Lesbian-related Media Thought of the Day: Soap Operas

I've just completed a binge re-watching of All My Children's Bianca/Marissa storyline. It's been a little light in new lesbian media these days (although I did just watch in interesting little short called Camp Belvidere; more on that in another post maybe) and when that happens I tend to go back to my old standbys for my girl-on-girl fix. Re-watching AMC is one of those standbys. As always, watching those clips made me start thinking about how odd the state of lesbian affairs is in the daytime soap world, so I thought this time I'd write it down and maybe not have to think about it the next time. Doubtful, but hey, no harm.

I don't know how many lesbians there've been in the history of US soaps. I'm not an avid soap watcher, although when I was a teen I tuned in to Days of Our Lives, Guiding Light, As the World Turns, and Another World whenever I had a chance. I of course didn't realize that tuning in to Another World simply because I was enthralled with Anne Heche, or that I really, really liked As the World Turns's Shannon O'Hara played by Margaret Reed might mean something...else. Like, it wasn't because of the stellar acting.

I became reacquainted with soaps by watching clips of Maggie and Bianca on AMC. I had heard about Lena Kundera but honestly, she wasn't all that attractive to me so I didn't really fancy going back to see any of that. It's kind've the way I pretend Callie and Erica didn't happen on Grey's Anatomy. I enjoyed the BAM storyline even though it just didn't make sense a good deal of the time, and it seemed that the writers were doing everything they could to keep them from having to actually do anything about the attraction between the two characters. It was so weird because they had already established this lesbian character in Bianca Montgomery, and that was such a big deal, and they'd given her a relationship already (two actually because there was Frankie I guess), but for some reason they were really balking about fully committing to Maggie and Bianca. Who the hell knows why? They kissed a total of I think 3 times during the series, and for all but the last time it wasn't mutual. You have the Maggie snogged Bianca while Bianca was with someone else kiss: http://youtu.be/Ery5wWUTgX4. I'd embed it but the user disabled that functionality. It's at the 3:40 mark.

The next time is the other way around. Maggie's in an abusive relationship with some dude and Bianca kisses her: http://youtu.be/ZYO-DcQcFc0. Same deal with the video, but this person seems to be the only one with any BAM vids on YouTube.

And the last kiss: http://youtu.be/LTmJLs4tgYk. It was still a sort've non-mutual kiss; it was a break-up kiss. They actually talked to each other and said out loud that they were lovers...right before Elizabeth Hendrickson left the show. I guess better late than never.