I definitely don't remember anywhere near everything and there's probably some YMMV involved, but I was a lesbian high schooler at the time and:
It did kind of bug me that Spencer and Ashley were both constantly flirting not only with guys but with the same guy. Aiden's whole role in the first two or three seasons seemed to be to play a stand-in for every straight male who has ever wanted to have a threesome with a lesbian couple. Now, for the flirting-with-guys-in-general thing, I understand that sexuality is weird and sometimes lesbians do flirt with or have sex with guys for a variety of reasons, but at the time it just felt to me like it was playing right into the "No one under the age of 27 is a real lesbian," narrative I felt like I was hearing all over the place. I felt like it contributed to a culture where young queer women are never taken seriously. We definitely weren't/aren't taken seriously to the extent that young queer men are. When I was around sixteen years old I was in the habit of specifying that I was "A lesbian-the kind that doesn't sleep with boys." It also just felt like kind of bait-and-switch because "OH LOOK A SHOW ABOUT LESBIAN TEENAGERS" was a major part of their marketing and then you watch it and you realize that really it's about a love-triangle and the love-triangle is 2/3rds heterosexual. My friends and I got really excited about that show when it first came out and then we spent a ridiculous amount of time watching these lesbian characters we were supposed to be able to identify with make out with boys. I don't know if I'm really getting at the heart of what bothered me about it here or not. I understood very well at the time what it meant to be a sexually confused high school girl who identified as a lesbian but wondered occasionally if that identity wasn't premature. I still couldn't really identify with the weird Spenser/Aiden/Ashley thing at all.
There were some random lines that just annoyed the shit out of me. There's a scene on the beach where Ashley asks Spencer (to "prove" that she's a lesbian) if she sneaks peaks at the other girls in the locker room, and Spenser says that she does. And yeah, that's one little line... but it's one little line that I remember six years later. Because my friends and I did not sneak peaks at other girls in the locker room. Straight girls who were afraid of that very thing segregated the locker room by sexuality and regularly sexually harassed and bullied us to ensure that that very thing didn't happen, and we were not particularly amused to see lesbians on a TV show that was aimed at our age group telling those straight girls "Yup, your fears (and thus the "precautions" you took because of them) were absolutely justified. All lesbians do this." [idk. That might sound whiny to someone else, but gay panic was a pretty constant oppressive force in our lives as it was and we lived in Conservatopia where the Swimming/P.E. teacher we'd otherwise have reported this harassment to taught lessons like "All gay men molest little boys," in health class. (Other gems included "Abortion 100% undeniably is murder," and "All non-Christians go to Hell." This was a public school. I graduated in 2010.)] There were also at least a few "I date girls because girls are [adjective], while boys [adjective]!" lines that irritated me for a number of sexism-related reasons.
Plus the show was just bad. Even if we put aside the problematic stuff, it sucked. I'm pretty sure that when the plot was first pitched it looked something like "1. Lesbians at a Los Angeles high school 2. ????? 3. Profit!", the subplots tried too hard to be Degrassi (in the way that every The N show in the mid-2000s was trying to be Degrassi), one actor decided sometime after season three that he was actually a homophobic ass and didn't want to do this anymore, and the whole thing was just kind of a train-wreck from start to finish.
I'm sure there was more, but it's almost 3am here and after four years of not even thinking about that show, I really don't remember much other than that I was extremely glad when it ended.
It did kind of bug me that Spencer and Ashley were both constantly flirting not only with guys but with the same guy. Aiden's whole role in the first two or three seasons seemed to be to play a stand-in for every straight male who has ever wanted to have a threesome with a lesbian couple. Now, for the flirting-with-guys-in-general thing, I understand that sexuality is weird and sometimes lesbians do flirt with or have sex with guys for a variety of reasons, but at the time it just felt to me like it was playing right into the "No one under the age of 27 is a real lesbian," narrative I felt like I was hearing all over the place. I felt like it contributed to a culture where young queer women are never taken seriously. We definitely weren't/aren't taken seriously to the extent that young queer men are. When I was around sixteen years old I was in the habit of specifying that I was "A lesbian-the kind that doesn't sleep with boys." It also just felt like kind of bait-and-switch because "OH LOOK A SHOW ABOUT LESBIAN TEENAGERS" was a major part of their marketing and then you watch it and you realize that really it's about a love-triangle and the love-triangle is 2/3rds heterosexual. My friends and I got really excited about that show when it first came out and then we spent a ridiculous amount of time watching these lesbian characters we were supposed to be able to identify with make out with boys. I don't know if I'm really getting at the heart of what bothered me about it here or not. I understood very well at the time what it meant to be a sexually confused high school girl who identified as a lesbian but wondered occasionally if that identity wasn't premature. I still couldn't really identify with the weird Spenser/Aiden/Ashley thing at all.
There were some random lines that just annoyed the shit out of me. There's a scene on the beach where Ashley asks Spencer (to "prove" that she's a lesbian) if she sneaks peaks at the other girls in the locker room, and Spenser says that she does. And yeah, that's one little line... but it's one little line that I remember six years later. Because my friends and I did not sneak peaks at other girls in the locker room. Straight girls who were afraid of that very thing segregated the locker room by sexuality and regularly sexually harassed and bullied us to ensure that that very thing didn't happen, and we were not particularly amused to see lesbians on a TV show that was aimed at our age group telling those straight girls "Yup, your fears (and thus the "precautions" you took because of them) were absolutely justified. All lesbians do this." [idk. That might sound whiny to someone else, but gay panic was a pretty constant oppressive force in our lives as it was and we lived in Conservatopia where the Swimming/P.E. teacher we'd otherwise have reported this harassment to taught lessons like "All gay men molest little boys," in health class. (Other gems included "Abortion 100% undeniably is murder," and "All non-Christians go to Hell." This was a public school. I graduated in 2010.)] There were also at least a few "I date girls because girls are [adjective], while boys [adjective]!" lines that irritated me for a number of sexism-related reasons.
Plus the show was just bad. Even if we put aside the problematic stuff, it sucked. I'm pretty sure that when the plot was first pitched it looked something like "1. Lesbians at a Los Angeles high school 2. ????? 3. Profit!", the subplots tried too hard to be Degrassi (in the way that every The N show in the mid-2000s was trying to be Degrassi), one actor decided sometime after season three that he was actually a homophobic ass and didn't want to do this anymore, and the whole thing was just kind of a train-wreck from start to finish.
I'm sure there was more, but it's almost 3am here and after four years of not even thinking about that show, I really don't remember much other than that I was extremely glad when it ended.
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