Wednesday, April 13, 2022 — 5
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

‘Bend It Like Beckham’ isn’t a queer story, but it’s part of mine

Nothing is really ‘Straight Up’

OKAY, TIME FOR a confession.
Long before I began to unpack my 

internalized misogyny and unchecked 
ego, I was just another girl who clung 
to wearing weird clothes and an inter-
est in sports in the name of being 
“not like other girls.” Since then, I’ve 
embraced how beautiful and complex 
being a woman is, and how I can be 
perfectly myself and similar to a lot 
of other women — a truly lovely thing. 
But before I could come to terms with 
such a concept, I needed to uncover 
the missing piece of myself that was 
ardently telling me I was different and 
could never fit in with the girls around 
me. This, I would realize, was my 

unrecognized Queerness.

When people ask me now about being 

bisexual and whether it was something 
I always knew about myself, I chuckle 
because the answer is no, but I totally 
should have. My journey to recogni-
tion required a series of key moments, 
spurned on by passing touches, lin-
gering feelings in my stomach and 
encountering a pivotal piece of media 
at precisely the right time. For me, this 
was “Bend It Like Beckham.”

It’s no secret that the film is a Queer 

allegory, though not a Queer story. It 
explicitly depicts Jessminder (Par-
minder Nagra, “The Blacklist”), or Jess 
— a tomboy who is forbidden from play-
ing soccer (or football) because it isn’t 
proper for a girl, according to her par-
ents — and implicitly depicts her secret 
desire to be herself much in the same 

way many experience Queerness. All 
the while, she is encouraged to follow 
her passion without inhibition by her 
narrative foil, teammate and other half 
of an incredibly homoerotic friendship, 
Jules (Keira Knightley, “Anna Kar-
enina”). Ultimately, it was the undeni-
able chemistry between Jess and Jules, 
from their shared passion for soccer 
to their easy banter and mutual dis-
dain for boys, that made me realize 
maybe my aching desire for a relation-
ship like theirs wasn’t based in friend-
ship — I already had plenty of valued, 
close friendships with women — but 
was instead fueled by something more 
romantic. 

There is plenty of analysis out there 

that gets into the nitty gritty of just how 
sapphic Jules and Jess’s relationship 
really was, including the abundance of 

lingering gazes and their Queer-coded 
aesthetics (their hatred for bras isn’t 
exactly subtle). From start to finish, it’s 
glaringly obvious that the film is laced 
with Queer-coded elements. There is 
the character of Tony (Ameet Chana, 
“Unhallowed Ground”) who explicitly 
comes out as gay, as well as direct ref-
erences to Queerness, like when Jules 
says, “Being a lesbian isn’t that big of a 
deal.” In a moment of unchecked leg-
end behavior, Knightley even remarked 
during an interview that Jules and Jess 
should have ended up together and that 
she wants a lesbian sequel.

So you can imagine young me’s dis-

appointment when the film decides to 
run with a lukewarm romance between 
Jess and her soccer coach, Joe (Jona-
than Rhys Meyers, “The Tudors”) 
instead. (To this day … ew.) To the 

film’s credit, it does put genuine effort 
into building a developed relationship 
in which both characters are vulner-
able with each other; Joe opens up 
about his relationship with his father, 
and Jess describes her relationship 
with her parents and her insecurities. 
Yet even during my first watch, I got 
the sense that their relationship was 
one of mutual emotional support, cer-
tainly, but not one with any romantic 
chemistry. I felt betrayed by the forced 
run to the airport scene at the end, 
because Jess had never shown any seri-
ous interest in boys prior, and even if 
the film didn’t depict Jess and Jules in 
a romantic relationship, why would a 
relationship with a man be the narra-
tive’s cathartic moment?

“WHAT IF I’M not gay?” 
This may not be the first line of James 

Sweeney’s feature film debut “Straight Up,” 
but it may as well be. Todd (Sweeney, debut) 
sits in a diner across from his friends, model 
Meg (Dana Drori, “Freaky”) and compe-
tent gay Ryder (James Scully, “You”), trying 
to convince them that he’s straight. In his 
current rationalization, Todd is only gay 
because everyone else deems him as such — 
he embodies the idea of “gay,” therefore he 
is. Desperate to not be alone, he believes that 
giving heterosexuality a shot will magically 
find him a partner, and it miraculously does 
in the form of aspiring actress Rory (Katie 
Findlay, “Man Seeking Woman”).

