xandromedovna | Meta: Brenda My Beloved (Rules s5)-- DFvQ

CW: pregnancy, homophobia, heterosexism, transphobia, alcohol, fat-shaming, food

Starting out as a joke about Jeff’s softball team whose absence requires Audrey to join temporarily, by the end of s5 Brenda has become a pivotal person in Jeff and Audrey’s lives. She’s not the first openly queer recurring character but she is the longest lasting (not including leads). Brenda agrees to be Audrey and Jeff’s surrogate, which deploys queer reproductive technologies in service of heterosexuality and also serves to contrast her relationships with Audrey and Jeff’s. Brenda injects a queer sensibility into the show that frankly makes it more watchable as a queer fan. Welcome to my Brenda appreciation post.

Brenda and Jeff get along well, and Brenda is able to hold her own in the insult battles common to this friend group. Unlike when the mains are targeted by homophobic or transphobic jokes, instead of them being the game point in the exchange, as an ‘actual’ homosexual she can often rebut them and get the last word in:

Brenda: I see you let Jeff out of his cage tonight, what’s up you big gorilla?
Jeff: Nothing much, Carrot Top, look who has a light beer, why don’t you grow a pair?
Brenda: Oh, well I could borrow yours, except they’re in Audrey’s purse. And y’know, for your information, the reason I am drinking a light beer is because I don’t wanna end up with a body like yours.
Jeff: Umm the last chick you dated had a body exactly like mine.
Brenda: Uh-uh, she was only rocking B-cups. (5x8)

Audrey and Brenda’s interactions, meanwhile, often allow them both to lament that Audrey is straight:

Audrey: I get why you went the other way.
Brenda: Yeah and Jeff’s always there to remind me of what I’m not missing.
Audrey: […] Just out of curiosity, what is the process for joining up with your side?
Brenda: Oh god we would love to have you. Plus, I could really use the commission. (5x8)

Brenda: And yet Audrey is still straight. Really proves it’s not a choice. (6x14)

This of course doesn’t stop them from being queerbaited, such as when they hug after the implantation takes and Jeff says: “Feel free to keep that going. […] Is there a bad time for girl-on-girl?” (5x20) That Brenda has such great rapport with both of them makes her an ideal candidate for becoming their surrogate, especially since Jeff keeps chasing off all the other candidates.

As mentioned, Brenda does get to have onscreen relationships but remains a recurring character and thus is secondary to Jeff and Audrey’s story. For example, in her second appearance, Audrey hijacks Brenda and Jeff’s bar hangout and turns it into a double date with them and Brenda’s girlfriend Becky. The only problem is Brenda hasn’t actually told Becky about the surrogacy plan yet, so when Audrey lets the cat out of the bag, Becky breaks up with Brenda. Later in the series, Jeff gets weird about Brenda having sex while she’s pregnant: “I can’t believe we have to have this conversation. We’re paying you to be our surrogate, so as long as our kid’s in there that whole area is closed for business” (6x14). Her life is put on hold by the demands of straight time.

That said, the show does avoid the desexualization of lesbians. Jeff and Brenda will often comment to each other about their physical attraction to women, especially as Brenda’s hormones start to make her horny all the time. More interestingly in relation to queering Jennifer, the first time Brenda sees her, she is in a tank-top carrying a tool belt, and the camera gives us Brenda’s POV in slomo, providing a lesbian gaze. Jennifer’s erotic appeal is based in her gender transgression in the moment in accordance with lesbian aesthetics. (Don’t mind me, I’m just sitting quietly in the corner shipping Brenda/Jennifer and Joe/Adam.)

Like many pregnant people, Brenda has to put up with people touching her at random and assuming access to her body. People will put their hands on her belly to feel the baby kick whether she invites them to or not. As mentioned above, Jeff feels entitled to tell her who she can and cannot have in her body. She is stuck on the couch for hours as Audrey and then Jeff read to the baby and talk through her belly. As a surrogate, she in some ways becomes merely a vessel instead of a person in her own right, and her role in some episodes is purely instrumental because of this.

Audrey and Jeff’s discomfort with queer time is a recurring theme throughout Brenda’s pregnancy. Audrey keeps trying to bond with Brenda but it’s awkward at first. When they first try to implant a zygote, Audrey signs up for surrogacy classes in a bid to feel more involved in the process. Jeff, who very much doesn’t like change, has trouble adjusting when Brenda comes to stay with them. Closer to the time, Audrey laments the fact that her baby shower was upstaged by Brenda and the baby kicking and that she’s “a bystander in this whole thing” (6x15). She starts to doubt her own preparedness to be a mother when she breaks a girl’s doll and lets slip that Brenda’s a lesbian. Jeff and Audrey are ill-equipped to navigate the queerness of their arrangement.

Brenda meanwhile treads the well-beaten path of lesbian pregnancy stories though surrounded by more heteronormativity. While pregnant lesbians queer reproduction, these narratives often also shore up traditional femininity and bioessentialist ideas of womanhood as well as provide an assimilationist we’re-just-like-you view of lesbians. When the implantation takes, she is suddenly emotional, nauseous, and irritable: “thanks a lot, Jeff, you’ve turned me into a freaking girl!” (5x20) Instead of Brenda being a “baby caddy” (5x20), Jeff ends up having to deal with two stressed out women in his home instead of one, assimilating Brenda into straight conceptions of femininity. Add that to the fact she’s not doing this with a partner but on her own as a surrogate and you get a view of lesbian pregnancy that is decidedly straight.

On the other hand, Brenda also offers an alternative to the oppressive weight of Jeff and Audrey’s heterosexuality. At one point Brenda and Jeff have a plotline that uses food as a metaphor for cheating. Audrey has Jeff on a strict diet per doctor orders, but he hates it. Brenda tempts him to join her at a bar and grill for steaks, which becomes a pattern. Jeff plies Audrey with flowers and tells her he loves her after, only to go into the other room to listen to Brenda describe her meal in a parody of phone sex. When Audrey catches him out in a lie and shows him the moist towelette she found in his wallet, his cover story is a romantic tryst: “it’s a condom for my sex affair” (6x6). Even as they draw her into a heterosexual narrative, for Jeff and Audrey, Brenda’s queer presence disrupts their relationship. Baby shopping with Brenda leads Jeff to embrace maternity pants as a revelation. Audrey and Brenda bond over things like reading to the baby or listening to music. Brenda becomes a buffer in their marriage.

Ultimately Brenda is an underutilized character who only exists to further the narratives of straight people. But she also injects queer humour into the show through her witty rejoinders to Jeff and Russell’s microaggressions and her interactions with women both straight and queer. We are often encouraged to take Brenda’s side in the plot, such as when Jeff is trying to “beaver dam” her on a date and in retaliation she drags him along to a foreign film and vegan food (6x14). And there are times when she is able to ask them for help in return, such as when Jeff and Audrey cover for her at her catering business (however poorly). In conclusion Brenda’s amazing and deserved more screen time and a girlfriend thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.