November 7 marks eight years since the death of this wonderful poet, singer, and ladies’ man. On September 21, I had the lovely opportunity to celebrate Cohen’s ninetieth birthday at a special event held by The Word Bookstore. Guest speaker and biographer Christof Graf gave a talk entitled “Memories of Leonard Cohen,” during which he shared his experiences accompanying Cohen backstage at his concerts. Graf described himself as a fan “addicted to Cohen,” lucky to have the opportunity to interview Cohen throughout his career and eventually write several books about him. During the talk, Graf provided a detailed account of Cohen’s life here, saying that “Cohen is intrinsically connected to Montreal; he is built into the very fabric of the city.” Audience members were also invited to share their memories of the singer. Though my friends and I were too young to contribute, it was extremely eye-opening to hear from people who had seen him in concert as far back as 1966. Some attendees had even been in Montreal long enough to remember when Cohen would walk up St. Laurent for his daily breakfast bagel, waving hello to his neighbours and to those who recognized him on the streets. 

In the weeks since I attended this celebration, I have spent a frankly absurd amount of time listening to Cohen’s music and reflecting on the legacy of love he has left behind in Montreal. It feels like his ghost is following me wherever I go: walking down the Plateau, where he used to live; going to English classes in the Arts building, where he used to study; even writing this article for The McGill Daily, where he used to contribute. It is impossible for me to separate my experiences in this city from his. 

Part of why I am so submerged in Cohen’s legacy at the moment is because I’ve spent half of my semester analyzing his writing for a class on Canadian poetry. I was reintroduced to “Suzanne,” a song I knew and loved long before I knew anything about its singer. As I heard him sing the lyrics softly into my earphones for the hundredth time, I realized that Cohen himself had put into words what I’d been feeling for him: “She shows you where to look among the garbage and the flowers / There are heroes in the seaweed, there are children in the morning / They are leaning out for love and they will lean that way forever / While Suzanne holds the mirror.” 

Cohen’s poetry is a way for me to reflect on my relationship with Montreal. The more I read and hear from him, the more I feel my bond with this city strengthening. Though his work is rarely explicitly about Montreal, those who have lived here can easily identify what he’s talking about – “our lady of the harbour” in “Suzanne,” images of downtown streets like St. Catherine sprinkled throughout Parasites of Heaven. It’s no wonder that the city is so proud to be known as Leonard Cohen’s hometown. 

“I feel at home in Montreal in a way that I don’t feel anywhere else,” Cohen shared with an interviewer in 2006. Similar to his nomadic lifestyle, I myself have moved around many cities over the course of 20 years, never quite feeling tied down to one particular place. Living in Montreal, however, I have made this place my home on my own terms. I’m sure most people who have moved here from another city would agree with me when I say that there’s something about Montreal that you can’t find elsewhere – whether it’s the people, the distinct subcultures, or the strong sense of local identity, it’s the kind of place that makes you want to stay forever. Cohen put it best when writing the introduction to The Spice-Box of Earth in 1961: “I have to keep coming back to Montreal to renew my neurotic affiliations.” 

Even as I continue romanticizing the city through the lens of Cohen’s work, however, I am careful not to romanticize the man himself. I know there is a lot we differ on in terms of political ideology, with much of it being a product of his time. His background as an upper-middle-class, Westmount-dwelling Montrealer is ultimately quite alien from my experience as an immigrant in Canada. What is important to me beyond these differences is that I am still able to learn more about myself through his work. Both his poetry and songwriting actively engage the audience, inviting them to question their own ideologies as they confront his. He is not interested in making his reader comfortable or catering to their tastes. He only wants us to face our own truths. To borrow Cohen’s words from his poem “What I’m Doing Here,” he is waiting for each one of us “to confess.” 

I’ll confess first: I love Leonard Cohen because I know we share the same love for a city far bigger than either of us. I can feel that love while listening to a song recorded in the 1960s, and I can feel it if I go for a walk down Rue Crescent  today. I can feel that love in the legacy he has left behind in Montreal every single day. 

