It’s Lesbian Visibility Week, which means two things: a) I’m posting a link to my Venmo on my Instagram story every day in the hopes that a few charitable souls take the bait (I got $8 last year, thank you very much), and b) I have been legally mandated to rectify one of the greatest oversights of my life—I’ve never seen the 1999 cult classic But I’m a Cheerleader. Complimentary cup of tea in hand, I made myself comfortable on the green couch in the Kelly Writers House and pressed play.
It took me maybe three minutes to realize that this might be a perfect film. The opening credits play over deliberately framed clips of exposed midriff, sports bras, and upskirt shots of spandex–clad cheerleaders. Are we only here to ogle women, you might ask? Not necessarily—but Megan (Natasha Lyonne) certainly is, even if she’s not aware of it quite yet. Seventeen years old and losing the battle against allegations of lesbianism, Megan finds herself at an intervention staged by her parents and closest friends to address her homosexual tendencies. The evidence is, unfortunately, pretty damning—her disinterest in kissing her boyfriend borders on revulsion, and the posters of half–naked women hanging in her locker stare her in the face as she receives the news that she’s about to be sent away to True Directions, a gay conversion camp where she’ll be able to work through her “illness.”
The first thing we see of the camp is a crop–top–wearing RuPaul sporting the slogan ‘STRAIGHT IS GREAT’ splashed across his chest, a visual which aptly prepares us for the cast of characters we’re about to meet. Led by the severe, probably closeted Mary J. Brown (Cathy Moriarty) and her barely closeted son Rock (Eddie Cibrian), True Directions welcomes Megan with a stern look and a hospital–grade dressing gown. Just like that, she’s on her journey to “normalcy.” It isn’t until we meet Graham (Clea DuVall)—hot, butch, smoking on her bed, and unafraid to call it like it is—that we realize that Megan might be in big trouble here. As she goes through the five steps of Mary’s tried–and–not–exactly–true program, she grapples with the disconnect between what she should be and what she really is.
“I’m not perverted. I get good grades, I go to church. I’m a cheerleader. I’m not like all of you,” she insists on her first day. This immediate conflation of homosexuality with perversion, this notion that she can’t possibly be a cheerleader and a lesbian is what Megan struggles to work through during her time away. She is constantly caught between expectation and authentic expression, operating under the assumption that the two are directly at odds.
Megan’s struggle to reconcile her queerness with her femininity is a common one. TikTok bombards our For You Pages with videos of influencers “trying to dress more gay,” chronically online discourse about issues that only serve to separate us, and relentless mischaracterizations of fem vs. masc presenting people by our own community. It’s exhausting, and it all serves to uphold this notion that there is one “right” way to be a lesbian—to exist in this space that should be much more accepting than it is. We’ve all heard the stereotypes—vegan or vegetarian, blue hair and pronouns (in my case, an admitted self–report), wears lots of rings, drives a Subaru—and while the film pokes fun at them, it doesn’t erase the fact that many people buy into their validity. The beauty of But I’m a Cheerleader lies in its steadfast rejection of an idea that’s all too common nowadays: that lesbians owe a certain kind of presentation or identity to anyone other than themselves.
In the film, cheerleading serves a dual purpose. As a representation of heterosexuality, it restricts Megan, causing her to doubt her validity as a lesbian despite the joy the label clearly brings her. She begins as the perfect all–American fantasy—a blonde cheerleader with a football player boyfriend—and her commitment to the sport doubles as an unspoken commitment to the heteronormative lifestyle she thinks she has to lead. But it’s hard to ignore the big smile on Megan’s face when she cheers and the endearing act of carrying her pom–poms around everywhere with her, both indicators that she truly loves what she does. She even confides in Graham, after an illicit sleepover, that “cheerleading’s the one thing that’s kept [her] happy.” And—spoiler alert—in her big romantic gesture to win Graham’s heart at the end, Megan writes a cheer routine and performs it for her. As a tie to her femininity, it’s telling and triumphant that she’s able to embrace her queerness and her true identity all at once, and it’s no coincidence that this action—this unapologetic acceptance of herself without a care for what anyone else thinks—is what wins Graham over and convinces her to make her escape.
As a femme, I came away from this film with a lot to think about. Because lesbians are so often associated exclusively with masculinity—another heteronormative misconception that serves only to harm people within the community—my desire to maintain my feminine presentation was somewhat at odds with my identity when I was in the process of figuring it out. Never mind that both femmes and butches have been integral parts of lesbian history for nearly 100 years at this point—modern society’s entire conception of lesbian fashion is still flannel and a baseball cap. This is in no way meant to erase the validity of lesbians who present this way, or to erase the harm done to masc presenting people in these spheres—as our more visibly queer counterparts, they are more often subject to violence from bigots who can’t or refuse to accept the existence of gender nonconformity. Instead, I want to call attention to the joy and freedom that are made possible when people are allowed to express themselves however they want, regardless of what that expression may be.
And that’s exactly what But I’m a Cheerleader does. Megan and Graham light each other up, turning mundane tasks like scrubbing bathroom tiles and changing a baby doll’s diaper into moments of unbridled joy—and it has nothing to do with what they look like and everything to do with the understanding and companionship they’re able to provide each other through shared experience. Graham loves that Megan is a cheerleader not because she wants to date a cheerleader—she could care less about that—but because she sees how brightly Megan shines when she’s not trying to hide behind a mask. And it’s this fierce acceptance of each other that the film showcases so beautifully, making it the sweetest representation of lesbian joy I didn’t know I was missing out on.
I’ll be carrying the film’s message and energy with me this week and the next, and hopefully for a long time after that. But for now, ex–ex–gay Lloyd (Wesley Mann) says it better than I possibly could: “There’s not just one way to be a lesbian. You just have to continue to be who you are.”
