Lesbiennes de Passage: A decade of queer representation on French TV

As often when left to my own devices, I tend to ponder to the extreme on why I am the way I am. In other words, a delightful and not at all mind-straining exercise. And so, what was meant to be a quick, innocent research about what mainstream queer rep I could have missed as a surly French teen who preferred Tumblr to TV, quickly dissolved into a ‘That can’t be right’ headbutting-the-walls type of situation.

For context, I spent my teenage years in a very small town in Middle of Nowhere, France, where it was thought that Marilyn Manson was a certain glorious blonde actress and where differences weren’t exactly welcome nor encouraged nor tolerated. If international TV shows today are to be believed, discovering and accepting your sexuality usually comes during the formative years of teenagehood, and if accurate, I couldn’t be gladder it is so. Unfortunately for many queer people of my generation, expressing who you are came with warnings. Showing any sign of straying away from the accepted heteronormativity of it all was asking for trouble. As a consequence of all that, being open about sexuality doesn’t always come easy to some of us.

My teenage understanding of queerness began with fiction and the homoerotic atmosphere of the series I could catch on the Internet. It was sometimes fulfilled (Torchwood’s Captain Jack Harkness for the win), but mostly ultimately denied (BBC’s Merlin and Sherlock and their bromances forever tip-toeing the line). Thankfully, I saw more than the tired queer baiting of Supernatural or the unbridled but rarely positive queer subtext in Hanazakari no Kimitachi e then; there was Skins and Maxxie’s more than assumed sexuality; there was In the Flesh’s Kieren who might have been a zombie but still found love; there were the partying queers of the American Queer as Folk… But notice something there?

It was men. It was always men.

Now I know about The L World, Lip Service, Sugar Rush… Back then, I didn’t have the faintest these shows existed. These were not the shows I saw gifs of while wasting hours scrolling on Tumblr or giggled at with my best friend after school. And now, I can’t help but wonder what it would have changed had I known about them. The only example of a relationship that wasn’t between cis, white gay men I remember was Melanie and Lindsay in QaF, but, while mostly lovely to watch, this relationship meant nothing to me. These two were adult women in a bumpy but committed relationship who had a strong community around them, and one then two babies on the way. I was an awkward teen with an awful haircut and more complexes than I had fingers, stuck in a town where I always felt like a pen colouring outside the lines; their life was not one I could imagine for myself. One I did not imagine I might one day want (sans the babies, let’s not go overboard).

And so, all that got me thinking recently. Was my focus in the wrong place, back then? If queer representation was growing—maybe even slowly improving—in other countries, reflecting the life of some, is it possible that I missed characters in my own country that were more like me than a twink wizard or an over-confident sex addict could ever be? In short, where were the lesbians, the questioning teens, the gender non-conforming characters on French TV?

The easy answer to all that is: debatable, no, and MIA.

When I started my research, the first mention I found of lesbianism in mainstream French TV came from an episode blurb stating that ‘a teenage lesbian girl had been found murdered’. A questionable start, yet one I expected. And although I’d like to say it got better, lying is bad, so.

Sure, I was pleasantly surprised to find a comprehensive list of queer characters that have appeared in French TV shows since 1992, but the feeling was short-lived. Amongst the fair number of lesbian, bi, trans or enby characters, it turns out there was only a handful whose sexuality and/or identity hasn’t been used as a running joke, a personal burden or for the sake of a short-lived experimentation with sexuality.

It isn’t before 2009 that I found a queer character who was not a gay man and whose sexuality isn’t entirely portrayed in a negative light. In La vie est à nous (literally translated, ‘Life is ours’), the spin-off of a YA series that follows the characters as they go through their early twenties, Kelly kisses women on screen, she goes to lesbian bars, she has multiple flings and serious relationships. She grimaces when two of her friends discuss straight sex and cuddles her girlfriend at the breakfast table, with all her friends around. That in itself feels pretty ground-breaking for 2009 France. But perhaps because it was too much so, whatever progress her character could have symbolised gets progressively lost in storylines of cheating, manipulation and of pregnancy obtained through some sort of lavender marriage to a straight man.