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But is that really true? I think this is a passive attitude, one that assumes any kind of political action is out of our hands simply because we do not have voting power. Even outside the context of this specific U.S. election, I find it jarring how the onus of political change is often solely on the electoral process. After all, both the U.S. and Canada are home to millions of green-card holders and legal permanent residents who are affected by the same laws as citizens but are still refused the right to vote for their representatives.

Voting has always been considered the cornerstone of democracy in the West. Coming from India, where huge sections of minority populations are outright omitted from electoral rolls at the whims of the current government, I was not raised with this sentiment. I have always known real political change to come from grassroots movements — from people taking to the streets to fight for what they want. And now, watching the state of the U.S. elections, I am more convinced of this than ever.
Over 700,000 Americans agree with me — these are the people voting “uncommitted,” who are similarly disillusioned with both parties and what they stand for. “Uncommitted” is a voting option that allows citizens to express their dissatisfaction with either candidate, often by choosing “none of the above” on a ballot. While many voters feel obligated to choose between “the lesser of two evils,” the fact remains that “lesser evil” is still evil. Democrats and Republicans have both played a bloody hand in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians, with the Biden administration making more than 100 military aid transfers to Israel since October 7, 2023. Presidential candidate Kamala Harris likewise refuses to budge on her policies that continue to fund Israel’s genocidal campaign. In her recent Presidential Town Hall, she claimed that voters must accept her policies on Palestine if they want to see any kind of change on “other issues.” Harris has also previously responded to pro-Palestine protesters by saying, “You know what? If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.”

This dismissive attitude — treating the lives of millions of Palestinians as if they are simply another item on her political checklist — is understandably infuriating to those of us watching these atrocities unfold. Arab and Muslim voters in Michigan have lost faith in the Democratic Party after their continued complicity in Palestinian genocide. As one such voter asserts, “It is their job to earn my vote; it is not my job to fall in line.” And yet, plenty of liberal virtue-signallers continue to fault these citizens for not voting blue. Why should pro-Palestinian voters be blamed for the faults of a system that has failed to represent them? Why should they bear the brunt of scrutiny when the party they are supposed to trust cannot even meet basic demands — to stop funding the slaughter of Palestinians, to stop backing a genocide?

I ask: has a genocide ever been stopped by voting?

Voting is a function of the system, and when the system itself is inherently flawed, trying to “fix” it from within its limits will never work. No matter who wins this election, the United States government will continue sending military aid to Israel and profiting off of Palestinian suffering. It is beyond unfair to force voters to play a part in this genocide through the ballot box.

During this election period, many Americans are instead relying on alternate strategies, such as uncommitted voting or third-party voting, alongside organizing and raising funds for Palestinian aid. For the rest of us, who are not American citizens but understand the importance of stopping U.S.-backed Israeli occupation, we must join the fight on the streets. Montreal-based organizations such as Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) and Montreal4Palestine, as well as transnational ones like the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), are important avenues of activism on campus and beyond. I encourage more students to get involved with such organizations, to take part in demonstrations, and to amplify Palestinian voices wherever possible.

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On September 29, literature enthusiasts from in and around Montreal gathered at Le Gesù to attend the fourth edition of the Kabir Cultural Centre’s “Garden of Literary Delights.” Established as part of the centre’s NexGen MultiArts Festival, this event aims to highlight South Asian writers in Canada who are emerging onto the literary sphere. Each writer read a selected section from their books, before converging in a panel discussion and taking questions from the audience.

The panel was curated by writer and journalist Veena Gokhale, who has written several books herself and takes part in organizing this event each year. For the 2024 iteration of the Garden of Literary Delights, she proudly introduces two new genres: translation and children’s literature. As she introduced the panel, Gokhale emphasized the “pluralism and diversity” of the authors present in the room: Janika Oza, Mariam Pirbhai, Shahroza Nahrin, and Mitali Banerjee Ruths.

