few bars across the United States to choose from. According to a study released last year (open in new tab), there are only 15 lesbian bars left from over 200 in the late 80s, and more are expected to close in the wake of COVID-19. lesbian night in 2020 will be a special "girls" night at a gay club will often be.

So why, when lesbian bars are disappearing from big cities and small towns alike, is an imaginary lesbian social utopia constantly appearing on women-centered TV shows? The unreachable portrayal makes me want to scream at the screen, "Liz Lemon, I want to go there."

We watch television because it is not realistic. Carrie Bradshaw can't maintain her manolo-laden lifestyle by writing a weekly column, and the living space on "Friends" is a mansion compared to an actual 20-something's Manhattan apartment. These shows are more entertaining than anything else, portraying a simpler, wiser (and sometimes problematic) lifestyle. [Without imagination, queer culture would not exist today. The LGBTQIA+ creators who bring our experiences to the screen are pushing both mainstream and queer culture into a better future.

"The lesbian bars I went to in my twenties, now closed, were all loud and bright and not at all sanitary spaces where $15 drinks were neatly served in martini glasses," said Carleton University in Minnesota gender and film studies professor Candace Moore reminisces about once-real haunts like The Lexington in San Francisco and The Palms in Los Angeles." They were a little smelly, the bathrooms worked more than once, and they had cheap, bad beer." In contrast, she notes, the lesbian-centric series The L Word, which aired on Showtime from 2004 to 2009, always offered queer women the opportunity to gather in luxurious spaces in West Hollywood.

"The drama constructed an upscale fictional lesbian bar that existed and still exists almost exclusively on television," Moore says.

"This seems to be partially related to the fact that television offers viewers aspirational ideas about wealth, power, and prestige. There is also an element of fantasy. What if queer women had all kinds of capital: social capital, cultural capital, economic capital? What if they could afford to buy fancy salads and tequila shots "for the house" on a regular basis?"[15] "I'm not saying there aren't wealthy lesbian, bi, and queer women, but I don't know many who are planning to open bars anytime soon.

"I write about the world I want to see, not necessarily the world I live in," says The L Word showrunner Maja Lewis-Ryan: for the sequel, she's working on a nostalgia-inducing, lesbian-owned, queer-centric hot spot She set out to create a nostalgia-inducing, lesbian-owned, queer-centric hot spot: Dana's. The fictional space became so pervasive that Semitropic, a Los Angeles gastropub that serves as Dana's exterior, hosts a monthly "Dana's Night." It's really a dream come true," Lewis-Ryan says. 'What I envisioned, someone actually put into practice. I create safe community spaces and hope others will make them a reality."

Meanwhile, Los Angeles-based architect Lauren Amador is designing her own realistic lesbian bar, partially inspired by the L Word's original hangout, The Planet. Last year she launched a pop-up lesbian cocktail bar, Finger Joint, with an "unpretentious but witty" menu of women-produced wines and spirits. When she saw Dana's restaurant on the screen, she found it "unrealistic. It's a challenge that plagues aspiring bar and restaurant owners who don't have the budget of a Hollywood production.

Projecting a lesbian bar in the living room can build stronger alliances. Wendy Straker Hauser, showrunner of The Bold Type, says she was "shocked" to learn that there are only a couple of lesbian bars left in Manhattan. So in season three of the show, Kat, who has found a new community at a lesbian bar, runs for City Council to save the lesbian bar from going out of business. Says Hauser, "I always want to be accurate as a storyteller." 'For me, I realized how powerful it was for lesbian women to not just have a queer bar, but to have an actual space for them. It was eye-opening to see how important it was and still is," Hauser says.

Molly Bernard plays Lauren, a feisty queer publicist, in Younger. Familiar with Manhattan's "only two lesbian bars," Cubby Hall and Henrietta Hudson, she liked that the writers decided to bring a lesbian bar, albeit fictional, into the series.

The lesbian social utopia is only on screen. And for now, that's all that matters. Over the past year, lesbian representation on screen has increased dramatically; Vida, Gentefied, and Feel Good have expanded the boundaries of diverse lesbian characters on television, but there is still work to be done, both on screen and in reality. Problematic stereotypes routinely tie queer identities to nightlife. So Lewis-Ryan examines a more inclusive and realistic space to write into the second season of Generation Q, inspired by Cutie's (open in new tab), an unassuming queer coffee shop in Los Angeles. In the real world, Amador is working to include non-alcoholic and low-alcoholic drinks on its finger joint menu, and Butch Judy's (opens in new tab) in New York City is developing a lesbian bar concept that is not a club but a conversation-driven bar.

It is impossible to portray the lived experiences of all LGBTQ people in America in the media. We try to escape. That is what makes the nonexistent bar, the lesbian social utopia, so powerful.

"Even if real-world lesbian bars no longer exist in the same way or in the same place, I hope they remain a staple of visual culture. The fictional bar was never realistic, but it offered a glimpse of something close to it: a space where lesbians could find each other," says Kelly Hankin, author of Girls in the Back Room: A Look at Lesbian Bars. . Whether it is the candy-glam version of "Bold Type" or the raucous neighborhood bar of "Jane the Virgin," these images offer lesbians a vision of community that is as important as ever.

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