Positive Bisexual Representation – Part 1: Alex Kelly of "The O.C."

Anyone who knows me (or who may have read my introduction post) will be well aware that my taste in music is truly atrocious. To me, there is nothing quite as enjoyable as rocking out to 90s boyband hits. My embarrassing taste doesn’t stop there, however, as I love cheesy teen dramas too. One of my all-time favourites is The O.C. That show will always have a fond place in my heart because it ran from 2003 to 2007, when I myself was an impressionable, melodramatic teenager. I own boxsets for the first two seasons. Those boxsets don't often see the light of day now, but I took them out last weekend because I wanted to use them as weights for pressing tofu.
The tofu has long since been pressed and eaten, but the DVDs were still sitting on my kitchen counter a couple of nights ago ... and since I was feeling a bit under the weather and in need of a pick-me-up, I thought, what better way to spend my time of convalescence than rewatching the episodes in season 2 when Alex Kelly shows up, so that I can relive the emotional rollercoaster I experienced when I first saw her all those years ago? 😁 At least it gave me something else to focus on, besides being sick and bedbound.

To me, Alex was the embodiment of who I longed to be during my teenage years: confident, outspoken and achingly cool.Image Credit: LGBT Fans Deserve Better
I will never be achingly cool, but I have at least learned how to be confident. 😉 When I first saw Alex on screen though, living an open and unapologetic life as a bisexual person, it set off a firestorm of conflicted emotions within me. It made my heart skip several beats. It made me want to cry. It even made me a bit angry. On some level, I thought: "if I am not allowed to be happy, outspoken and confident, then why is she allowed to be?" I definitely had a bit of the Paddy Manning/Keith Mills mentality going on (this will make sense to any Irish person who watched a certain Late Late Show debate that occurred shortly before our marriage equality referendum in 2015 – the cringe factor was unbelievable).
At that point, I knew I was bisexual, but I had decided that it would be easier to simply ignore every crush I developed on a girl, and to focus exclusively on guys. I had persuaded myself that it would be far better to live out my life convincing myself and others that I was straight – regardless of what that might cost me in terms of my own personal happiness – because I didn't want to deal with the jokes, the derogatory comments, or any other forms of unpleasantness that would be associated with coming out.

My beliefs on that were challenged by Alex's self-assured attitude – and her refusal to apologise or cower in fear when her love interest Seth found out that she had previously dated a girl.Image Credit: Bitch Flicks
Don't get me wrong – she and Seth were adorable together. I loved the dynamic that existed between them.Image Credit: Bitch Flicks

Still, a part of me cheered when Seth turned up to the club where Alex worked – ready to launch into a big showdown over the fact that she had dated a girl prior to dating him – and she greeted him with the calm response: "I'm working, so if you've come down here for some big dramatic confrontation, it'll have to wait." I lived vicariously through Alex Kelly in so many ways. As I stated earlier, she was the person I wished I could have been when I was a teenager.

When Alex's relationship with Seth ended, and Marissa caught her eye, my tendency to live vicariously through her went through the roof. This glance ... be still, my heart!

And of course, every O.C. fan of old remembers the iconic beach scene, where they kissed for the first time.

During a time in my life when I was dire need of some positive bisexual representation in the media, Alex Kelly gave me the tiniest glimmer of hope that it might, in fact, be possible to live happily and authentically as a bisexual person, rather than continually cringing and feeling the need to apologise for my very presence. This is why it broke my heart when The O.C.'s creators ended the Marissa-and-Alex storyline in a rushed, botched kind of way, citing conservative pressure to abandon the controversy and push Marissa back into the arms of her ex-boyfriend Ryan. Creator Josh Schwartz said:

"The network was very nervous — it was an extremely conservative time in our country and everyone was freaking out. We had a whole episode where every kiss between them was cut out, just so I could get one kiss in the 'Rainy Day Women' episode. I was literally on the phone with Broadcast, Standards and Practices, bartering for kisses. It was a battle, and The Powers That Be are part of a big corporation, and were going in front of Congress at the time (every network was) — so I understand they are all good people who were under a lot of pressure. But they wanted that story wrapped up as fast as humanly possible and Alex moving on out of the O.C."

I disliked the way in which the creators chose to wrap up Alex's storyline: namely, by transforming her into a paranoid, bitter person in the space of just two episodes. I disliked the fact that her character morphed into someone she had never been in any of the previous episodes, just to give Marissa a more plausible reason to break up with her. I disliked the fact that once Alex had left the series, Marissa's relationship with her was completely brushed under the carpet and never mentioned again.
Still, the fact remains that for one brief, golden period in time, Alex Kelly showed me what it could mean to be a joyous, fulfilled bisexual person who was not willing to take anyone's BS. 😛

Her sassiness, her humour and her overall badassery was like a light in the dark for me ... and I am sure I'm not the only one who felt that way.
I have given this post the title "Positive Bisexual Representation – Part One" because I'm aiming to track down more examples of bisexual characters in film and T.V. who are authentic, well-rounded and engaging role models for every bi person out there who may be struggling to come to terms with who they are. I plan to make a series of posts about these characters, in the hope that it may offer a sense of hope or comfort to someone.

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