Rose-Coloured Closet Glass: An Analysis of Compulsory Heterosexuality in the Patriarchal Female Tyrant Trope
Gliinda Upland, Alicent Hightower, Apple White, Regina George, Sunset Shimmer… You know her, I know her, we all know her. She comes from a position of privilege that she’s been too sheltered to even fully understand, let alone the systemic issues at hand. She’s been shaped to fit a mould society deems her to be in, that her family religiously abides by. She’s grown up from a victim of consequence into a perpetrator of the same structures that chain her. Inside a system that undermines womanhood and condemns queerness, she has conquered the former and suppressed the latter.
From high school mean girls to low-level dictators, depending on the amount of power within their reach, there seems to be a certain trope in media of characters abusing a position born out of privilege to gain power over those who suffer from the same oppressive system. Women who think that becoming friends with the oppressor and actively harming her community will get her enough social credit under patriarchy that she gets to receive what she wants as a reward for good behaviour.
Whether she becomes an ally to the oppressors or a representative of the misogynistic world views we all so intrinsically know is up to the light in which the specific story wants to paint its characters. But there seems to be a recurring correlation between the internal conflict of continuing to be complicit in her own oppression versus becoming a true ally to her own cause, and suppressed homoerotic tendencies usually shown in contrast to the character who has managed to free herself from those same shackles.
While we can’t fully absolve her of her responsibility, it does seem like mainstream media still mostly feels comfortable with portraying lesbianism in a deeply flawed character. Her homosexual tendencies are hidden behind her moral dark-greyness, while her redeeming qualities, behind the plausible deniability of her sexuality.
In the same way that queer, and especially trans, existence was not on the radar of the average conservative before the media war on ‘wokeness’ was ignited by the people in power, queer characters were casually portrayed in Hollywood before the introduction of the Hays Code from 1934 until 1968, which included guidelines for censorship in movies. Since ‘sexual perversions’ were prohibited, characters could not be explicitly LGBTQ+ on screen; even when it was just suggested or implied, they would still be portrayed in a negative light, stereotyped and villainised. And so it began Disney’s era of queer-coded villains, like Jafar, Scar, Ursula, Hades and Cruella de Vil, just to name a few, and of predatory gay men and lesbians. This new trope of the closeted-lesbian-coded tyrant is reminiscent of the evil queers from that censorship period.
The base story of the trope might not have originated with Wicked, but it is certainly best portrayed in the musical-turned-movie. It follows two female characters developed in opposition to each other: one raised in privilege, comfortable in her own complacency towards a system that oppresses her just as well, usually symbolised visually through a blonde character; and an underdog, forefront victim of not only the systemic oppression but also, directly or indirectly, the other character’s own agenda, ready to be a hero of the story because she has no other choice. While the text of the story already builds them as two different sides of the same coin, their relationship through a sapphic lens reveals another layer to their relationship that reflects back on their own internal conflict. The homoerotic subtext becomes a narrative tool to show the two characters’ development against each other, while the theme of compulsory heterosexuality in the privileged character adds to the complexity of what she’s unknowingly suppressing in order to please the system she’s complicit in.
Unlike the underdog, whose lamentable backstory left her with nothing and has pushed her to fight against the system that has taken everything from her and others, the illusion of power is fed to the blonde character as a pretty little box that, if she fits into, will grant her all her wishes; and that’s the only way she could get what she desires. Not strengthened by any of life’s hardships and not yet hardened by the storyline, she will always choose the easier option, in which she gets to keep her rose-coloured glasses on.
The character not only lacks an understanding of her own queerness but also experiences the conflicting dichotomy of what she shows for men to be just out of duty and societal conditioning, and what she feels for women, a description of potentially true romantic love, disguised as strictly platonic.
Analysing her compulsory sexuality can then be done in two layers: the importance she gives to her male love interest, whom she only craves as a concept, as part of the image she’s trying to project into the world, and a relationship with another female character that serves as a catalyst for her development, which she never allows herself to fully explore. Even when she doesn’t come with a built-in female counterpart to dominate the narrative with as a pairing, the characteristics of the trope are just as easy to spot.
A few steps lower than the dictator-adjacent role Glinda had is one of the most iconic HBICs in cinematic history, Regina George from Mean Girls (second only to her predecessor, Heather Chandler), and a nicher reformed villain from My Little Pony’s high school movie series spin-off, Equestria Girls’ Sunset Shimmer. Each starts her movie as ruler of her own toxic miniature of society, a high school ecosystem functioning after the same misogynistic rules as the outside world. Her tyranny gets disrupted only after a newcomer set on disrupting the status quo threatens to replace her. Even putting the tension between them aside, since it’s not as centred as in other stories, the only proximity she ever has with a man is when she tries to get her ex-boyfriend back, just to get him away from the newcomer. Sunset Shimmer even spells out the only reason both of them seem to have been in a relationship before:
"He's a great guy, but I never really liked him that way. I was just using him to become more popular."
