'Do you want to come inside my house?' 'Foxfire' and the Teenage Closet

In Medias Les: Humorous musings + critical theory + coming-out memoir

Long before I came out as queer -- before I told my family, my friends, or even just strangers on the Internet (hell – before I’d ever used the Internet), I had these chicks I loved named Legs, Maddy, Goldie, Rita and Violet.

In Medias Les: Humorous musings + critical theory + coming-out memoir

Long before I came out as queer -- before I told my family, my friends, or even just strangers on the Internet (hell – before I’d ever used the Internet), I had these chicks I loved named Legs, Maddy, Goldie, Rita and Violet.

Now, for context --we’re talking about my teen years in the early-mid 1990s. Way back then, there were few outlets for me, a young queer thing who didn’t quite know it yet, to examine or analyze my own sexuality. There were certainly no role models to turn to who were queer or questioning. I was happy to play “straight ally pal” to any out or half-out kids at school, and mostly tried to keep my own sexuality something that seemed as concretely hetero (if light on details) as possible.

Now – because everyone loves the laughing look back at one’s obvious deep-closet gayness - Exhibit A: The entire website Born This Way; Exhibit B: Clay Aiken’s early career; Exhibit C: Me

[photograph of the author looking very much the child lesbian in 1993, sitting on a stock car, in barn, in Maine]

In those quietly closeted times, I had Foxfire (1996) and the warm, fuzzy, and highly confusing feelings that came along with it. Of course, Angelina Jolie is now the widely accepted “universal boner” of hetero lady-crushes. But before her sex goddess status, before she became one-half of a fantasy threesome partnership Brangelina, there was Foxfire – a teen movie about fighting the Man, sticking together, and getting your girlfriends topless and tattooing their boobs.

The film is loosely based on a Joyce Carol Oates novel, Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang, which I tried to read as a teen, but lost interest once I realized that the film’s sex appeal was noticeably absent.

Then again, how could the book possibly compete with moto-jacketed tomboy Angelina Jolie? She lets off a dizzying and distinctly queer vibe as Legs, the androgynous, mysterious bad girl who shows up from exactly nowhere. In the opening sequence alone she sneaks a weapon through a metal detector, is mistakenly called “young man” by a security guard and fights the good fight against animal cruelty. And that’s all in a school she doesn’t even attend! By the end of the film, she will have started a girl gang bent on stopping a sexually harassing teacher and showing the jocks on his football team what’s up. In summary: pure badassery.

And then there’s the gloriously ambiguous dialogue like the following:

Madeline 'Maddy' Wirtz: “I don't even know your name.”

Margaret "Legs" Sadovsky: “...she says the next morning.”

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