The Queer Uniforms of “Do Revenge”
“Sun down, and I’m feeling lifted…”
As a queer woman in 2022, I leap to my feet whenever I hear the opening guitar strums and 90s-pop-girl intonation of MUNA’s “Silk Chiffon”; it’s something of a national anthem for us at this point. Watching Netflix’s Do Revenge, I was momentarily thrust out of the film’s plot and into my bedroom when I heard the song, dancing along as I watched deuteragonist Eleanor share a kiss with love interest Gabby. Unlike most of its predecessors, Do Revenge has no shortage of queer characters and storylines; in fact, Eleanor’s villain origin story involves an involuntary outing and the spread of a vicious assault rumor. Eleanor’s partner in crime, Drea, will be responsible for taking down said rumor-spreader, while Eleanor will avenge Drea against an ex-boyfriend who’s circulated revenge porn. This complicated web of high-school revenge is not unique to the film; it pays homage to past favorites such as Mean Girls and Heathers, featuring elaborate schemes, inevitable discovery, and, of course, amazing style. The film’s queer representation, however, turns over a new leaf in the genre - I will never forget watching Cady Heron flip through the Burn Book and reading “Janis Ian - Dyke.” Nothing else is necessary: Janis’s queerness is burn enough. Do Revenge flips the script, its queer characters demanding justice regardless of the consequences. I’m curious, however, about the stereotypes that the film tries to avoid and ends up perpetuating anyway - especially sartorially.
The outfits in “Do Revenge” will make you ask “wait… is that their uniform?” Those who wear skirts do so in mint green and lavender, with knee socks, barrettes, and berets appearing more often than not. The popular girls wear satin Pink-Lady jackets, courtesy of The Mighty Company, with blue hair and loose button-downs abound. That said, I couldn’t help but notice that the fashion in the film codes its femme-presenting characters by sexual orientation. Eleanor begins the film with an on-screen version of sloppiness, wearing basketball shorts and loose t-shirts. When in uniform, she wears her high school’s requisite tops with cargo shorts… that is, until she receives a makeover from the supposedly straight, traditionally femme Drea. Once fully made over, she is dressed to the nines in skirts and heels, all lacquered lips and perfectly styled hair (and the fits are phenomenal). Right after deciding to take their revenge, the girls make their way towards the mirror, Drea proclaiming that a style revamp is in order; Eleanor groans, and Drea comments that the idea is “so problematic.” The screen cuts to a classic makeover montage.
It’s campy and self-aware, as is most of the film; even Drea’s villainous ex-boyfriend (a poster child for toxic masculinity) begins a club for cisgender, heterosexual boys at the school to support their female classmates in an obvious-to-us PR move. That said, satire often still asks for the representation of the thing being satirized, and satire of queer stereotypes often invokes those stereotypes. There are three femme-presenting queer characters in the film that we know of: Carissa, the object of Eleanor’s revenge who Drea describes as a “human Birkenstock,” Gabby, Eleanor’s soft-butch love interest, and Eleanor herself, who is a sartorial chameleon throughout the film. When in uniform, Carissa, Gabby, and pre-makeover Drea all opt to wear the cargo shorts instead of the mint and lavender skirts of their peers. None of the presumably straight characters in the film choose to do the same. Campy or not, self-aware or not, this delineation of queer vs. straight falls in line with the single-sided queer representation of teen movies past, even when the rest of the film strays from that one-dimensionality. The line between pastiche and portraiture becomes blurry.
I do not believe that every movie has to feature every character. We watch films written by countless screenwriters, directed by countless directors, often seeking variety and nuance in our stories; each work features its own cast of characters, its own scenes and settings and storylines. I’m intrigued in particular by Drea’s general acceptance of her queer friend but casual homophobia towards other queer characters. . . this Jekyll-and-Hyde treatment is all too real for countless LGBTQ+ people, even from friends and family. Even so, Do Revenge has its blind spots - did its creative team dress its queer characters in cargo shorts or stylize them as fashionably challenged as a joking nod to past films that have done the same? Or is that style a redundant way to delineate the film’s queer characters? Each queer character dresses differently when out of uniform: Carissa in sensible button-downs, Gabby in bright athleisure-inspired outfits that call to mind today’s TikTok lesbians, and post-makeover Eleanor in colorful prints and chunky accessories that call to mind a California teenage Leandra Medine. Still, I can’t help but fixate on their school uniforms and the supposed sloppiness of their early outfits - if it is coincidental, it feels uninformed, and if it is cheeky, it feels unnecessary. The film’s queer representation is a massive step in the right direction - I wonder how much further we can go.
