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SWIHBARNEYV Psychoanalysis Pastoral Counseling Individuals 6: Couples Jungian orientation ' . 9 Center Court Rive!‘ Road. \‘ Northampton MA Putney VT 413-584-2442 802-387-5547 Janet Langdon, Mdiv, NCPsyA jliesl@sover.net Church St.,& Bank 0 660-2032 * M-Th .8 Sat 10-6 0 Fri 10-8 0 OPEN SUNDAY 12-5 BLUE TOPAZ GODDESS ’ RING by Marne Ryan FINE ART: PAINTINGS BY GABMEL BORAY ANNIS GALLERY Qolb Editor's Note: As promised, here is more Moore. Although she has emerged this fall with a new name for her wide-ranging column, she hasn ’t changed her feminist perspective. en we first see Regina eorge (Rachel McAdams) on screen in Mean Girls, it feels more like Skinemax than Disney — the camera pans longingly down her body, savoring every slo-mo hair toss and lip-lick. What’s (maybe) redeeming about this shot is that it’s not from the perspective of some ogling boy, but from a group of high school out- siders — new girl Cady (Lindsay Lohan),_artsy weirdo Janis (Lizzy Caplan) and their gayboy best friend Damian (Daniel Franzese). Ostensibly, their desire is to be Regina rather than to be with her, but the camera tells a different story. “All right!” I thought to myself, seeing the movie for the first time,*“Finally, a high school movie with an 80’s sensibility where the lesbian subtext isn’t totally buried!” I prepped myself for something akin to Ally Sheedy making out with Molly Ringwald at the end of The Breakfast Club instead of suffering an insulting makeover and winding up with dumb jock Emilio Estevez. Will this be the movie where the homoeroticism inherent in girl-on- girl competition will be acknowl- edged or (dare I say it?) even cele- brated? I wish. Instead, we witness a denial of lesbian desire that feels weirdly anachronistic in this day of GSAs and The L Word. But maybe denial isn’t the right word as much as rejection, because we do see the specter of les- ‘ bianism in the source of Regina’s status as a “life-ruiner.” Apparently she passed a rumor about Janis in seventh grade that she was a lesbian, which caused her to drop out of school and is apparently the “root,” if you will, of her weirdness. Sounds okay so far, right? Standard queer subtext stuff. The weird thing is how completely the movie cops out on its queer subtext, even while it seems to be establishing one. For instance, Janis shows up at the winter formal in drag with her gay best friend, but ends the movie making out with a cute (if dorky) mathlete. Just Regina — the character who has been only moore the receiver, never the initiator, of lesbian desire — ends the movie sin- gle. Both Cady and Janis are linked in happy heterosexual couples, shown cuddling on the lawn at the school as they ‘make their way into a bucolic, clique-free future. Leaving the movie, my sister commented that it felt like a 50’s pulp novel ending, where the bland hero comes in at the last minute to provide the big het finish and save the heroine from a lifetime of perverted misery. right now, having just returned from my tenth high school reunion. It felt a little similar to my experience watching Mean Girls — I’d shown up with high expectations of seeing the girls I’d been crushed out on when I was fifteen, and. that we would fmal- ly acknowledge the desire that had always been just below the surface in our relationships. What I got was, sadly, more of the same kinds of games that had gone on in high school, but (I hope) I’ve gotten a lit- tle less awkward in playing them. Most of the cute softball jocks I ’d pined over were AWOL, although one was scarily tanned, and, I‘ think, married. One of the first girls I ever had a crush on is on her ‘7‘“second husband and has three kids. I traded the “we’re both queer” nod (I think) with Tiffany Reutiman, a girl’ I hardly knew when we were in high _ school, but there was no erotically charged bonding over being closeted tenth-graders. No one was there with a girlfriend, although one guy I prepped myself for something akin to Allyfisheedy making out with Molly Ringwald at the end of 111_e Breakfast QLQ. It’s not so much that any of the homophobia in Mean Girls is that surprising within the context of the representation of lesbian rela- tionships in film and movies over the last fifty years or so, but the vir- ulence of its rejection of lesbianism seems a bit off, especially since male homosexuality is so normalized. »Darnian’s queemess just seems to insure his status as a trustworthy best friend, but Janis’s possible les- bianism is frightening enough to completely disrupt her life. Is les- bianism still so scary? You wouldn’t think so, considering the prolifera- tion of big-time out lesbian icons, but there’s clearly still some pretty effective taboos in place if this movie shies away from explicit les- bian erotics with such vehemence. I’m particularly interested in how these taboos break down brought his boyfriend, and I still (even now, working as a queer organizer in a queer town, even out _ to my friggin’ grandparents!) felt totally awkward about coming out. It’s not so much that my queemess felt dangerous, as it felt shut out as an option in that environ- ment. Which is maybe the same as what’s happening in Mean Girls. If you take out the competition-over- men part of girl-on-girl competition, you lose the vocabulary to talk about it. The love that ciare not speak its name seems, at least in the context of high schools, still a little mute. V Anne Moore is a cheerleader and local gadabour who hails from vari- ous inrerc/iangeable suburbs all over the country. She currently lives in Burlington with her car and exhaus- tive collection of Buffy DVDS.