That is the whole point of Regina’s character as well, an attitude she carries in her other heterosexual relationships throughout the movie. Her relationship with Janis Ian seems to carry more weight than all of her romantic ones combined, a lot of fans believing that her bigotry towards her could have actually been projected internalised homophobia. And in terms of less subtle hints, Sunset Shimmer’s redemption arc includes certain flirty interactions with an alternate version of Twilight Sparkle, the newcomer in her villain arc, completed by some sapphic flagging on both their parts, their outfits’ colour palettes matching the ones of the lesbian and bisexual flag, respectively.
What about the man, though? Even if we were to hang onto any trace of heterosexuality in the blonde archetype, the positioning of the male ‘romantic’ lead in most pairings must strike at least a part of the audience as odd. Besides his existence in her life as a sole stand-in for the role she was told she must uphold, his relationship with her seems to be intrinsically interlinked with the dynamic he has with the other female character and the one the female characters have with each other. Glinda marries the man she knows is longing for Elphaba; Regina George and Sunset Shimmer try to get their ex-boyfriend back only after he starts flirting with the new girl; Alicent Hightower lets herself finally enjoy sex outside of her religious guilt with the man her homoerotic frenemy rejected. Somehow, the only way for her to be enticed into fully engaging with him romantically is by knowing she stole the man her rival wants. While it certainly serves as a power move over her trope counterpart, it also becomes a way to get intimate by proxy with the one she can’t be with directly, whether from society’s limitations or her own.
As far as textbook descriptions go, Wicked’s Glinda Upland is a perfect example, as well as a somewhat pioneer, of the aforementioned blonde tyrant (so much so that she becomes the obvious inspiration for Apple White from the Ever After High series). She begins as a spoiled pink socialite, expecting everyone to worship her blindly and sneering at anything different. Her rich parents have promised her the perfect life, the blind adoration of the people, status, money, fame and a husband; all she has to do is stay in the bubble built for her. Fiyero enters her life at the perfect moment to complete her fantasy, a perfect pair for her perfect self, whom she knows for certain she will marry. Only her relationship with Elphaba scratches the illusion, making her yearn, at the same time, not only for her friend’s integrity she is unfamiliar with, but for an entire connection that exceeds any straightforward vision she has had for herself and her life. Getting closer to Elphaba not only challenges her worldview by making her start to wish she were also good like her, but her view of herself as well.
Her behaviour throughout the story can face the same criticism as the concept behind white feminism and ‘girlbossing’. The illusion that if you have made it, surely that means that the road is now paved for all the women behind you. And while trailblazing is important, when you come from privilege, the only other people you have opened doors for are those with the same upbringing as you if you do not put any extra effort into it. Your failure to acknowledge any other conditions than your own makes you, in your own eyes at least, the ultimate victim; that one who has raised and defeated the white man, and now feminism has officially won.
Even just her name change is used as a reflection of her superficiality, a performative act of activism in part done just to fit with the people she’s trying to be more like, part of the first step of her journey to actual goodness.
Although it tolerates success when it’s superficial, ultimately, the system wants women to be submissive. The rules that exist are put in place to make sure they never step out of line or raise their heads enough to notice something’s off. Allegedly, good, rule-following behaviour then gets rewarded. So why wouldn’t the pious woman keep her head down before the system she was raised in? She’s been taught that if she bows down to men well enough, she could go far, for a woman. We see this in Alicent Hightower from the House of the Dragon show: groomed into being a teenage bride to a widowed king, left alone among conniving men trying to use her to their best interest, turned to a highly conservative religion. The second part of her arc in season 1 deals with the conflict between what she has convinced herself she has to do in order to survive versus what she can see around her. The only way to lose yourself in a world that moves against you is to convince yourself that the path you’ve been following so far is the sole option. Seeing Rhaenyra Targaryen get away with breaking every rule there is chips away at her entire belief system, the one thing that keeps her going. Cause if women never actually had to relinquish their power to succeed by obeying and could actually just grab that position themselves, then everything she has endured has been for nothing. This is where her infamous monologue comes in, the pinnacle of this feeling breaking out:
“What have I done, but what was expected of me? Forever upholding the kingdom, the family, the law, while you flout all to do as you please! [...] Where is duty? Where is sacrifice? It's trampled under your pretty foot again!”
But behind the surface analysis lies another layer of their relationship: a love that never got to be. The special bond that Alicent and Rhaenyra share in their youth still bears the differences that ultimately break them apart. The freedom Rhaenyra aims for can only exist for Alicent in her most childish dreams and unattainable fantasies. And once betrayal alienates them, and Rhaenyra goes off doing more or less what she wishes, Alicent gets pushed into a corner that slowly becomes her own prison, which she later personally enforces. But if the rules were never real, since Rhaenyra can break them with no consequences, and her own reward for good behaviour is yet to arrive, that means she could’ve done the same years ago.
Not only could she have not enclosed herself in limitations of her own making, but she could’ve given into the only feeling that has ever made her happy; so happy it didn’t seem possible. As Rhaenyra put it in the first episode, they could’ve run away on dragonback together. And when Alicent’s world crumbled under her feet at the realisation that no matter how subserviant she is, men will treat her as ultimately inferior, the same as the other women, at the end of season 2, she bounces back to that moment: she sneaks to Rhaenyra to give her an upper hand and ask her to run away with her; except Rhaenyra has since moved on.
