For many years, sexual minorities struggled with the lack of representation of their communities on television. Sure, there were Will and Jack, the two gay characters on NBC’s Will & Grace. But many queers were frustrated with the fact that Will was played by a straight guy (and hence didn’t seem all that convincing on the screen) while Jack epitomized every imaginable stereotype of gay men. And there have been shows such as Six Feet Under, which have featured queer characters. But up until recently, there have not been any mainstream shows that have represented and spoken to GLBT communities. In fact, it is questionable whether much has changed even with the arrival of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and more recently, The L Word.

But is the onset of such shows really empowering for these previously underrepresented communities? Yes and no. While the presence of shows revolving around the queer community is a positive step in disrupting an otherwise homogenous television culture, these shows fall back on old stereotypes, perhaps in order to win the viewership of straight men and women.

Queer Eye for instance, tells the story of five gay guys who are — surprise — into fashion and decorating. This seems to suggest that being a gay male is synonymous with being effeminate, which is something we’ve been hearing since the late 1940s. Sure, one could argue the fact that the gay guys on the show use their effeminacy to help make straight guys a little queerer, or a little more effeminate, by giving their lives a makeover. But the reality is that generally, this is done for straight men, not by straight men, to woo women. In other words, the show ends up bolstering stereotypes of both gay and straight men, where the former are cast as effeminate while the latter are cast as masculine, messy, and not all that in tune with their feminine side or the women in their lives — in order to preserve heterosexual relationships and heterosexuality more generally.

Somewhat similarly, The L Word, Showtime’s new series about lesbians, cast as the other side of HBO’s Sex and the City, also plays up femininity with several extremely attractive, skinny female characters. As Melissa Silverstein points out:

You’d think they had discovered something new. They tried to make these women seem like rock stars. I heard they even sent the stars on a lesbian cruise during premiere week. I couldn’t believe the press materials that I was sent by Showtime. So glossy. So expensive. So unlesbian. The pink materials with the actresses posed was ringed with many different L words – lush, lashes, lyrical, lofty, looking, loose, latent. One word that was very hard to find was the word ’lesbian.‘ It seemed as though they were trying to make The L Word stand for just about everything except lesbian.

Given that the majority of sex scenes on the show involve heterosexuals, the show seems to ensure that straight men and women don’t have to find themselves in an uncomfortable position. If the responses to the premiere of The L Word shared by Silverstein and her friends are any indication, the only audience that this show might appease consists primarily of heterosexuals.

However, it is important to note that The L Word is written and produced by two lesbians, which is an important step in ensuring that the queer community gains representation on-screen.  While Silverstein and others are skeptical of the way they have chosen to represent this community, it seems likely that they may have had to represent the lesbian community in rather homogenous — and heterosexual — terms in order to get their show airtime on a major network like Showtime. But the fact that these shows are the first of their kind is noteworthy, even if they don’t adequately represent the lives, interests and diversity of these communities. Perhaps future shows seeking to represent these communities will learn from the shortcomings of their predecessors and better speak to the complexities of GLBT communities without falling back on the terms defined by heterosexuality.

Laura Nathan-Garner