"Like Being in Love Can Feel For the First Time"

During law school I took a "Women and the law" course. The purpose was to look at how the law affects women and how different manifestations connect to create systems of oppression - gender, race, sexual orientation, disability, etc. In taking that course I saw, for the first time, things that always existed in the world but were largely invisible to me because language and the law has been used to create social norms and false dichotomies.

In trying to make the invisible more visible, I somehow stumbled across AE, where I really began to notice how underrepresented the gay community is on TV and film. While reading the July 11, 2008 post of "Best. Lesbian. Week. Ever." I saw the article on PepSi describing Ep. 76 (countryside getaway) and immediately noticed from the tone of the article that this story seemed different than all of the other lesbian stories on TV - neither character was a killer, or ratings stunt, or ended up dead (yet). But what really piqued my interest were these lines from the article: "Unfortunately, the scene ended when Silvia's dad intentionally walked in on the two women, after spying on them having sex. Apparently, this is a habit of his. Creepy much?"

I thought, "That can't be right. That sounds too absurd - it much be a translation error" so I decided to check out the forum Breakerfall started on AE and found myself even more confused, yet intrigued, trying to figure out the family dynamics and determine what the hell was really going on. After searching on YouTube, I came across ThoseRaindrops' "Pepa and Silvia - The Build Up" video. To this day, it is one of my favorite PepSi videos ever. Everything about it was perfect - the music selection, the edited scenes, the acting. Watching it reminded me of the opening scene in Mr. and Mrs. Smith, where Brad and Angelina are dancing at the restaurant in Bogota and later sitting in the rain and gazing at each other while drinking tequila. There's barely any dialogue - just "Mondo Bondo" playing in the background - but the glances they give each other and the sexuality oozing from that scene makes you want to see more. This is how I felt watching ThoseRaindrops' video. The looks, the glances, the hesitation, the fear, the lust, the chemistry - it was so compelling that I wanted to see more, learn more about their story. When I finally saw the bathroom scene as it aired, with basically no dialogue and just Dana Kerstein's "My Soul Ghost" playing in the background, I was hooked. And for the first time I saw something that had been invisible on American TV - a story of two people who were falling in love and who both just happened to be women.

Over time, my love grew beyond PepSi to the entire show. But it was that bathroom scene - with just Pepa, Silvia, and Dana's voice - that opened my eyes to the invisible. That scene (and many of their subsequent scenes) showed me what being in love can feel like and the journey it can take you on, regardless of your race, gender, or sexual orientation. It's a feeling that, I imagine, is akin to what being in love can feel like the first time.

kalike

*The title for this lecture is based on lyrics to the song "First Time" by Lifehouse.

Piper's Note:
KC's debut post at AE was after Ep 104 when she wrote about how it just set women's TV roles a few centuries back. OK, maybe not a few centuries, but still.  Her subsequent postings show a cerebral adulation for Pepa, and knowing the Silvia-centric lectures we've had so far, we decided we needed a Pepalogist.  And KC has not disappointed, in her treatises and her choice of songs, and personally, I think she is more on the romantic side of the Pepsi Empire (i.e., please go back to her initial lectures about the "L" word) than she would want to accept.  Thank you, Counsel, for your unbridled analytical romanticism and intellectual love for Pepa.