Cherine: Você não está cansada?
Meena: Eu não estou nem um pouco cansada já que você está sempre ao meu lado.
Cherine: Mas eu não tenho nada pra você.
Meena: Só você já é suficiente.
I’ll be the first to say that in many ways, show me love the series is a fucking mess. The writing is uneven, the editing is GODAWFUL, and there are tons of gaping plot holes 🕳️
But I’ve continued to watch and I think there are a few reasons why even if you don’t watch, it’s worth thinking about how this series fits into the larger landscape of queer media. First off, I am a shallow lesbian and I’ll never say no to women kissing women on my tv screen 🤷♀️ Second, I am p confident that this show is gong to give Meena and Cherine a happy ending, and a happy ending for queer women on tv is still revolutionary! Third, this show has heart and warmth despite its many flaws. Many people have put a lot of care into the show and that does come through despite everything. Fourth, I’ve watched a lot of terrible shows and movies featuring lesbians and it has allowed me to look past superficial flaws (often due to a low budget) and at the heart of the story being told. And this story, although not the height of sophistication, is fun and trope-y and at its best is like the show equivalent of cotton candy. Fifth, this is a Thai show that normalizes queerness and brings visibility to wlw in Thailand, a country where gay marriage and unions of any kind aren’t legalized.
Finally, and perhaps most interesting to me, is that this show is an offshoot of the Miss Grand Thailand beauty pageant and in many ways acts as an advertisement for them. I’ve never been into beauty pageants and frankly my stereotypical view of them has been that they are bastions of misogyny, patriarchy, and the objectification of women. If lesbians exist in the world of the beauty pageant, I’ve always imagined it was to perform for the male gaze. And yet this show is aimed squarely at queer women!! It portrays the beauty pageant as a hot bed of lesbian activity and queerness is very normalized in the world of the show. And in the real world of Miss Grand Thailand, the lead actors and the possible romance between them are the face of the pageant. The show doesn’t critique beauty pageants in any way (it really isn’t equipped to do so), but the very act of aiming itself at queer women is subversive.
i'm still thinking about how miss grand thailand was like "oh we have amazing pageant winning supermodels and we need to increase their reach and popularity" and went with the obvious option of a beauty pageant GL 😭