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Happy Women Kissing Each Other on TV Month, everybody!

Yes, it's true that Women Kissing Each Other on TV Month has gotten very commercial in the last few years (what with all the Women Kissing Each Other on TV Month cards, stuffed Women Kissing Each Other, and other assorted Women Kissing Each Other merch), but in today's Times, Virginia Heffernan reminds us what Women Kissing Each Other on TV Month is all about: Women Kissing Each Other on TV.

Or, as she puts it:

[I]n the last decade television's masterminds have discovered the lesbian kiss. Eminently visual; cheap, provided the actors are willing; controversial, year in and year out; and elegantly reversible (sweeps lesbians typically vanish or go straight when the week's over), kisses between women are perfect sweeps stunts. They offer something for everyone, from advocacy groups looking for role models to indignation-seeking conservatives, from goggle-eyed male viewers to progressive female ones, from tyrants who demand psychological complexity to plot buffs.

Hooray for the all-purpose lesbian kiss, then, cynical though it may be. "L.A. Law" did it in 1991. "Picket Fences" did it in 1993. In 1994, 1997 and 1999, big prime-time shows - "Roseanne," of course "Ellen," "Party of Five" and "Ally McBeal" - did it. And, though 2004 was dry, we've had about one a year since 2001.


Hooray, indeed! Don't forget to call your grandma and wish her a happy Women Kissing Each Other on TV Month today!
It's February; Pucker Up, TV Actresses [NYT]