yourlibrarian: FemaleHeroes-liviapenn (OTH-FemaleHeroes-liviapenn)
yourlibrarian ([personal profile] yourlibrarian) wrote in [community profile] tv_talk2025-04-22 12:53 pm

TV Tuesday: Being Seen

Laptop-TV combo with DVDs on top and smartphone on the desk



What does representation in television mean to you? Do you find representation important? When did you feel represented in a TV show?
tinny: Something Else holding up its colorful drawing - "be different" (Default)

[personal profile] tinny 2025-04-27 11:15 am (UTC)(link)
Weirdly, the only time I ever went *wow, my people* at a tv screen was this:

Hannah Gadsby's Gender Agenda on Netflix.

And not even because I'm queer (my friends call me queer-adjacent, I guess I'm an ally), but simply because so many of the comedians there are butch women, and seeing a group of them backstage just made something open up in my heart. I felt like I belonged.

There's often one token person on tv who looks like me, but more often than not, they're the comic relief, or maybe they're the tech specialist (implying "not really a woman", which hits twice as hard), or maybe the lone super hero who everyone admires but nobody wants to be. Women who look like me are few and far between.

Do I find that important? Before last year, I didn't realize that I wanted a different representation than the one I was getting. There are good female characters everywhere these days, you don't have to look very hard. But apparently that hadn't been all I was craving. Huh.