Femslash Friday: Bend It Like Beckham Edition

You have to love women's sports movies that include zero lesbian or bisexual female characters. Especially if that sport is soccer, but I'm also looking at you A League Of Their Own. Bless Hollywood's heart.

Now, my main issue with Bend it Like Beckham isn't that it's devoid of queer characters, in fact it actually includes a gay male character(!), which for 2002 was still somewhat of a novelty. Perhaps the producers of Beckham believed that introducing a gay male character would distract audiences from any sapphic homoerotic undertones associated with women's sorts, relieving the tension so to speak.

Perhaps they thought wrong.

Never underestimate what audiences deprived of representation can read into a film. Thus, my main issue is that, like Pitch Perfect, Beckham includes a completely superfluous male-female romance even though it's clearly the two female leads who have the most chemistry with one another.

Quite simply, I am 100% unable to view the film without viewing Jess and Jules as the real romantic pairing of the movie. Also, BONUS FRIDAY FUN FACT OF FEMSLASH: For every femslash pairing that exists in fandom, somebody has made a video to it with "I Kissed A Girl" as the soundtrack. Bend It Like Beckham is no exception.