As Pride Month begins to cum to a close, it’s important to remember that, for most of the rest of the year, the straights and so-called normies alike will continue to have amnesia regarding the persecution that the LGBTQIA+ community endures on a day-to-day basis. And although this is a difficult subject to “make light of,” perhaps no one did it with as much deftness as Jamie Babbit via her 1999 debut feature, But I’m A Cheerleader. Starring Natasha Lyonne, who had then recently secured a bit of “indie dominance” with 1998’s Slums of Beverly Hills, our seventeen-year-old (Lyonne was twenty at the time) heroine, Megan Bloomfield, is “just your average” teenager living in a small, God-fearing American town.
It only helps her bid for “normalcy” that she’s a cheerleader as well. Or rather, it would if she could stop fantasizing about all her teammates doing their various jumps and tumbles as she tries to enjoy making out with her jock boyfriend, Jared (Brandt Wille). But try as she might, she really doesn’t—and she’s certainly never had sex with him. Yet none of these things—in addition to being a vegetarian and having a Melissa Etheridge poster in her room—seem to be red flags to Megan. Instead, she is ultimately told who she is through an intervention arranged by her parents, Peter (Bud Cort) and Nancy (Mink Stole). As for casting Mink Stole in the part of Megan’s mother, Babbit was making a patent admission to the fact that this film has the John Waters stamp of camp sensibility all over it. Not to mention the stylings of Edward Scissorhands’ set designer, Bo Welch.
Just as Welch saturated the world of Edward Scissorhands’ suburban-nightmare-posing-as-a-dream in pastels, so, too, does the set designer for But I’m A Cheerleader, Rachel Kamerman. By drenching the girls’ rooms in pink and the boys’ in blue, Kamerman communicates a parody through the color-coded language we’ve all been conditioned to understand. The blues and pinks are consistent throughout the narrative to underscore the increasing absurdity of Mary trying to “transform” these teenagers into anything other than what they are at their core. The semiotics of the color schemes also appear in the costume design, curated by Alix Friedberg. Of the skimpy orange cheerleading ensembles that show up in the first scene, Babbit remarked, “I knew I wanted them to have a lot of skin exposed, so we looked at tops where you could see the midriff. I did want to explore the idea of a gay cheerleader because I had never seen femme desire onscreen before, and I thought it was important to start the movie showing that.”
Although the script was written by Brian Wayne Peterson (his only feature screenplay to date), the story itself was from Babbit, who read a news article about conversion therapy and paired it with her own knowledge of the rehabilitative process. Naturally, the entire crux of the film’s humor is that you can’t rehabilitate someone from their sexuality. This much is emphasized in the intentionally ironic casting of RuPaul as Mike, an employee at True Directions (because a place like this is always called something “gentle” and “innocent” in the same vein).
He’s the one to facilitate the intervention so that they can get Megan to go in the proverbial van and be whisked away to her new home for the next several months. Run by Mary J. Brown (Catherine Moriarty, forever iconic because of Casper), Megan is hesitant to agree that she belongs in a “facility” (that looks more like a creepy Victorian dollhouse than anything else). Alas, the first step—as in any rehabilitation program—is admitting to your “problem.” Everyone else who just arrived at True Directions, Graham (Clea DuVall), Dolph (Dante Basco), Hilary (Melanie Lynskey), Joel (Joel Michaely), Clayton (Kip Pardue), Sinead (Katherine Towne) and Jan (Katrina Phillips), has readily admitted to being a homosexual (the primary term bandied throughout the movie). It takes an entire support group therapy session for her to come to terms with the reality, immediately wanting to “fix” herself by cooperating. After all, she’s a “good Christian,” and she just wants to be “normal” so she can keep cheerleading (though perhaps only for the sake of being able to keep looking at dem bouncing titties and asses).
