What lays behind my annoyance is this: I feel like this sexualized interaction stemmed from a sexualized relationship between the characters. I think that the actors succeeded in kissing as though it was something they fought and wanted.

It seems like the “stale” comment came from a point of view where bisexuality or dykedom had its moment and should fade off into never-never-land with shoulder pads and other fads. Well, for some of us, we kissed girls before Ally McBeal did (I’m assuming she did, though I never watched) and we’ll continue kissing girls far into old age, please.

I’ve seen a lot of girl-kissing that was torn up by critics because of context or characterization, but that made me squirm with happy-pants. Great acting, ladies…if you didn’t like it, that is. Girls kissing girls for a camera – they are always pretending, in that their acting. So it’s their acting ability that’s in question, not their desire.

I have seen ridiculous, unrealistic kisses, ones that felt as though they were done for ratings or ticket sales. I have seen kisses between girls in movies so clearly marketed to boys that it’s amazing I was watching. And yeah – those are sometimes annoying. Even boring.

I made a big leap in calling Dion straight. Maybe Dion is queer through-and-through but is tired of shallow representations of queerness. In that case, it may be a differing impression of how shallow this movie’s representation was.

I think you must be straight.

I feel lonely, I feel marginalized, I feel masculinized when something that turns me on is decried as being done for the male gaze. Girls kissing girls will never be stale for me. It was never for scoring feminist points and it will not become an old, tired tactic.

There’s more than the kiss in this movie for those of us girls who like girls. Especially for those of us who made out with friends who ended up presenting themselves as completely straight. For those of you who saw the movie, you might remember that Jennifer also proposed to Needy that they play boyfriend/girlfriend like they used to, implying an ongoing sexual element in their relationship. Needy seemed stripped of something in that moment, some friendly shield she’d been using to hide that she liked the sexual aspect of her relationship with Jennifer.

Though I shed that shield long ago, it gave me a heart-twinge to watch the manipulative Jennifer use it to prod Needy and get a reaction.

And I might have missed something, but how does everyone know that Needy was a virgin?

For a true feminist writer/producer who died about a year ago. Not perfect but she tried

Word to that. I’m a little tired of expecting woman-made media to be 100% feminist pure

And I am a lot tired.