I Am Femslash: Mod Jess
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| Title: | I Am Femslash: Mod Jess |
| Creator: | Jess |
| Date(s): | February 28, 2017 |
| Medium: | Tumblr post |
| Fandom: | |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | I Am Femslash, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
I Am Femslash: Mod Jess is a 2017 essay by Jess.
It is part of the I Am Femslash essay series sponsored by Femslash Revolution.
Excerpts
There’s a movie called Gold Diggers: Secret of Bear Mountain that I watched about a thousand times as a little girl. I wore out two VHS tapes (one of which my mom stole from Parrot Video and Tanning Salon for me in 1995). It was about two girls, Beth (played by Christina Ricci) and Jody (played by Anna Chlumsky), who meet over the summer and go on a treasure hunt together. The first time I watched the movie, I was three or four years old, and I was immediately attracted to Jody.
The thing was, I had an Uncle Jody, so I thought that was only a boy’s name. So, to me, Jody was a boy, and he teased and got a rise out of Beth, and I adored it. Then my mom told me that Jody was actually a girl—she just had short hair and wore tomboy clothes. I was so upset, and I don’t know why!
Even fandom was a pretty male-centric place starting out. My introduction to online fandom actually began in the mid-2000’s with the Fueled by Ramen “bandom”—emo/alternative/rock bands like Fall Out Boy and Panic! At the Disco. I crushed on boys with slim hips and long hair and fingernail polish, boys who weren’t afraid to be feminine. It wasn’t very friendly towards women, and femslash was quite a foreign concept. But…the more feminine an artist was, the more I was drawn to him. I became quite enamored with Adam Lambert during his American Idol season because of his makeup and hair, and because, though he wasn’t out yet, I knew he was gay. I only ever was attracted to gay men, and I think this was similar to my unattainable crushes in grade school—it’s not as if anything could ever happen with them. They were safe.
Then, a little show called Glee popped up out of nowhere.
It seems normal now to anticipate pairings like Clarke and Lexa or Alex and Maggie on network TV. They’re possible now. Sure, there was Tara/Willow, but they were a bit before my time, and Arizona/Callie, but Grey’s was a little above my age bracket. But then there was a slow pan upwards from two pairs of sneaker-clad feet, four legs entwined with matching red cheerleading skirts, and my heart began hammering, my breathing quickened, I got all sweaty and cold at the same time.
It was happening, it was happening. Brittany and Santana were queer girls, and they were kissing, and it wasn’t a joke. I was a freshman in high school and knew so little about the world.
From then on, I was in the femslash fandom, confined to our desktop computer in the kitchen. Brittany/Santana gave way to Quinn/Rachel, who became my OTP. Many of my favorite fandoms weren’t femslash juggernauts (Emily/JJ from Criminal Minds was a big one for a while), but I always found small spaces with other femslash lovers. However, I was in the middle of writing a Criminal Minds high school AU that featured both Emily/JJ and the smaller pairing of Hotch/Reid. I received a firm, angry review from someone who wondered why I wasted my time on femslash when people only read for my slash pairings. They said femslash wasn’t really a thing in fandom. I quit fandom for three years after that.
I got into the Teen Wolf fandom, which is still my biggest fandom experience. While there were no canon femslash pairings, there was still a thriving femslash fandom that I got involved in right away. I then found Once Upon a Time and Orphan Black years later—two fandoms that I joined mainly because of the main femslash ships.