And so, after step one, “Admitting You’re a Homosexual,” Megan is on to step two, “Rediscovering Your Gender Identity.” Here, the contentious (read: sexually tense) dynamic she has with Graham—who knows all of this is hooey—intensifies as they partner up to engage in “female gender-affirming” activities like changing diapers, scrubbing floors and vacuuming. Meanwhile, Mike tries to do his part to show the men what “manliness” means by demonstrating how to fix a car, chop wood and grab one’s crotch (as if that proved Michael Jackson’s masculinity—actually working better when Madonna adopted it to showcase her own sense of agency and dominance… hence, gender constructs are illusory). All among a very phallic cardboard cutout “forest,” mind you (later complete with two army men cardboard cutouts that appear as though one’s gun is the penis being offered to suck off for the other man on his knees in front of him).
Another supposedly key aspect of “deprogramming” from homosexuality is “finding one’s root.” As in: the root cause of why they “turned” gay. Graham offers, “My mother got married in pants,” while Sinead posits, “I was born in France.” Joel, instead, maintains, “Traumatic bris.”
Every detail—again, most especially the costuming (particularly Mary’s bomb ass bright pink vinyl coat) and set design—plays a role in accenting just how cartoonish the idea of “staying in your gender lane” really is. The root-finding, of course, all harkens back to something family members did, ergo step three being “Family Therapy.” Something the group is forced to do in a communal setting, with Graham’s parents exhibiting the cuntiest of behaviors as her father threatens to cut her off if she can’t quote unquote quit the lez shit. And when you’re a trust fund baby like Graham, that threat hits hard, even when one does her best to act devil-may-care and rebellious. As Graham does by taking Megan to a gay bar called Cocksucker. It’s a haven where ex-ex-gays Lloyd Morgan-Gordon (Wesley Mann) and Larry Morgan-Gordon (Richard Moll)—who formerly worked with Mary at True Directions—smuggle people from the clutches of “gender affirmation” hell so that they might see for themselves that they don’t have to hide who they are. Though, of course they do—that was the entire reason gay bars were established in the first place: as a kind of speakeasy for letting one’s homo “freak flag” fly.
Tucked appropriately into the step four segment, “Demystifying the Opposite Sex,” at the bar, “Lipstick Lesbian” (as the credits bill her), played by Julie Delpy (like Michelle Williams’ cameo, she seems too “big” to appear in this, but then, these were different times), approaches Megan to ask her to dance. She refuses at first, but then Graham urges her to just do it—for it’s all part of her scheme to prove that Megan cares enough about Graham to become jealous when she sees Sinead getting too handsy with her as they dance next to Megan and Lipstick Lesbian to the beat of Saint Etienne’s “We’re in the City.”
It is after this night that Megan ceases to put her guard up about who she is. Unfortunately, it also just so happens to be around the same moment that Graham chooses to put hers up in order to “make good” and graduate by participating in the fifth and final step: “Simulated Sexual Lifestyle.” The parody of heteronormativity reaches a zenith here, as Mary directs Graham (dressed as Eve in a flesh-colored bodysuit with attached leaves where “censoring” is “needed”) simulating sex with her own gay son, Rock (Eddie Cibrian)—also in an “Adam-styled” flesh-colored bodysuit. Being amenable, Rock does as he’s told and proceeds to writhe on top of her awkwardly. “What about foreplay?” Joel asks as Mary insists all Rock has to do is “insert himself.” She snaps back, “Foreplay is for sissies. Real men go in, unload and pull out!” And yes, this is the myth straight patriarchy has been trying to perpetuate for centuries.
At the time of the film’s release, despite the late 90s being a safe space for kitsch (see also: Drop Dead Gorgeous, Dick, Jawbreaker, et al.), it was not well-received. Or at least not as lauded as it should have been. Though, luckily, it was released during a period when straights like Lyonne could still get away with playing gay roles. In the present, like all great things, the movie has developed a cult following that acknowledges it as an essential part of the queer canon. One that dares to ask the still somehow provocative question: why are we continuing to be hemmed in and limited by the expectations of gender identity? For obviously, as But I’m Cheerleader spotlights, it’s utterly incongruous. And to those who would say it’s a “necessary” part of securing the “procreation circle of life,” don’t worry, you can still bang no matter what type of clothing you prefer to wear.
