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lgbtpopcult · 3 months

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Streaming Services & LGBT+ Women Representation in 2024

Let's do a raking of where we stand and what has been going on in the last few months in streaming...

Grades: A+ highest and F lowest/fail

Max C

Max has been having trouble getting any hits in recent years. Though they are not purposeful about giving us representation they do have some gems. There's no quantity but there's some quality stuff. First and foremost. Harley Quinn the Animated Series. The animated series, now renewed for a fifth season and with a spinoff, has gone where no series has gone before. Yeah, animated series have given us representation before there's been Adventure Time, Shera, The Owl House, Steven Universe and more. However, two popular, important characters that are part of a huge franchise getting together in an animated series geared towards adults? And the representation being romantic and sexy and a healthy relationship? Love that for us and at the same time should be the standard. Max also has The Last of Us which was the biggest hit of last year and is returning next year, the lead Ellie is gay and will have a stable relationship next season. However, there's serious lack of quantity. There's some side characters here and there in shows like Peacemaker and The White Lotus but most shows don't have gay women or if they do they get cancelled or leave or handled badly. The gay lead in The sex lives of college girls is leaving, in Vilma Mindy Kaling made us think she's giving us Vilma and Daphne only to go "just kidding she's in love with her guy best friend after all" and the new Pretty Little Liars show original sin? Has no gay girl in it. Hubris.

Apple TV+ A

Apple TV+. For everyone asking what's the best platform for gay girl content that is consistent and of high quality that is your answer. Apple TV+ is not just the place for Dickinson and For all Mankind. It is consistent in giving us wlw in its shows whether that's The last thing he told me, See or Invasion. It is also giving us leads in its big budget, important projects not some small show they made on a dime and nobody noticed while they were advertising straight romcoms. In The Morning Show one of the leads is queer, in Bad Sisters same and of course our best show you could be watching right now, Monarch legacy of Monsters. It also usually renews its shows for at least 3-4 seasons. So, yeah if ur a gay girl you can get an Amen. On Apple TV+. Yeah there's some good stuff here and there on other platforms, Max has Harley Quinn which is revolutionary and The last of us which is one of the best shows of the year, Amazon's best and most successful show Wheel of Time gave us a queer woman lead, Netflix...used to include us in its important projects back in the day when they weren't the Facebook of streaming? But the important thing is, Apple TV+ has the most quality and quantity in its recent projects we've seen in a while. The effort to cater to us is clearly there.

Amazon Prime Video C+

Amazon Prime tries. We have to give them that. They have greenlit some important shows with good budgets that included gay leads. Some of those were The Wilds, A league of their own, Paper girls, Shelter. Notice a pattern? Yeah, cancelled. To be fair that is not always the case. The Wheel of Time, one of their most important shows has a gay woman lead played by fan favorite Rosamund Pike of I Care a Lot fame. They also gave us a whole reality show about Latin American super couple Calle and Poche. However, their misses are way more than their hits and they never give shows room to breath and grow an audience. You can't trust them to do that. Hopefully, they will at some point give us stories that they can finish but for now their efforts are subpar.

Hulu: B-

Hulu has been ramping up its efforts for representation and it shows. While for a long time aquired content was their gayest content (movies like Happiest Season for example) they have some interesting stuff recently. They made a more inclusive How I Met Your Father, with a lesbian being part of the group and treated well, they of course have our fan favorite Killing Eve, and they made a gay romance movie, Crush, casting two actual bi women to play the leads (Rowan Blanchard and Auli'i Cravalho). They have some shows that have important gay women characters like Class of 09, Only Murders in the Building, Dopesick, Little fires everywhere and even their new big bet Death and other details. Hulu has only started focusing on original content in recent years so we'll have to see how it goes.

Netflix: F

Netflix as been very focused on straight people in their 30s over the past couple of years. Gone are the days when they first started with shows like Orange is the New Black, their flagship show, having a wlw couple as its main couple. GenZ, the gayest generation yet(and this research doesn't include genz under 18 or that number would not be what it is😂), will probably be their downfall so there's that but for now it's an important streaming service that has turned into network TV.