And such seems to be the destiny of lesbian and bi characters on French TV, at least pre-2013. How many more examples did I find of characters we’d now define as ‘bi-curious’ or perhaps only weighted down by internalised homophobia, and whose journey includes reacting to being kissed by a woman with a slap, giving sapphism a go because they were feeling lost after a break-up/divorce/enter more weak excuses, before returning to the ‘straight’ path. For many of these characters, it’s near impossible to find information about them if not in relation to a man.

Sous le Soleil (‘Under the Sun’), an ultra-mainstream show that went on and on and on for over ten years, included a brief lesbian plotline for one of the main characters, which can be resumed as: ‘closeted woman has sex with an out woman’, ‘closeted woman refuses to acknowledge that that desire has roots somewhere and treats lover like crap in the morning’, ‘lover reacts badly and becomes obsessive as the stereotype goes’. Other shows like Famille d’Accueil (‘Foster Family’) did the work. It set the scene for a healthy, mature lesbian relationship, then surprise surprise! The storyline gets removed from the show entirely at the start of a new season as there ‘was no space for it’ any longer. Sure.

In all of my research, I saw the French equivalent of ‘homosexual’ being used once. Once. There’s never a direct use of ‘gay’, ‘lesbian’ or ‘bisexual’ when it comes to women—any woman—but we’ll take the crumbs we’re given, I guess. That sole mention is in the blurb for season 3 episode 1 of Clem, where a man gets the surprise of his life when a son he didn’t know about shows up, the result of the man’s sperm donation to ‘Vic and Sabine, his homosexual friends’ years ago. Of course, there has to be some sexual tension between the mum who carried and the sperm donor because it’s well-known that middle-aged men are so damn irresistible they make lesbians in committed relationships reconsider their options. There’s also the stereotype of the slightly aggressive and jealous masc lesbian we could have done without, but hey. It’s worth noting that the episode came out in 2013, a few months before the legalisation of same-sex marriage in France. In the span of one episode, homosexuality and same-sex parenting are discussed, mainly through a conversation about the legal invisibility of the second mother, who has less rights on the child she raised than a mere sperm donor. A small victory for the gays just before a bigger one, even if the couple is seemingly never mentioned again past that episode.

Then comes Plus belle la vie (literally translated, ‘(a) More beautiful life’). This never-ending show was celebrated by some as having included the first mostly positive representation of gay (cis male) characters and relationships. Meanwhile, the rest of the queer spectrum is stunted by denied bisexuality, more cheating, and manipulation. The show does deserve a tentative gold star for being the first mainstream French series to figure a trans character played by a trans actor (Jonas Ben Ahmed’s character, Dimitri). The actor has talked about using his role as a way to inform and educate, and the few scenes I found of him do feel like listening to a speaking encyclopaedia more than to a fully formed character, but again, crumbs are better than nothing. In one such scene, he endeavours to explain the spectrum of the trans experience to a couple of very confused parents whose kid is questioning their gender identity. In another, he advises said kid not to buy testosterone on the Internet, which does speak on the absence of clear medical information available in France, as the kid seems to rely mostly on dodgy forums and YouTube videos. In short, Dimitri acts as the kid’s guiding light and that’s maybe not the worst job there is. The least said about the lesbian and bi characters in Plus belle la vie is probably best as most of their storylines seem to include cheating or being cheated on, SA or tipping a toe in their repressed sexuality before returning to the ‘safety’ of heterosexuality.

