‘D.E.B.S.’ WAS MUCH DEEPER THAN WE THOUGHT IT WAS

I patiently waited for D.E.B.S. to come on streaming for a long time, a moment that came a few weeks ago. D.E.B.S. was a highly anticipated watch for me because I’d heard that it’s a campy sapphic movie with a happy ending, but also because it had come out in the early 2000s, a time when movies like D.E.B.S. were especially rare. However, when I finally watched the movie, I found there was a lot more to the film that initially meets the eye. 

To give a brief background, the film is about main characters Sara and Lucy Diamond. Sara is in a group called the D.E.B.S. which she was placed in after getting a high score on a secret test in the SAT, (we’ll get back into that later). The D.E.B.S. is a paramilitary academy/college, and Sara is in a D.E.B.S. squad with her roommates, Max, Devon, and Amy. In the beginning, we learn that Sara has just broken up with her boyfriend Bobby who works for Homeland Security. He won’t stop calling her trying to get back together, and this conflict comes to a head while the D.E.B.S. and other federal agencies are staking out Lucy Diamond, a young woman part of the Reynolds family crime syndicate. It’s ominously stated that “no one has ever fought her and lived to tell about it.” They think Lucy Diamond is meeting Ninotchka, a Russian assassin with aspirations to be a ballerina, for criminal reasons, but really the two women are on a date. In the chase to catch Lucy Diamond, Lucy and Sara end up meeting which sends sparks flying and chaos ensuing. The movie ends with the two women having to give up their life as they know it to be with each other. Lucy stops being a criminal and returns all the stolen diamonds, money, etc., and Sara leaves the D.E.B.S. and pursues her dream of art school. The final scene is the two of them literally driving off into the sunset. 

Throughout the movie we see the two women struggle with keeping both their interest for each other and their relationship a secret, but it’s much more difficult for Sara as she hasn’t come out to herself or her friends and peers. Interestingly, the reason they have to keep their relationship a secret isn’t because they’re gay, but because one is a spy and the other is the criminal mastermind the other has been ordered to catch. I think there’s two conflicting reasons the writers created a plot that centers queer women having to keep their relationship a secret but not for the typical reasons. Firstly, because it gives the viewer a break from the realities of the queer experience and treats queerness instead as something that’s simply normal. Secondly, and somewhat contradictory, the use of the spy and criminal plot dramatizes and demonstrates the queer experience in a new and less on-the-nose way. Despite the campy plot, there’s still a palpable tension felt while watching the film as there are two queer women being kept apart and told that their relationship is wrong. At the end of the movie Sara and Lucy even have to leave their communities to be together. While it’s not because of their sexuality, it feels too close to the realities of many queer people to not be referencing real experiences. There’s something powerful being shown in how even in a movie about a diamond thief, queer women still must leave everyone they know behind just to be together. In my opinion, the entire movie is an allegory for the queer experience. 

There’s also something that stands out about the actual test one takes to become a D.E.B. At one point Sara asks Mr. Phipps, one of the leaders of the D.E.B.S, why she got such a high score on the test. He says it’s because of her impressive ability to lie, which is the biggest thing the test measures. This feels particularly significant, because you can translate Sara’s ability to lie into her time spent in the closet. In a way, she was lying to herself in the world because she wasn’t able to express her sexuality before she met Lucy and it became undeniable. 

In all, I really do love this movie. It feels like an homage to sapphic culture from Sara pointedly ordering a vegan meal at the beginning, (a tofu scramble with a dairy free peach smoothie-yum), to famously queer Holland Taylor playing the director of the D.E.B.S. The movie is also just aesthetically fun. For example, all the D.E.B.S. wear plaid skirts and button up short sleeve shirts with a tie but get to wear different shoes to express their personalities, some choosing combat boots and others stilettos or Mary Janes. I think it’s fascinating how D.E.B.S. was both a movie that is fun and campy while also being an allegory for some of the more negative realities and experiences that came with being queer, especially at the time the film was released. 

• 2000's
• entertainment
• expectation
• forbidden love
• LGBT Community
• UC Berkeley