In The Ladies' Room: Gay's Anatomy and Becoming "Those Girls"

Welcome to the second installment of In The Ladies' Room, a weekly column by me, Amelie, and my BFF Anne where we take on music, pop culture, lesbian culture, DC culture and the times when these things intersect.

Neither Anne nor I had never been anything close to a fan of Grey's Anatomy. We mercilessly mocked those girls who quoted the show (like my college class president did during her Baccaluarate speech) and dreamed of men like McSteamy, McDreamy and McCreepy or whatever. I couldn't even tell some of the characters apart. But last April/May, that all began to change.

When they began the Callie/Erica storyline, Anne and I both felt compelled to start watching. For some reason, probably due to the complete lack of lesbians on network television, we don't think it's uncommon among lesbians to feel some strange urge to watch anything--anything--lesbian-related on television. Which has led to some less-than-stellar mements, like when I decided to watch the lesbian episode of The New Adventures of Old Christine. Or the lesbian episode of Fat Guy Skinny Wife, more commonly known as Still Standing. As you can imagine, watching these episodes was generally a painful experience that we were glad were behind us.

So we both slyly checked out a few of the lesbian segments of Grey's Anatomy on YouTube, and we found ourselves hooked. Neither of us would admit it to each other, but once Callie and Erica's sexual tension really started building, we both checking YouTube on Fridays, waiting for our Callie/Erica update. And we won't lie, while spending the weekend after graduation caring for some elderlies, we watched the season finale Callie/Erica kiss scene no less than eight times.In one day.

When the new season started, we had to figure out a special system to watch the show. Since I'm a massive hypochondriac and watching five minutes of House convinces me that the spots of my fingernails mean I have lung cancer (and simply by writing that I feel like I'm tempting the fates), I knew there was no way I was going to be able to watch a full episode of Grey's. Anne was convinced she could put up with the whining and Meredith-monologuing to see the lesbos, because if she didn't, "she wouldn't fully understand what was going on." However, about three minutes into the premiere, Anne realized it was just too painful, and I breathed a sigh of relief. We launched our new system of watching--Gay's Anatomy, where we would let the show record on our DVR, and watch the five minutes of gay moments about an hour after it originally aired. It worked wonders--to a certain extent. Apparently the writer's of Grey's really understand lesbians, because some of the dialogue between Callie and Erica was so real, and so painful, that Anne watched with a pillow ready to cover her eyes, and I was a constantly making gagging noises due to my discomfort.

Seriously, the dyke drama was so painful--but only because it was so realistic. And where they really got us, was Erica's glasses speech. There was something in that monologue that was so familiar to us, we immediately rewound to watch it again. And there may have been some almost-tears involved.

But it's not what you think. It wasn't the just gay that got us--it was the glasses.





Let's just get this out there. Neither of us would win the eyesight Olympics by a long shot. While glasses maybe making a comeback, we've both been members of the glasses club since middle school. So a speech about getting glasses and seeing leaves on trees for the first time and what a literally eye-opening experience it is? We both had that moment, driving home from the eye doctor, realizing that you were supposed to be able to see each individual leaf, not just a giant tree blob.

And that was when we realized there was something far more important for us to be upset about--when in the world did we become those girls who cry during Grey's Anatomy?

So, tell us--how many times have you gotten tricked? How many crappy sitcoms or TV hospital dramas have you watched just for the token gay moment of the season, and how many times have you actually found yourself caring?