Janika Oza kicked off the panel by reading from her recent debut novel, A History of Burning. Oza comes from a long lineage of migrants who left British-ruled India for British-ruled East Africa, where they lived for multiple generations until the 1972 expulsion of Asians from Uganda. As the first person in her family to be born in Canada, she wanted to tell the untold stories that arose from this history of immigration. A History of Burning is a result of this dream. Shortlisted for the 2023 Governor General’s Award for English Fiction and the 2024 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, her novel is a striking historical epic that charts the genealogy of one family from 1898 onwards. Oza read from a chapter about Rajni, a character who moves from Karachi to Uganda after getting married, giving us insight into the subaltern voices that often go unheard when discussing history from a broader perspective.

It is these unexplored histories that Oza wants to bring our attention to. When asked about her research process for this novel, she explained that she initially tried to consult historical resources, but found that there was a huge lack of written material about Indians in Kenya and Uganda. She turned to asking around her family for information, and filled in the rest of the gaps with fiction. By having these conversations with real people in her life, she says she realized the importance of collective memory and highlighting these stories from within her community.

As Oza shares her experience of visiting Kenya for the first time to promote her book, an audience member stands up to say: “I was born in Nairobi, and the way you described Kenya is so realistic that I can hardly believe you’d never been there.” It felt like a full-circle acknowledgement of the stories she set out to represent while writing A History of Burning.

The problem of representation is one that all the authors on this panel contend with. Mariam Pirbhai is a professor of English literature at Wilfrid Laurier University, who joined us via Zoom all the way from Waterloo to discuss writing her work through a decolonial lens. She presented two of her most recent books: Isolated Incident, a fictional novel about the lives of Muslim Canadians on the heels of a hate crime against a mosque in Toronto; and Garden Inventories, a work of creative nonfiction that reflects on how gardens contain histories of culture. The scene she read from Isolated Incident showed the difference between how two characters confronted an Islamophobic parade in Montreal, an incident based on a real white supremacist demonstration that took place in Quebec City. Pirbhai explained that she tried to cast the lens inward and show the friction that exists within Muslim communities as well, in order to counter how reductively Muslims are represented in the media.

Garden Inventories, which was a finalist for the 2024 Foreword Indies Book Award for Nonfiction/Nature Writing, takes on a similarly introspective tone. It draws inspiration from Pirbhai’s own garden in Waterloo that she spent years cultivating. It was there that she realized that plants were not so different from people, which in turn led her to question our relationship to nature in our everyday lives. Through rich, visually-immersive writing and evocative imagery, Pirbhai draws connections between her human experiences and gardening. She reflects on her position as someone who has moved through multiple continents before settling in Canada, and how this history of immigration affects the way she interacts with the land around her. As a surprise for the audience, Pirbhai even shared a few photos of this titular garden – and it is every bit as stunning as she described it to be!

The next panelist moved us away from landscapes and back to history, as Shahroza Nahrin introduced her translation of works by Bangladeshi author Shahidul Zahir, entitled Life and Political Reality: Two Novellas. A graduate student from McGill, Nahrin has a background in academia and literary translation. She was recently featured on CBC’s “All in a Weekend with Sonali Karnick,” where she spoke about Zahir’s influence on Bengali literature. Before reading from her book, she posed an important question to the audience: “Who makes the decision of which books get translated and which don’t?”

For Nahrin, a translator becomes an activist when they translate a book from a marginalized community and bring these voices to the forefront. She describes Life and Political Reality as a “frictional work,” a “thorny text” that goes against the mainstream grain. The excerpt she read from the book exemplified this perfectly, as it brought attention to the effect of the Bangladeshi genocide on a small locality in Dhaka, highlighting the silenced voices there.

Nahrin is extremely passionate about Zahir’s work, which was evident from the heartfelt way in which she outlined the importance of his legacy on Bangladeshi literature. Similar to the fictionalized accounts of Dublin and Macondo which characterize the works of James Joyce and Gabriel García Márquez, Zahir mythologizes Old Dhaka and creates a unique world through magical realism. Nahrin spoke about the struggles that come with translating the works of such an iconic literary figure, explaining how she and her co-translator tried to keep Zahir’s musical writing style alive throughout their translation. They also made the decision to retain some Bangla dialogues within the text, in order to challenge English hegemony and stay true to the original tone wherever possible.