Let’s be clear — the relationship between 

Todd and Rory is about as cisgender-het-
erosexual (cishet) as I am, which is to say: 
not. On account of Todd’s intense hatred of 
bodily fluids and Rory’s past sexual trauma, 
sex plays no part in their connection; they 
instead have hours-long conversations 
about grammar and idioms, or they bond 
over dinner and a weekly documentary. If 
it weren’t for their deep emotional interde-
pendency, you could almost mistake them 
as best friends who kiss sometimes. From 
the outside, it seems a bit Queer, but is there 
anything wrong with that?

Todd and Rory remind me of myself and 

my previous partners. In fact, it was with 
my most recent partner that I first watched 
the movie. Snuggled up together in my bed 
with the laptop resting above my waist, 
we viewed the film as a cishet couple. We 
laughed at Sweeney’s clever wordplay and 
slick jokes, we held our breath during the 
climactic break-up and we smiled sweetly 

at the neat and joyful resolution. In essence, 
we missed the entire point of the film. 

Watching it now, one year of being single 

and a tangled mess of gender and sexual-
ity, it’s impossible not to recognize that 

my relationship faced the same dilemmas. 
Long before I came out, the sexual pillar of 
our relationship was crumbling; whether it 
was the constant long-distance or our men-
tal states is anybody’s guess. The time we 
spent together was experiential: We’d bake 
treats, cook meals, watch movies, finish one 
another’s sentences. I knew her idiosyncra-

sies and she knew mine — you could almost 
mistake us for best friends who kissed 
sometimes. 

SARAH RAHMAN

Senior Arts Editor

M. DEITZ

Senior Arts Editor 

 

2022 Juniors
2022 Juniors

Sydney Maria Czako
Lauren Elise Doyle
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Eliza Joy Feinberg
Evan Ferry

Noah Baratz Gross
Gretchen Skye Heidebrink
Nameer Mahmood Hirschkind
Eric Wilson Huang
Christopher Lawrence Kolb 

Olivia McMullan
Jonah Allen Nan
Jacob Bennett Nielsen
Oscar Matthew Nollette-Patulski
Hunter Michael Petz

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Kylie Jean Schache
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2022 Seniors
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Phi Beta Kappa
Phi Beta Kappa is the oldest and most widely recognized scholarly honorary society in America. Founded in 1776 at the College of William and Mary, it celebrates excel-
lence in the liberal arts and sciences. The UM chapter, Alpha of Michigan, was founded in 1907 and inducted its hundred and fourteenth class into membership on April 
engagement. Membership as a junior is arguably the highest honor that an undergraduate in liberal arts and sciences can achieve. The Executive Committee of the Alpha 
of Michigan Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa recognizes and congratulates these new members of this venerable society. 

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A conversation with my therapist 

about my gender identity

Editor’s Note: The author of this contribu-

tion has requested anonymity for safety. In 
accordance with our ethics policy (which can 
be found in full in our bylaws), the Editor-in-
identity.w


today, I wonder if you maybe want to talk 
about your gender identity a little bit?)

YEAH, ACTUALLY I do. I didn’t even 

realize it, but I actually have been think-
ing about this a lot lately. So, yeah, let’s talk 
about it. 

Here’s where I’m at with the whole gen-

der thing: One of the reasons I first wanted 
to go to therapy was because of some new 
gender dysphoria I started feeling a year 
or so ago. And after a lot of struggling and 
wrestling with the concept and the feelings, 
I feel like this semester I was finally more 
confident in where I landed. Which is why 
we haven’t talked about it yet. But lately, I 
have been questioning again.

Basically, I thought I was nonbinary, like 

yeah for sure I don’t feel super like a woman 
but I also don’t have a penis, so like, what do 
I do with that? And this semester I finally 
just bit the bullet and started introducing 
myself with they/she pronouns. And that felt 

fine, I suppose.

But the problem is there are not a ton of 

places halfway through a school year where 
it makes sense to introduce yourself with 
your pronouns. And just the whole concept 

of sharing and defining pronouns, in gen-
eral, makes me squeamish. And I was not 
about to announce my “new” identity to the 
world. Because I still was not sure that those 
were good words to use for me. So yeah, 
everyone was basically still using she/her 
pronouns for me because, unfortunately (?), 
that is the most obvious assumption. 

(Well, I actually think you look pretty 

androgynous in my opinion.) 

Thank you! Thank you! And it always 

feels like such a compliment when people 
don’t assume my gender! Which I suppose is 
a confirmation of these nonbinary feelings. 

ANONYMOUS CONTRIBUTOR

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