If you are looking for sapphic representation in media, look no more. The past month my Twitter Timeline has been a mix of clips and tweets in German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and, of course, English. I understand most of it, in part because I speak Spanish, English and a little Portuguese, in part because no matter the language all those posts are based on an universal sapphic experience that doesn’t need words to be understood. Their soul is the passion, love, crave, investment in diverse representation a lot of us have.
This is not a new feeling for me. All representation has been foreign representation to me. I don’t remember one TV Show in Colombia that had lesbians in it, or a same sex relationship. At most, we had a gay male side comic relief character in one or two popular telenovelas. Since I was a teen, the TV Shows, Movies, fan fiction, I looked at for representation were foreign. American usually.
Thanks to the magic of technology and the Internet, now is easier than ever to have access to all kinds of contents around the world and I’ve fallen in love with several shows and characters thanks to my fellow Sapphics sharing information about them in Social Media.
Where to start when it comes to international Sapphic representation?
There are several examples. Juliantina, a ship from a Mexican Telenovela, took over Twitter two years ago. It became so big the network created a dedicated website focusing only on their love story after the Telenovela ended. Or 4 More Shots Please! The Indian Amazon Prime Original that dedicated like 4 episodes to a lesbian wedding.
This month alone, I have half of my timeline obsessing over the drama of the unofficial relationship between an Italian actress and a Brazilian model (Rosmello) in the Italian version of reality show Big Brother VIP, and the other half swooning over one of the few Lesbian black main characters on TV (anywhere) and her Vietnamese Bisexual love interest in the German TV Show Druck, part of the Skam franchise that has versions (most of them with LGBT storylines) all over Europe.
Those are the most recent examples, but this is a trend that has always existed and is only getting stronger. When we crave representation, we are happy to embrace it wherever and whenever it appears. Even more when it is quality representation, made sometimes even better because it’s created outside of the constrains of American media.
The best part, in my opinion, is that there’s a big community willing to help each other, translate and share information so we all can enjoy the joys of international sapphic representation. But even without all those resources, we don’t need to understand the words, because love is universal and seeing two women falling in love on our screens is all we need.
If you haven’t yet, don’t limit yourself, don’t miss the chance to enjoy these beautiful stories. Most of the time, the only thing you need is a good VPN, and there’s a big community out there willing and happy to help you find resources to enjoy this international stories of women loving women.
There is still a long way to go when it comes to lesbian representation. We have more and better content now, but is still not enough. Not limiting ourselves to only American TV is a way to enjoy more quality stories while we keep dreaming with a world when stories about women loving women are not so rare.
Lesbian Rabbit Hole 