Write me 5 different attractive, catchy headlines for the article: I Saw Myself in the Intense Longing and Love Portrayed in “Fried Green Tomatoes”
I was captivated by the story of Idgie and Ruth’s bravery as two queer women in the south in the early 20th century
hen my sixth-grade crush told me she didn’t want to partner up with me for a class project, I was quietly heartbroken. I didn’t yet know I was queer, but I knew I was devastated. Reeling from the loss of my closest friend (and imagined future wife), I did what I always do in times of crisis: I turned to a book.
My mother had a copy of Fannie Flagg’s 1987 novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café, so I picked it up and started to read. Evelyn Couch, a lonely empty-nester searching for purpose, meets Ninny Threadgoode at the retirement home where her mother-in-law lives. Ninny is a spunky chatterbox who soon draws Evelyn in by sharing her stories of life in Depression-era Alabama, including anecdotes about the lesbian couple who owned the Whistle Stop Café: the slyly charming Idgie Threadgoode (Ninny’s sister-in-law) and the angelic but strong Ruth Jamison.
Like Evelyn, I was quickly captivated by the stories of Idgie and Ruth’s bravery as two queer women, who ran a business together, raised a child together and stood up against racism in the South during the 1920s and 1930s. Idgie and Ruth’s devotion to one other, along with the pure joy they found in each other’s company, reflected how I felt when I experienced these strange pre-adolescent sparks with other girls my age. The intense longing and love described in the books felt like a recognition I had long been seeking.
Before I even knew I was the B in LGBTQIA+, I was writing short stories about running away with the other little girls in my class, who were mostly outgoing tomboys, while I was quieter and girlier. I wanted to spend all my time with them: protecting them, working side by side in school (like Idgie and Ruth did in their café), hearing their secrets and telling them mine. I wasn’t always sure what to do with these feelings, and Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café provided me with some context.
Fried Green Tomatoes, the book’s 1991 film adaptation, is currently enjoying a renaissance as new fans discover it on Netflix and fans from its heyday do nostalgic rewatches. Before my own rewatch, I turned back to Flagg’s source material, and I was immediately transported back to my thorny pre-teen years, which were filled with confused queer longing.
The book is even more explicit about Idgie and Ruth’s relationship than I remembered. When Ruth comes to stay with Idgie’s family one summer (at the time, Idgie is around 15 or 16; Ruth is around 21 or 22), Idgie’s open-hearted mother cautions her other children against mocking Idgie’s nervousness around Ruth, telling them, “Now, children, your sister has a crush, and I don’t want one person to laugh at her.” The fact that her crush is on a young woman like herself isn’t acknowledged; it’s treated like a normal crush that any angsty adolescent would have. Her siblings giggle at Idgie’s awkward behavior just as if her crush were a heteronormative one.
To my surprise, some of my friends who were happy to revisit the film did not know it was a queer love story. Or should it really be a surprise? While Flagg (an out and proud lesbian) makes it clear in her novel that the women are in a romantic relationship, the movie was subtle enough for the romance not to be read at all. In fact, the sweet, goofy food fight scene between Idgie and Ruth in the film was described by Jon Avnet, the director of the film adaptation, as a “love scene” during his director’s commentary on the DVD. If that’s the love scene, it’s no wonder people didn’t read their relationships as a romantic one.
Something else surprised me, too. While I was more or less prepared to be hit with the bittersweet nostalgia of being a confused bisexual kid, I didn’t realize that my 40-year-old self would reread the novel (which I had read at least a dozen times in my childhood) and appreciate it for a completely different reason.
While I did read the sections about Evelyn’s descent into menopause as a kid, I did not completely get it. Evelyn confides in Ninny, “I’m too young to be old and too old to be young.” As an 11-year-old, my understanding of that sentence was very surface level. Sure: Middle age is in the middle.
Now, as a premenopausal woman myself, I read that sentence and get a chill. This was my older self mirrored back to me by Flagg’s iconic novel: I was no longer a lovelorn child, but a woman on the verge of… something.
Evelyn is in a deep depression when the book begins. Her moods drop so low that she daydreams about death by suicide. As Flagg says, “Evelen was forty-eight years old and she had gotten lost somewhere along the way.” Evelyn is also obsessed with the ideas of pain and death. She also has what I think of as a healthy distrust of doctors. “She wondered why she had to live in a body that would get old and break down and feel pain… While she had been in the throes of labor pains… her obstetrician had stood there and lied to her face. ‘Mrs. Couch, you’re going to forget these pains as soon as you see that baby of yours. So push a little harder. You won’t even remember this, trust me.’
WRONG! She remembered every pain, right down the line.”
I have experienced my share of doctors being obtuse or simply being ignorant of the realities of life as a person with a uterus. Evelyn’s dismissive doctor reminded me of some of mine, doctors who’d misdiagnosed or dismissed my painful symptoms of endometriosis, uterine fibroids and premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) for years.
Like Evelyn, I am weary of doctors – I’ve encountered so many who don’t listen, especially when it comes to women’s health. I didn’t realize it when I was a tween obsessively reading Flagg’s novel, but Evelyn Couch was the first woman I encountered in fiction who called out how callous (and ill-informed) the medical system can be when it comes to menstruation, childbirth and menopause.
I went to many, many different gynecologists who shrugged off my extensive list of symptoms, chalking everything up to “normal” period pain. I felt powerless, just as Evelyn did. Having pain doubted, brushed off or diminished by medical professionals is a sadly common and demeaning experience faced by women, and particularly Black women.
At the nursing home where Evelyn and Ninny meet, the only employee mentioned by name is Geneene, a Black nurse who takes care of the residents. While she makes few appearances in the book (and movie), she represents the medical community at the nursing home. Earlier in the book’s timeline, Onzell, a Black woman who works at the café along with her husband Big George, takes on the role of medical caretaker when cancer overwhelms Ruth. When Ruth becomes bedridden, Ninny tells Evelyn, “Onzell moved into the room with her and never left her side.” In fact, Onzell is the only person with Ruth when she passes away; when Ruth is ready, Onzell is brave enough to give her the morphine that will release her from her pain. Whether by coincidence or design, Black women are the trusted medical professionals in this story, and they treat their patients with the respect and dignity that is so often lacking in the medical establishment.
