Miss Representation: Stoner Women in Film and Television

This article by Lola Sasturain was originally published on The pose.

Mainstream cinema and television owe us stoner women. By that I mean ladies who smoke weed like real flesh and blood. No tragic women ruined by drugs or defenseless little creatures afraid to take their first token.

Epic stories of drug trafficking, crime and subsequent redemption, such as the movie The Garden of Joy or the TV series Weeds, are not included in this ranking. This article praises those female characters who smoke like real women, just like men: eagerly because they enjoy it and as part of their daily lives.

Undoubtedly, the indie universe has featured thousands of multi-dimensional and realistic female characters who smoke grass, much more complex and diverse than the ones selected here. But this is a quirky list based on this writer’s own history as a mass culture and weed consumer. It’s even quasi-biographical.

Here is a select group of women who have used marijuana in mainstream high-volume content that many of us girls grew up with. Movies that came to us do not require any researchand revealed the world of Women who smoke cannabis and are normal people too. Yes, as interesting, funny, and empowered as they are, they are ordinary people.

Sex and the City (1998-2004)

While it’s not a pot show, it deserves some credit. The two episodes of girls smoking weed meant a lot to many girls of my generation (childhood in the 90s, teenage years in the 00s). Why? Because it would be the first time we’d see an absolutely fabulous adult woman smoking a joint on TV.

Although It is never implied that they are normal consumers, if the joint shows up, it does so naturally, without moral judgments and without being classified as “dangerous”. For the time and the goal of the series, this was no small matter.

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The relationship these women have with marijuana is similar to that of many more or less progressive women of this generation: they like it, they have respect for it and when they smoke (which is not often the case) they get very high and have a great one Time.

There are two famous weed scenes in Sex And The City:

The first scene is from the third season (2000). In it, Carrie smokes with Wade, her “boy on duty” (one of the unimportant). Wade is an eternal teenager who still lives with his parents and, of course, takes care of the weeds.

It is perhaps one of the most memorable roundups in the entire series. The couple spend a weekend pure marijuana and chill, but when the boy’s parents get home he blames them for it. Between outrage and confusion, Carrie takes a masterly stance: Yes, the weeds are mine … and since I brought them I’ve been taking them. In the next scene we see her smoking with her friends.

Keeping the herb is a deeply symbolic act of empowerment that goes right to the heart of this article. Weed is for independent women, not lazy, overgrown babies who don’t know what to do with their lives.

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The second scene is from the last season in which Carrie is depressed because her boyfriend left her on a sticky note. Samantha offers her a joint that they smoke on the street and almost go to jail for. Yes, they are safe because they are white great women and they don’t just appeal to pity. But it’s still a good scene.

Jackie Brown (1997)

At the beginning of the millennium any teenager who wanted to declare themselves A “moviegoer” had to have seen all previous Tarantino films. Tarantino wouldn’t be the first feminist, but those were great films.

Jackie Brown most of all inconspicuous In his famous trilogy from the nineties, some very interesting female characters took center stage and were held up by them.

We’re going to focus on the character of Melanie, who (more than a decade before legalization) appears to be the model of the marijuana smoking California girl.

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Melanie is blonde, tanned and very relaxed. She is a friend of a millionaire trader whose beach house in Baja California she spends her days smoking weed. Everything around her is danger and crime, but she is the one who types non-stop, not the criminals who surround her. Within cinema stereotypes, Melanie is like any male stoner.

Your quote is perhaps the best marijuana quote a woman has ever uttered in mainstream cinema. A sentence written to captivate teenagers from 1997 to forever. In the scene, her boyfriend tells her that smoking so much weed will kill her ambitions, to which she replies, “Not if your ambition is to get up and watch TV.”

Broad City (2014-2019)

The fluidest, funniest, and most relatable series about friends in their late twenties who live in New York in an effective 20-minute episode format.

Broad City is one of the best shows to see while going super high. In the adventures of these two girls, cannabis appears as an everyday habit. It is impossible to pick a single weed scene out of so many great ones.

Broad City’s star duo – the big one To have Jacobson and Ilana Glazer – has done a lot for the acceptance of us women who are funny, ridiculous, clumsy and lovable. It also provided a realistic and delicate account of what marijuana is for women around 30: a little spice to life, a moment to part, something to share with friends for interesting conversations or just laughing until it hurts does. It’s neither glamorous nor fancy: they smoke cockroaches, they live with vendors, and they sometimes argue about who scores. Just like life itself.

The show also has the most precise and subtle stoner humor women have ever shown on television. You can say the The show was created by the main characters themselvesand they know very well what they are talking about.

With no moral aspect, cannabis is the protagonist of many memorable scenes in which various taboos are broken, such as smoking weed in the family. This was immortalized in an episode in which the girls travel to Florida and, among other things, share a joint with them Ilana Mother and aunt, two Jewish women.

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This is a great scene full of pop culture references: it’s filmed in the manner of That 70’s Show and Fran Thresherwho plays the aunt is a pop icon herself.

Smiley Face (2007)

Granted, it’s not Gregg Araki’s best film. Without a doubt, it is one of the mainstream and most superficial in the flagship queer cinema from the early 90s catalog. His characteristic “f *ck The vision of gender roles is very much alive in this comedy.

In the film a young actress named Jane (played by Anna Faris) has an absolutely psychedelic day, somewhere between funny and terrible, after accidentally eating a tray of cannabis cupcakes.

Smiley Face is hyperbolic and not very realistic. Still, it gives an interesting twist to the grueling (and often moralizing) story of a “crazy day after accidental drug use”. The woman who gets high is already a stoner and knows how to use drugs correctShe is ready to face what comes with such accidental poisoning.

The film has some of the best represented, the most realistic scenes all about getting high in public. It could totally star Seth roe Instead, it plays a young, blonde Britney Spears guy.

The role of John KrasinskiOn the other hand, you are usually played by “the girl” in films. He’s a no-charisma madman who is in love with the leading lady and goes out of his way to help her even though she is totally confused.

A really absurd stoner comedy, nothing more and nothing less.

Atlanta (2016-)

Full Disclosure: There are many problems in Van’s life that I cannot possibly imagine from my place in society. She is a young working class African American mother. I’m not. And yet the character, played by ZazieBeetzis extremely relatable.

Van is always tired, has a sour sense of humor, a very short fuse, and a strange tendency for everything to go wrong. She is also wild, independent, and utterly adorable. Like most of the characters in this great, bittersweet comedy, Van Gras smokes, but only occasionally.

There is an episode which portrays the profound problem of inequality of the less privileged sectors before the law in the act of smoking. Van shares a joint with a teenage friend who is Also African Americans, but also millionaire influencers. It represents the path that Van did not take because hardly anyone could.

The inequality is palpable: Van cannot smoke as freely as her rich friend because she doesn’t have the same privileges. In fact, she has forgotten that she has an interview for a job at a school the next day and will therefore have to take a drug test. A thousand tragicomic inventions follow to pass this test, ultimately without success.

Van reminds us that it doesn’t matter how beautiful, kind, open, and intelligent you are. Being a girl who smokes weed is difficult, but being a lower class African American girl who smokes weed is a lot harder.