Welcome To the Dollhouse - I Wish I Were Beautiful
This still probably does the best job at breaking my heart. Dawn looks so lonely and confused and the graffiti on her locker elicits both a protective Nerd Girl reaction and a catty Mean Girl reaction. Everything written on Dawn’s locker is both cruel and hilarious.
The part I’m most focused on is that the word Lesbo is scrawled twice on Dawn’s locker. There’s another scene in the movie when Dawn is asked if she’s a lesbo by a bunch of popular girls. Of course they don’t believe her denial and chant Dawn is a Lesbo! together while Dawn fights back cafeteria tears. Later Dawn calls her sister a Lesbo, and the gay slur is paid forward and becomes a readily used insult - just like that, something used to express anger.
Heather Matarazzo, the actress who played Dawn Wiener, is a lesbian. In the documentary Fabulous! The Story of Queer Cinema, she discusses how she learned the word lesbian on the set of Welcome To the Dollhouse, and that, as a result, she discovered not just what a lesbian is, but who she is. This happens to most gay and lesbian children. We learn the word, usually in a negative context, and then we discover that this is who we are. I do think this happens less, but it’d be nice if it didn’t happen at all. Realizing there’s a name for who you are is an important event for a gay person, as important as the actual act of coming out, having to realize it from a bunch of bullies makes it so much more difficult.
I don’t remember the first time I learned the meaning of the word gay, but I do recall soon afterward, sharing it with two of my friends while playing Barbies at one of the girls’ house. I wanted to make two of the Barbies gay. I said to my friends - “Do you know what gay is?” - in a tone of education. I wanted to share my new discovery and apply it to real life. One of the girls didn’t really react, but the other told me I was dirty and disgusting, and I gathered up my Barbies and ran home, crying. The mean girl’s name was Missy. I used to name my favorite Barbies, and one shared Missy’s name. Missy-the-Barbie had dozens of satisfying girl-on-girl experiences during my many years of intense Barbie playing, so take that lesbo-phobe!
(I loved every word she wrote)