The importance of bringing South Asian voices into the spotlight, which has been expressed by all the authors so far, is exemplified through the work of children’s author Mitali Banerjee Ruths. A self-proclaimed “Texan-Quebecois” born to Indian Bengali parents, Ruths’ main intention as a children’s author was to write the kind of books she wanted to read as a child. She uses a creative metaphor to describe the lack of South Asian representation within children’s literature: since monsters are often considered non-human because they cannot see their own reflection, Ruths wanted to provide children with their own reflection so that they would not feel less than human. Her latest series, The Party Diaries follows the main character Priya Chakraborty as she plans different parties for the friends and family in her community.

Ruths explained that she wanted children to be able to see different foods and cultures represented in their picture books, both as a valuable source of learning and a way of identifying themselves in what they are reading. She is grateful for the opportunity to shape children through her writing, as she herself harbours a huge appreciation for the books she read as a child. “My kids are always my first critics,” said Ruths, laughing, when a member of the audience asked her about her own children’s response to her books. “If there’s a joke they don’t laugh at, I know I have to go back and rework it!”

From historical fiction to children’s literature, the wide range of authors present in this year’s Garden of Literary Delights leaves me with hope for the future of South Asian representation in Canada’s literary scenes. If you’d like to get more involved, the Kabir Centre’s NexGen MultiArts Festival will continue to highlight emerging Canadian artists across different fields over the next month, including a visual arts exhibition and celebrations of classical music and dance.

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I was lucky enough to read Kate Rogers’ The Meaning of Leaving while on a train leaving Toronto, which I think is the most aptly ironic location to experience this bittersweet poetry collection. A Canadian poet who lived in Hong Kong and China for more than two decades, Rogers recently moved back to eastern Ontario in 2019. This is where The Meaning of Leaving takes off, leading the reader on a journey that is constantly on the move from one city to another. Each poem blurs the line between departure and arrival, navigating the intersections of female loneliness, domestic violence, and the search for identity. Published in February 2024 by the Montreal- based publishing house Ace of Swords Publishing, this beautiful collection enters the literary fray right in time for Women’s History Month.

The book opens with the poem “Unreal City,” a sort of anti-ode to Toronto that brings to light all the violence simmering underneath the surface of the city. By mentioning specific locations by name, Rogers makes the setting of this “unreal” poem feel all the more “real” – allowing the words to occupy a tangible space in real life. Even as someone not from Toronto, I was able to relate to the scenes exactly as she laid them out, largely in part due to her straightforwardly familiar tone. “Unreal City” sets the scene for the rest of the poems in this collection, which are divided into five untitled sections that continue moving chronologically through different periods in the poet’s life.

Rogers uses the first section to invite the reader into her childhood home, revealing the abuse she faces at the hands of her father, and establishing a link between this early violence and the violence she goes on to experience in her romantic relationships with men. She wastes no words, shying away from subtlety in favour of boldly laying out the events as they happened.

While I appreciate the lack of restraint and the trust she places in her reader, at times the shrewdness of Rogers’ poetry leaves little room for interpretation. In “Derrick’s Fist,” Rogers’ emphasis on elaborate descriptions of bruises leave a striking first impression on the reader, but her bluntness simultaneously results in an opaqueness that I felt lacked a more personal connection with the speaker. “Albino Sword Swallower at a Carnival, 1970” is an example of another graphic poem I felt was executed better. Here, Rogers is able to show her love for meta-textual references through her masterful association of the violence from her early sexual encounters to the violence experienced by a circus sword-swallower.

Section Two moves forward into Rogers’ time spent in China and Hong Kong, bringing these settings to life with the same attention to detail as she expressed for Toronto. In “On My Way to Cantonese Class” and “Lamma Island Tofu-fa,” Rogers crafts a loving relationship between herself and the city, pointing out the colourful characters that inhabit its every corner. Something as simple as tofu-fa from a roadside hut is likened to salvation. These images of home reach a turning point in the titular poem “The Meaning of Leaving,” in which she recreates her life story so far by moving from the lakes of Ontario to the Hong Kong coastline. The poem takes its title from a translation of “Requiem” by Bei Dao; each line of Dao’s work sandwiches Rogers’ stanzas, giving the words an entirely new meaning. She succinctly communicates the feeling of being lost in one land, before finding peace in another.