It's a shift we've seen happening gradually but became apparent in the last few years the most as there was not only very limited content for us to watch but queer characters have not been given important stories or romantic relationships. The few bright spots (like Fear Street and I Care a lot) are acquired content that they didn't greenlit themselves, they just happened to buy. On the other hand, they have endless reality shows about straight romance and straight romantic comedies. Big budget, well promoted series always have a straight lead (even if they have to straight wash her from the source material *cough archive 81 cough*). Gay women are the gay friend/side character if they exist at all. In the past few years there were some lead characters in shows with miniscule budgets that were not given any importance like First Kill (which they set up to fail by giving it a bad budget, unknown leads, untested writers etc.) and warrior nun that were swiftly cancelled. Similarly, some small budget foreign shows had some gay women leads like Feria The Darkest Light (which was very good but was not promoted at all), and Everything Now(ditto). There were some side characters here and there most notably the ones in The Fall of the House of Usher and Elite but little else. Sometimes they even make it seem like they'll be giving us a show in which the lead girl has an actual romance storyline with another girl (Chosen) only to out it's not that way and the girl is just one of her love interests, given 2 minutes of screentime and not treated all that well.

Good reenactment of how the Netflix experience has been for queer women in the past few years:

Netflix: straight romcom, straight romcom, straight reality show, straight lead, straight romcom...

Other streamers and networks: increased representation

Netflix: one lesbian side character, straight romcom, straight romcom, straight reality show, straight lead who was a lesbian in the original but was straight washed, straight romcom...

Other providers: Movies are becoming gayer look Scream, Mean Girls even the Purge movies got gay! In Yellowjackets you have a lead lesbian with romance and friends cheering her on, in NCIS Hawaii Our lead couple is two women, in Monarch legacy of monsters the lead is a queer woman and in meaningful relationships with women....

Netflix: In Chosen the lead sleeps with a girl, then sleeps with a guy, then has like two conversations with the girl before the season is done then the show is never heard from again. Also, we've been sitting on the rights of The seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo forever. Plus we took a successful podcast with a lesbian lead and ruined its live action adaptation by making her straight and we're always willing to throw in a gay girl side character XO XO

Paramount+ C-

When you think of Paramount+ and gay women you think of Special ops lioness. And that is a good show to think about. However, outside of that Paramount+ is a mixed bag with not a lot of choices. They don't have a lot of original programming, most of their stuff is CBS stuff. Other than Lioness in the original programming category we got dating show Love ALLways, a fun bisexual dating show. In the CBS shows they have NCIS Hawaii, which is awesome and has a wlw as its most important couple. They also bought Paper dolls which is another hidden gem you should definitely check out. Star Trek: Picard gave us two lead women in a relationship only to break them up. You'll find some side characters here and there like in The good fight. What adds some value is some acquired shows they have that you can also find elsewhere, like Showtime favorite Yellowjackets and MGM+ gem From. Still, definitely not enough for anything more than paying for a couple of months to watch Lioness, From and Yellowjackets.

Peacock C

Peacock has had trouble getting any of their shows to resonate with viewers. Most of their shows are the NBC shows. With their limited selection of original programming though they have shown a willingness to maje a real effort to be inclusive. The Saved by the Bell spinoff, which only run for two seasons(most of their original programming are lucky to get that far), made one of its leads bi and gave her a girlfriend. Bel-Air, one of its few shows to survive, made one of Will's sisters gay. Their miniseries The undeclared war has a gay woman lead. Their NBC shows are the ones that add some more quantity. You can find Law & Order: Organized Crime, one of the leads is gay in that one and any NBC show with a gay character from New Amsterdam to Manifest. What they don't have is some shows that you'll really want to watch and get a subscription for but to be fair, that goes for everyone.

Disney+ D

To be fair Disney+ has started its efforts for diversity and we suspect this grade will change in 2025 but for now it's a D. Right now only some small (but important) steps have been made in the right direction. Big Shot was their first show to include a lesbian kiss on the platform, it has since been cancelled. High School Musical The series took an important step by making an important side character bi and giving her a love interest...in its final season 🙃 Andor is really our big win when it comes to Disney+. A successful, already renewed show that introduces two gay women, who are important characters, and in a relationship, to the Star Wars universe. Marvel show She Hulk also threw us a marvel bone by having a gay girl side character. They also have The Owl House which is not nothing. But we need more than that, way more.

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