The feeling of the reckoning between the two is reminiscent of the first moment Elphaba and Glinda meet after Nessarose’s death in Wicked: For Good (act 2 of the stage musical). The witches start fighting because Elphaba ‘stole’ Glinda’s fiancé and Glinda caused the death of Elphaba’s sister. What Elphaba says about Fiyero running away with her, though, has a little bit more nuance:
“I know it may be difficult for that blissful, blonde brain of yours to comprehend that someone like him could actually choose someone like me! But it's happened... it's real.”
The emphasis here is not only on the fact that Glinda’s fiancé chose Elphaba in the end, but that someone like him did, someone who came from privilege, who had their whole life at their feet, who had to choose to break away from that fantasy in order to actually do something of value. And, like it’s already been established in the song Dancing through Life, that’s both Fiyero and Glinda. But, unlike Fiyero, who has managed to deconstruct his upbringing, wasn’t content anymore with closing his eyes and standing aside just because he could, who actively chose to go with Elphaba to fight the system, Glinda is still stuck in her bubble. And no matter the intensity of the relationship built between the two in the first movie, she is, at this point, still a prisoner of the inner conflict between grabbing the power that was handed to her and craving to be more, with Elphaba.
By the time she reaches a resolution of that conflict, at the end of the second movie, she has done too much damage not to be responsible for fixing and rebuilding the entire system, if she still strives for that Good title. And Elphaba is, similarly to Rhaenyra, done waiting for her. What she always needed and deserved was someone to choose her first, which Glinda wasn’t able to do at the end of Act 1, because it was at the expense of walking away from the one thing she’s always wanted: real popularity and influence.
The moment of the fight goes even deeper for Glinda, as she is faced with the duality of what she has lost with that single action. In the creative interpretation of the movie, Fiyero’s decision comes right after Glinda thought she had convinced Elphaba to join them, conveniently solving the one thing that has been bothering her without having to do any work for it. Within a single scene, she has lost the fantasy she was living with Fiyero, promised to her ever since she was a child, and the genuine connection she rediscovered with Elphaba, with the possibility of becoming a better person.
Not once in the entire text of the musical or movies does Glinda express true longing or desire for Fiyero, not the way Fiyero and Elphaba express for one another, not the way Glinda expresses for her relationship with Elphaba. Fiyero is to Glinda only the central piece of the picture-perfect life sold to her since forever. Everything in her situation at the beginning of act 2 is an illusion, from her position of benevolent power to the adoration of the masses and including her engagement to Fiyero; it’s all a pretty and pink façade. And as long as she doesn’t look close enough, she doesn’t have to accept or acknowledge that. It is that she loses in that moment, the fantasy she has built and convinced herself that she truly wants.
The idea that ‘someone like him’ could actually choose the righteous path and join, but also be with Elphaba, even after taking part in her witch hunt, threatens to show her that everything that she has based her survival on so far has been a lie; that there’s nothing real left to hang onto. And the hurtful realisation that had she let go of the lie earlier, she could’ve had Elphaba, as well as the goodness, is ultimately what bursts her bubble. And although she has lost Elphaba, she gets to actually put her own title into practice for the first time and make amends for her mistakes. She has lost everything and everyone that matters, as punishment for her actions, but she can finally build her perfectly good world, genuinely now, from the ground up.
Although Glinda doesn’t get the happy ending that she wished for, rather the one warranted by her actions, others were able to escape the archetype more optimistically. The story of her trope successor, Apple White, almost got a canon sapphic conclusion, if not for the abrupt finalisation of the series. As daughters of Snow White and the Evil Queen, hers and Raven Queen’s dynamic mirrors that of Glinda and Elphaba’s almost completely. Although not free of homoeroticism, the show shifts the sapphic attention from the main duo to Apple’s own potential female love interest in season 4; a storyline that was coincidentally scraped by the network right after it was introduced.
The plot twist that her fated soulmate was not the son of Prince Charming, that she had taken as a boyfriend out of duty without ever showing any interest in, but rather her boyfriend’s sister, Darling Charming, the genderbent White Knight (from Alice in Wonderland), came at the same time as a major breakthrough in her development arc. The moment she dismantles the belief system she has been upholding her entire life in order to get a happy ending for everyone, not just the privileged ones, she also breaks the shackles of her own compulsory heterosexuality with the reveal that she might get to explore a romantic connection with her actual soulmate. The creators never actually got to decide how they were going to play that though, though, since the next and final season completely glazed over that specific part of the finale’s biggest plot twist, followed by an untimely cancellation.
Although we might not have yet gotten over killing our gays, and sapphic representation in media is nowhere near where it deserves to be, we can still hope that even subtle hints can help those who feel represented by the characters overcome certain limitations they can now better understand. And maybe one day we’ll have fewer cautionary tales and more happy endings for lesbians in media.