Friday 18 February 2011

Why I love the Coronation Street lesbians

(This post was originally posted by Flaming Nora on the Coronation Street Blog in April, 2010, reposted to this blog with permission.)

Corrie has always been about the women. The men are kept very much in the background being feckless, drinking too much, gambling the housekeeping money away on a nag, having a fling with a floozy or murdering their wives. And so this fan believes the time was more than right for a lesbian relationship on the nation's favourite soap and wholeheartedly welcomes it.

Yes, the tabloids are going for titillation but that's to be expected. I'm in agreement with the Corrie actresses who've said that Sian and Sophie's relationship on Corrie is a romance, a love story. And it's a story about which the Lesbian and Gay Foundation approve too.

In her wonderful book Women and Soap Operas, Christine Geraghty says that all soap opera turns on the premise of female friendship - how they work, why they don't, what happens when a man comes between them - and lesbianism is just the next step forward in the development of women's friendships on screen.

If there was just one thing I could change in the lesbian romance of Sophie and Sian, it'd be for a lesbian relationship to to have taken place between two of the older women instead. But that's just an age-thing, because I'm old too. And I don't suppose Eileen and Gail cuddling up to watch 'Desperate Housewives' together on the sofa would have made the gossip magazines and generated as much publicity as the two very pretty and young actresses Brooke Vincent and Sacha Parkinson are currently doing.

When Corrie aired its first gay kiss when Todd tried to snog Nicky Tilsley, the storyline developed with Todd coming out, being proud, stutting his stuff around Manchester's gay village. With Sophie and Sian's storyline, it remains to be seen how it will go. Will Sophie be seen in lesbian-Christian groups, for instance. Will she come out and be proud, or simper after Sian and then run to the first "New Corrie hunk for Sophie!" that could well be announced in the tabloids in a few months time? Time will tell, but Corrie will handle it well, of that I'm sure.

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