Rogers moves further into the realm of politics with Section Three, drawing the reader’s attention to pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. Like in her earlier poems, she conflates real-life conflict and trauma with fantastical images: the authoritarian government becomes a Gate of Hell, the young protesters become the nation’s saviours. Rogers emphasizes how the personal and the political interact with each other in times of crisis, and to me, her poetry seems to suggest that love and resistance are inextricable from one another. In “The Jizo Shrine,” we see the importance of holding on to close female friendships. This love letter to the long- lasting bond between two women stands in as an ode to letting go of grief, whether it be private or collective.

Though The Meaning of Leaving complicates the ideas of home and homeland in a nuanced, self-aware manner, I found myself growing wary of certain poems that seemed cast in an orientalist light. The implications of the line “Yet I long to uncover more layers / of Hong Kong’s midden heap” in “Cantonese Class” make me uncomfortable, especially as I recall the long colonial history of white travelers wishing to “uncover” the secrets of the East. “Sei Gweipo” in Section Four is a candid retelling of Rogers’ experience as a white woman in Hong Kong, highlighting her struggle in reintegrating with Canadian society by comparing herself to a “white ghost.” It’s almost overly self-aware in its execution, leaning towards feelings of white guilt, which makes it all the more difficult to read from a non-white perspective.

The book is ultimately redeemed through its meditations on womanhood and anger, which I found embodied primarily in “The Nose-Ring Girl.” Rogers plays with the idea of female vulnerability as she wonders about this stranger’s backstory, before connecting it back to her own college days. The titular nose-ring girl personifies strength and tenacity, as she continues to stand by her principles even when she does not need to. As we enter the fifth and final section, the reader is introduced to even more figures of feminine resilience. Rogers brings back her love for meta-textual references as she imagines an encounter with a victim of the Spanish Flu, and re-imagines the tale of the Don Jail ghost. In both cases, she reclaims a story told largely by male voices to instead shed light on a female perspective.

Rogers chooses to end this poetry collection by returning to the bird motif sprinkled throughout the book, taking on its themes of flight and motion. “Ode to the Ode to the Yellow Bird” is yet another retelling of a tale from the male poetic tradition. Rogers counteracts the pessimism of Pablo Neruda’s “Ode to the Yellow Bird” by making this poem an affirmation of joy. Her yellow bird is the very ethos of the kind of womanhood she writes about in The Meaning of Leaving: she is the Don Jail ghost, the girl in the pink tutu and Nikes, the lady with a bruised face at the fruit market. She is a symbol of resilience and ambition. And despite everything she has been through, the book grants her one ecstatic cry of hope in its very last sentence: “You live!”

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The play introduces three generations of gravediggers to its audience: the oldest of the trio, Solomon, is played to perfection by Christian Paul as the wisecracking, quirky uncle. His fellow digger Abdul is the most cynical of the three, yet Chance Jones expresses subtle nuances in his performance that elevate his character beyond his apparent pessimism. Abdul and Solomon take on the responsibility of introducing teenaged newbie Bai, played by Jahlani Gilbert-Knorren, to the intricacies of gravedigging. The developing dynamic among the trio gracefully balances humour with moments of heartfelt connection to create a deep bond beyond just family or friendship. What follows is a story of reconciling dreams with reality and of learning how to maintain hope in a world where everything seems determined to dash it down – a world where everything is destined for the grave. 

As director Pulga Muchochoma explains in the program, “Diggers is about self-questioning our position in society in times of struggle.” The pandemic that serves as the backdrop for the play is left intentionally vague, so as to reflect a sense of timelessness. The gravediggers’ work is never ending, and continues “through seasonal flooding, ebola outbreak, and […] political upheaval.” Even though the play’s setting is situated in the specific context of Sierra Leone’s history, the narrative strikes a universal chord with the audience, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the events unfold, the viewer is made to contend with their own role in relation to essential workers, regardless of which country they are in. Diggers makes us think twice about the things we take for granted in contemporary society, and perhaps even leads us to question how we can do better. 

