On Happiest Season & Coming Out
I participated in my high school talent show, The Follies, every year. As someone who was never the lead in any theater production but who was also desperately in search of approval and attention, it was the perfect opportunity to show off. One year, I sang an Evanescence track while a friend played piano. In subsequent years, my best friend Allie and I danced to whichever Britney Spears song had come out that year (yes, every year). I’d invite my friends from town, we’d hang out on campus after, and it was one of the best experiences of otherwise dreadful teenage years.
My sophomore year, I had met a girl whom I had enjoyed flirting with during rehearsals for the winter musical. I also very much enjoyed kissing her after Follies that year; after I’d performed, still in my stage makeup, surrounded by friends in one of the student lounges, laughing and joyous.
I had told my mother to give us an hour after the show. I hadn’t realized the hour was up until my mother tapped me on the shoulder, interrupting our kisses.
“Well,” she said, addressing me in front of my friends, “that was disgusting.” And we drove home in silence.
It was the first time I remember experiencing direct shame around who I was kissing. I knew I was queer, my friends knew, and it wasn’t an issue amongst my peers. But I had grown up with a mother who used to cover her eyes and say “ew” whenever two men kissed on television, and a Fox News-loving father who used to joke that if my best friend and I were gay, he could be like Dick Cheney (a conservative politician with a queer daughter, who later became estranged from some homophobic members of her family)—all he’d have to do was shoot someone and make them apologize for it.
So I hid my sexuality from my parents. I remember lying about who a valentine’s gift was for, who I was spending time with after classes. And that night, after Follies, I lied again: Oh no, it was just for fun. We were just joking around. It’s not like that.
I kept lying to my parents for almost twenty years.
Until last weekend.
Last night I sat on the couch with my partner Linda as we watched Happiest Season, starring Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis.
I had already seen some reactions and so knew what to expect, for the most part—I went in knowing we’d end up rooting for Aubrey Plaza, and that Davis’ character, Harper, had a significant coming out storyline.
As we watched, like many other Internet Queers, our reactions were that of horror and dismay. Was this supposed to be seen as romantic, or even funny? Did Clea DuVall, an iconic lesbian, write this and then have it destroyed by straight producers and editors? Was written for straight audiences?
We held each other’s hands and said over and over again, I would never do this to you.
In Happiest Season, Harper enthusiastically invites her long-term girlfriend Abby (Stewart) to her parents' home for Christmas. It isn’t until they’re in the car and practically in the driveway that Harper reveals she lied about coming out to her folks earlier that year—that her father was running for office, it hadn’t been the right time, so they would both have to pretend to be straight for the duration of this holiday visit. Which is, by the way, more than just a day or two. Abby is put in a difficult position: to support the woman she loves by pretending they’re not in love. Throughout the film, Abby is ignored, manipulated, and hurt by Harper’s decision. It was incredibly difficult to watch.
The issue here is not about Harper’s coming out story, but about the way she took advantage of her partner with little to no remorse. The film rewards her for it with an HEA. Harper’s manipulations are never truly addressed. It felt like abuse cloaked under the magic marketing dust of a feel-good holiday romcom.
I found myself, at times, trying to sympathize with Harper. The narrative made that very difficult to do. I have a lot of forgiveness for those in bad family situations, who find coming out impossible or unsafe. But, at the end of the day, this doesn’t excuse anyone from hurting the person they care about.
At some point during our watching, Linda said that the abuse in my life seemed more impactful than what Harper’s family had done. In the film, Harper feels the pressure to perform, to be perfect, both for her parents in general and for her father’s political career. Her queerness would be an ugly blot on their reputation, but we don’t actually see them be outwardly homophobic. There’s no evidence that her queerness would be unwelcome, as long as she’s wearing the right dress for the family photo.
My own family was never so concerned with how things looked. We’re not rich to that level, and certainly not in the public eye. But my parents made it clear that they thought queerness was disgusting, or at the very least, that they didn’t understand. My mother got better over time (in no small part thanks to Glee, which we always watched together), but by that point my trust had already been broken.
I felt, always, that my parents didn’t deserve to know that about me. They hadn’t shown me that they could handle that information with maturity. I didn’t trust them. And for a long time I took joy in keeping that secret from them. They didn’t get to know me like that. I had fooled them. My queerness was a success in my long-term plan to fuck over the people who had hurt me for so many years. And it was something I had for myself, only for myself, precious and wonderful and sexy and mine.
However, as I grew older, the burden of this became exhausting. After many lonely years I was finally starting to make friends, to be part of a larger queer community, and to come into my own. For the first time, I felt comfortable enough with my gender identity to start using they/them pronouns, and to date with confidence. Queerness is an intrinsic part of who I am. Having a supportive found family, a job where I am surrounded by beautiful weirdos, and creative fulfillment has allowed this precious secret to seep into my personality, my wardrobe, and every aspect of my lived experience. I am who I am because I am queer. I have never felt more in love with myself.
And so hiding became more difficult. I couldn’t be me without being queer.
This does not seem to be the case for Harper. Of course, everyone’s queerness is different, but it seemed strange to me that Harper so easily removed herself from her queer life. Did Harper not have other queer friends? Did her friends from home not know about her queerness? Had she been keeping the secret from literally everyone, except for the people she was dating at the time? Riley (Harper’s ex, played by Aubrey Plaza), seemed to be the only one aware of Abby’s charade.