But then, a miracle! Out of the sea of queer baiting, derisive storylines, and confused behaviours came something I had stopped hoping for: a queer character that felt real. Relatable even! Charlotte Lepic might still be bland as oats, but at least, she has guts. Fais pas ci, fais pas ça (literally translated, ‘don’t do this, don’t do that’) began in 2017 and over the course of the next ten years followed two families presented as ‘radically different from each other’, when they seemed, in fact, pretty interchangeable. But rather than discuss the wonky plot, I’m more interested in one of the younger characters, Charlotte. Hers is the first actual coming out scene I came across during my research and what a wild ride it is. In that 6-minute amateur montage with hilarious music, you see Charlotte hesitant, then assertive. She rolls her eyes and openly calls bullsh*t when her mother doubts her certainty that she is in love, with a girl. The parents’ reaction is on par with many parents’ (unfortunately) as is their refusal to simply accept that Charlotte might be young but knows what she wants. But it’s equally infuriating. And so it makes it only the more sweeter when Charlotte holds her ground and is supported by others who call out her parents’ idiotic behaviour. Like many who like to pretend they are okay with queerness until it’s found in their own home, the parents show their true face quickly enough. The pretence falls, the usual crap comes out. ‘My daughter thinks she is gay.’ ‘Charlotte, you can’t ignore all the nice-looking boys just because once, a girl made you wonder.’ ‘If in three years Charlotte isn’t a… lesbian anymore, well, it’ll be too late. We’ll be stained.’ And yet, Charlotte continues on her fruity way, going through first love and heartbreak, kissing a girlfriend (who is Asian! And masc!) in front of her parents, in the long tradition of queer people not giving a flying f about others’ opinion, and we can only respect her for it. For once, it feels like a queer character had been written not as a bit or to create some depressing storyline, but instead to maybe highlight the everyday bravery of queer people that go on being who they are despite the many that believe themselves allowed an opinion on their lives. ‘I like girls and that won’t ever change’, Charlotte tells her parents, unwavering, unapologetic, the words as resonant as a middle finger in their faces would be. And watching this, I felt like that gif of Pedro Pascal who’s laughing and crying, unable to decide whether I was mostly overjoyed to finally find such representation or envious of the self-confidence the character found so young.

What came next?

I split ways with France over a decade ago and writing this only reminded me why. As pretentious as it sounds, my queerness doesn’t translate to French, I think. It’s so tightly intertwined with my life in the UK, that today still I shift into someone I no longer am the minute I cross the border to France. This idea of queerness we see on French mainstream TV is not the queerness I know. These bland, white, conventionally attractive characters played by straight actors don’t represent the queerness I love. While I did come across some pockets of hope while writing this article (rant), one being Pascale Ourbih[1], another being the spectrum of sexualities and gender identities portrayed in Skam[2][3], France is still, as often, lagging behind.

It might be idealistic to expect more queer and trans actors portraying queer or trans characters on French TV because oh no, we wouldn’t want to offend the sensibilities of people that are so easily offended. But is it too much to ask for more genuine storylines that reflect our actual experience instead of dated stereotypes? Happy endings more than once every decade? Relatable characters that are allowed to thrive in their lives and relationships? And when finally we are granted truthful queer characters, can we remember that there’s a lot more than one letter in LGBTQIA+?

It does seem like queer culture is thriving underground in France, but I can’t wait for the day where queer voices, diverse voices, are reflected on every screen, no matter the channel, no matter the context. In short, I can’t wait until the day when French mainstream culture proves me wrong.

Note: All the information gathered is based on recent research and a deep delve into YouTube archives. So it’s possible that I’ve missed the finer points of some intrigue or character development, but the fact that almost none of these characters have the queer aspects of their storylines detailed online also reinforces my point, which is that queer rep in these years was almost invisible or made invisible.

Charlotte Rowan (she/her ish) is a queer author and translator based in London. She has published, so far, two novels with emotionally illiterate characters, a string of wordy Substack articles on the queer history of London, and is working on her third book. All these can be found at @charrowanwrites.

[1] A trans actress who appeared in various shows such as Vénus & Apollon, La nouvelle Maud and Pigalle la nuit.

[2] Technically a web series (the OG being the Norwegian version) but it became mainstream enough that I’ll allow it.

[3] Thumbs up also to the fluid queerness found in The Seven lives of Lea.