Warona Setshwaelo  – who plays Sheila, a member of the town council – precisely portrays the complexity of grappling with personal loss while owing a responsibility to one’s community. The chemistry between Sheila and Abdul lends itself to explosive arguments between the two, highlighting both sides of a fraught situation: Abdul claims that Sheila does not do enough to sway the town council into adequately supporting  the gravediggers, while Sheila maintains  that she is only able to do so much as one woman dealing with tragedy both inside and outside of work. Neither are satisfied with the other’s answers, nor have the will to argue any further: they are caught in a deadlock. Diggers never shies away from having tough conversations, even when they may be hard to digest. 

The play’s use of music and choreography draws the audience in even further.  Diggers incorporates  song and dance into dream sequences, adding a surrealist quality that helps to foreground the characters’ genuine nature. This musicality familiarizes the audience with the gravediggers in a more intimate way than plain dialogue, allowing us to fully step into their world. It also provides a much-needed release in tension from the play’s more serious moments, giving us a chance to share laughter and song with those onstage. These surrealist breaks from the linear narrative trip up the viewer, making them question what they are seeing and how to respond to it. This approach reinforces Diggers’ overall aim in leading its audience to introspection. 

In its final notes, Diggers moves towards an ending which promises tears and heartache amidst an ever-resilient hope for change. Solomon, Abdul, and Bai’s story ends with a promise from the town council that seems to point towards a brighter future. As I watched the curtain close, and the house lights slowly begin to illuminate  the theatre, I had a feeling that there might just be some brightness for the rest of us, too.

For more information on Diggers, visit their event page on the Segal Centre for Performing Arts’ website. To support future Black Theatre Workshop productions, you can volunteer, donate, or attend events at www.blacktheatreworkshop.ca.

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The hypersexualised lesbian is a familiar trope to anyone who grew up watching early 2000s Western media: whether it was straight pop stars kissing for the bit or straight actresses playing straight characters also kissing for the bit, all of these interactions were pointedly fabricated for an audience. This use of lesbianism as a gimmick to get more viewers is entrenched in a long history of how women’s bodies are objectified to benefit male audiences. Female actresses have historically been degraded to just the sex appeal they offer in front of the camera, all the way from Marilyn Monroe to Megan Fox. Male directors are often to blame for many gratuitous sex scenes that posit women as objects of desire, simply to service the male viewer without driving the plot further in any way. So if straight women already lack agency in mainstream media, it is even harder for lesbians. Lesbian relationships are one of the few places where men have no role to play, which threatens the patriarchal ideology that governs most popular media. As a consequence, the lack of men onscreen manifests itself through the male gaze behind the scenes, reducing lesbians to no more than passive sexual objects and trying to curb their threat.

Take the example of Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan (2010): the movie is almost universally praised for its uncensored depiction of the twisted relationship between Nina (Natalie Portman) and Lily (Mila Kunis), centring on Nina’s eventual descent into madness. Though it is rarely described as a defining “lesbian movie,” it is a movie that hinges on the homoeroticism between the main characters as a driving narrative point. Nina and Lily’s relationship embodies the trope of doppelganger lesbians: when lesbian lovers are visually represented as doubles of each other, often in the interest of responding to male fantasies. Not only is the “lesbian double” a common genre in porn, it is also a common plot device used to vilify lesbians or paint them as predatory. Think back to the murderous lesbians in Basic Instinct (1992), or lesbian obsession as portrayed in the more recent The Roommate (2011). These representations tend to harm real-life perceptions of lesbians by portraying them as inherently aggressive or psychotic. 

While Black Swan is less explicit in its villainization of lesbians, Nina fits almost perfectly into this trope of the “psychotic lesbian”: her sex scene with Lily represents a turning point in her transformation into the titular Black Swan, succumbing to her dark side and ignoring all inhibitions. It conflates lesbian desire with a death drive, seemingly concluding that Nina’s desire to have sex with Lily is a manifestation of her self-destructive tendencies. Not to mention the sensationalism of the scene itself: two straight actresses having sex onscreen, as choreographed by a male director, lends itself to the age-old tradition of exploiting lesbian sexuality for viewer entertainment.