The film centers on Abby’s experience, so we don’t know if Harper is tormented by the upkeep of this lie. Save for one stolen night together, Harper doesn’t actually seem bothered by leaving Abby alone in an unfamiliar town with a bunch of strangers. She seems totally content to ditch the person she claims to love to hang out with an ex-boyfriend at a super-hetero sports bar until 2AM. Harper uses the guise of self-protection to continually choose Not-Abby. Without hesitation, Harper continues the cycle of abuse—her family has hurt her, so she hurts others (namely Riley and Abby) in return. She only truly panics when she is about to be forcefully outed (which is an entirely different essay, honestly) by her sister.
It is, in a way, code-switching. I played this game for a very long time. I only spoke about boys I was seeing, never girls—or better yet, didn’t speak about my dating life at all. I yanked down my rainbow flag and shoved it behind a chair every time my mother FaceTimed me. I only brought certain clothes home when I came to visit.
This was a performance I put on so that my parents wouldn’t tell me how disgusting I was. It was what I did to protect myself. These are, sometimes, the choices we have to make, even when they are no real choice at all.
But it was torture. It hurt to be misgendered, it hurt to pull my flag down, to cover up major aspects of my life and friendships. More than anything, it hurt to say that I was at a friend’s house when I was really spending time with Linda. I didn’t want to hurt the person I cared about in that way, to lessen the depth of my feelings or the seriousness of our relationship. It became more shameful to lie.
I spent a full year and several sessions with my therapist working on how I would come out. I made a slideshow, I wrote a script, I came prepared with links and further readings. I practiced with my brother and even my partner’s parents. For that entire year, I felt like I was unable to predict my parent’s reactions. I had contingency plans for Good, Neutral, Bad, and Very Bad outcomes, and what I would do with myself afterward.
While my mother has grown out of her ‘ew’s at the television, I still had almost twenty years of their casual homophobia to recall. I still had no idea if their tolerance only applied to Glee and Mary Cheney. I had no idea if they would understand. I hoped to be met with silence. I did not dare expect anything more.
Leading up to it, I was a nervous wreck. My body felt every bit of it. I wasn’t sleeping, my gut was in chaos, my shoulders were so tense they were practically in my ears. I could barely talk or think about anything else, and so I discussed it at length with my friend group. I cried several times before and several times after. At 32, it was the most stressful thing I’ve ever had to do.
Which is why it doesn’t make sense to me that Harper, within the context of the film, was able to lie about her own coming out. How could she bottle all that up? This is not to say that my experience is universal—I know familial relationships are complex, and everyone feels differently about their own coming out. But there is a distant “before” and a distinct “after.” There is a charade, and then the truth.
But I don’t know how Harper pulled off so many deceptions without it absolutely ruining her. It seemed to me like standing in the center of a see-saw, with the weight of many lies teetering on either end. Nothing about that feels safe, and I do not know how she came out of it completely unscathed.
I wonder what Happiest Season would have been like from Harper’s perspective. I wonder if we would’ve have felt different if we’d have seen her crying alone in her bed at night, if we’d seen how alone and awkward she’d felt at the bar with straight “friends,” if we’d seen her stress texts to the group chat, and the rainbow of hearts her friends sent back. I wanted to see more of her history with her family, what it was like hiding relationships from them. I wonder how we’d feel if we saw her aware that she’s the villain of her own story, and just how hard it was to sit next to her love at dinner, and not be able to kiss her.
There’s a lot to be said about moving past queer pain in fiction, and also wanting more than just coming out stories. A lot of this stems from the fact that these stories have been told by straight people and for straight audiences in the past. The complexities are watered down to suit the cultural narrative that queerness will always mean a life of pain and death, a narrative that safeguards heteropatriarchy.
Queer storytellers know that our lives are much more complex, and I believe that fiction can, and should, strive to depict a more varied queer experience. These narratives serve a purpose—not only to entertain, but to reflect and share the realities of queer life. Pain and abuse is part of it, and coming out is part of it. But there is also so much more. Queer viewers want more.
Happiest Season failed because it didn’t move beyond the coming out, and didn’t show the emotional complexity of its queer characters.
I wasn’t looking for acceptance or love from my parents. I am accepted and loved already: I have a beautiful queer family with whom I feel safe to be completely myself, and a parter who has been nothing but supportive. There was also an outpouring of support online—both from friends and strangers, which was overwhelmingly touching. I couldn’t have done it otherwise. I am grateful to feel safe in all other aspects of my life. The fall out, if there was going to be one, wouldn’t be devastating. I’d be well looked-after no matter what.
I’m lucky. My coming out went well, for the most part. I know it’s not so easy for other queer folks and that history has done nothing but tell us how unwanted we are. To me, that is all the more reason to love and take care of the queer folks around you. We love each other and support each other because we know what it’s like to be pushed aside in other aspects of our lives. This is doubly true for queer and trans people of color, who are systemically hurt, disenfranchised, and killed by our culture. Queer love, queer Happily Ever After, is a radical act.
This Thanksgiving was the first time I spoke to my biological family as a fully out queer and nonbinary person. I turned on the Zoom camera, and I did not lie about the fact that I was sitting in Linda’s living room. With Linda next to me, we laughed and held hands and shared a glass of wine as we talked with my parents and siblings.
I don’t have words to describe how it felt.
So begins the After.
xx
C