This queer rep review takes a look at the first season of Trinkets available on Netflix.

What is Trinkets?

Trinkets is a dramedy show about three high school girls with a shopping addiction. Although all are very different, the girls bond through their shoplifters anonymous meetings and share some tragic backgrounds that drove them there. One of the girls is (you guessed it!) gay. Trinkets episodes are around a half hour long and there are 10 episodes with one season. This is a Netflix original with a gay character, so naturally its renewal for a second season came with an announcement that season 2 will be its last. Thanks for looking out per usual, Netflix.

Is Elodie’s identity good representation?

Short answer? Sure! I never found her character to be offensive or annoying in terms of representation, but I also didn’t find anything groundbreaking or exceptional. Regardless, Elodie’s queer identity was a win for sure and honestly the only reason I watched the show. The trailer came up while browsing and one glance-over had me knowing she was gay. And if the show decided she wasn’t, it was about to be a bad case of queerbaiting just with a stereotype look.

The girls Elodie befriends never outcast her or find her identity an issue, which is a nice bonus. They instead take bets over whether she is gay or not, which can be taken a few ways. I know some queer people get annoyed over straights claiming they have a gaydar (which is kind of what happened in the show, without using the word), but I’m not one to get bent out of shape over something intended as a nonchalant attempt to make the straight characters not care about Elodie’s identity one way or another. After Elodie confesses she did something “for a girl,” the shoplifter betting gay mumbles, “I told you so.” Later on when the three become real friends rather than new acquaintances, they try to help Elodie flirt with girls in a typical nerdy-girl-can’t-talk-to-her-crush fashion.

Elodie is also already out to her father, with whom she lives with. It’s nice that the show doesn’t really include a coming-out arc (apart from the other girls finding out about her identity), but there’s no angsty and dramatic business resulting from her identity. Her dad might not have a whole grip on the situation (he accidentally refers to one of Elodie’s friends as “your girlfriend”) but he never has an issue with it, and the show veers from focusing this apart from the one moment.

Is Elodie bi? Pan? Lesbian? Queer?

Elodie’s label is never identified, which is completely fine by me. The beginning of the series seemed to hint towards a multiple-gender-attraction label, but a scene later on in the show leads me more to lesbian. She points out that one of the boys in their support group “is hot,” and the other two girls look confused. Elodie shrugs with a, “What? I can still tell,” which implies that still tell refers to a despite me not being attracted to boys. The no label can leave her identity up to the viewers’ interpretation, but I’ll be sticking my headcanon into lesbian with this one.

Will you be watching Trinkets? Or have you already watched it? Let me know in the comments! If you enjoyed this post, please consider donating $3 to the blog’s Ko-Fi page or become a patron for exclusive content at $1/month.