We know that sex sells – and lesbian sex even more so. Female homoeroticism has been used to sell countless products, from Miller Light beer, to Nikon cameras, to even Canada Oil Sands. Promotional material for TV shows isn’t immune, either: take a look at Leighton Meester and Blake Lively in this Rolling Stone photoshoot for Gossip Girl. These portrayals turn lesbianism into a commodity in the same way that movies and TV shows often rely on lesbianism as an eye-catching novelty to attract their audience’s attention. All of these examples point to a long history of lesbians onscreen being reduced to nothing but objects of desire, completely stripped of their sexual agency and unable to exist as well-rounded characters. 

The only “solution” that seemed to be a possible response to these early hypersexualised lesbians was completely desexualised representation in the years to follow. The past few years have seen a rise in the popularity of “cottagecore” lesbian culture: by celebrating simple rural living, women and lesbians are able to construct their perfect utopia without the structural sexism or homophobia of modern city life. At its core, there is nothing wrong with idealizing countryside living – but the concept of cottagecore is problematized by its deeply Eurocentric understanding of rural life. It is a fantasy that largely only Western white women can dream of by romanticizing the American agricultural dream and inadvertently celebrating “aesthetics” drawn from settler colonialism. Even in the context of lesbian sexuality, the cottagecore aesthetic comes with its downsides when searching for realistic lesbian representation: instead of being reduced to sexual objects, lesbians are now reduced to symbols of hegemonic femininity whose only option is to live in a world of imagined fantasy without any active reclamation of sexuality. 

This phenomenon can be observed through the rise of lesbian period pieces that take a large leap away from early 2000s depictions to instead focus on the tension between women that arises from a lack of proximity or sexual contact. Recent movies like Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) and Vita and Virginia (2018) were well-received by lesbian audiences since they filled a historical gap in queer representation after decades of erasure. While this form of censored lesbian sexuality is definitely an improvement from explicit lesbian sex scenes made for the male gaze, it is still aimed at making lesbian representations more palatable for straight audiences. At the same time, these period pieces alienate a large majority of lesbian viewers by being set against pastoral backdrops that were historically occupied by a specific kind of woman: white, upper-class, and femme-presenting. Not to mention that the actresses behind the scenes remain as straight as ever. It seems to suggest that lesbian representation is only acceptable in the mainstream when it is not stepping on anyone else’s toes. 

This idea of lesbians as “digestible” queer representation has also led to them becoming more popular in recent kids’ cartoons. Since The Legend of Korra ended with its main female protagonists starting a romantic relationship, shows like The Owl House and She-Ra have followed in its footsteps with their female main characters being in explicitly queer relationships. Once again, there is nothing inherently wrong with this – in fact, lesbians being normalized in children’s media is definitely a landmark moment in the history of queer representation. As an inadvertent consequence, though, the association of lesbians with children’s media has led to the infantilization of said lesbians in pop culture. There is a lack of adult lesbian representation that doesn’t fall under the aforementioned period piece genre, which soon becomes frustrating since one ends up having to resort to cartoons for lesbian representation even as an adult. Even in popular teen shows like Never Have I Ever, where all of the other teen characters are sexually active or at least expressing interest in sex, the token lesbian character Fabiola (Lee Rodriguez) is never shown in any remotely sexual context. Her romantic relationships also receive the least amount of screentime and attention – which just goes to show how deep this new desexualised misrepresentation of lesbians goes. 

As with all tropes and traditions, the tide will eventually turn against the status quo, whether for better or for worse. The recent success of Bottoms (2023) suggests a wider success for lesbian representation universally – it goes to show that people are interested in seeing lesbians onscreen just as they are, without catering to non-lesbian audiences. We might still have a long way to go to escape all the stereotypes still associated with lesbians in modern media, but more queer women are stepping up to write the stories they want to share with the world than ever before. After all of the bad porn and cottagecore aesthetics of the past few decades, lesbian voices are finally being heard as they should be — uncensored. 

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