The movie “Hustlers” directed by Lorene Scafaria takes a deep dive into what the female gaze looks like within media, a concept not often portrayed in films comprehensively. The movie itself is portrayed within the female gaze, with elements of something undeniably homoerotic that left me wanting more romance-centered aspects of the film. While the undertones may not have been obvious to all viewers, for viewers like me and many other sapphic women on the internet, it was fairly obvious.Â
“Hustlers” follows the story of two strippers, Destiny (played by Constance Wu) and Ramona (played by Jennifer Lopez) who fall into a life of crime to make ends meet amidst a struggle to find business after the 2008 market crash.Â
Originally knowing each other solely as coworkers, when the two first meet, it’s under the bright stage lights of the strip club. Destiny watches Ramona’s to Fiona Apple’s Criminal as pink lights cover both women. Such a routine led Ramona to walk off with more money than Destiny had ever made. In awe, Destiny asks Ramona why she’s so good at what she does. Ramona lets Destiny climb into her fur coat and agrees to teach her the ropes to making more money. It was this scene that was the first that had me running to Google to see if anyone else thought there was homoerotic tension I did, only for my theory to be validated by several Redditors.
Throughout the film, more subtle romantic moments between the characters seem to arise. In the scenes where Destiny and Ramona take men to the backroom of the strip club, they never focus on their clients when they’re stripping. They’re focusing on each other and the intimate moments they’re sharing. When the stock market crashes in 2008, not only does the club they both work at fail but Destiny finds herself pregnant– financially supported by her boyfriend she leaves the club. Eventually, Destiny and Ramona fall out of touch with each other.
Even in the absence of one another’s presence, Destiny and Ramona continue to think about each other despite having moved on with their lives outside of the club. Destiny breaks up with her boyfriend and goes back to stripping to find a source of income again. When Destiny finds Ramona, working retail, she is barely able to sustain herself. Together they hatch the idea of drugging men at bars and taking them back to the club to take advantage of their state and charging their credit cards. Ramona refers to Destiny as her right-hand woman in all of this, stating that without her, the group wouldn’t be making the amount of money that they do. With the money that they get from this scheme, they can provide better lives not only for their children but for their families and each other.
In one specific scene where the two are trying to turn ketamine into a powder, Ramona ties Destiny’s apron around her standing very close to her, something I found hard to describe as platonic. My only reasoning for why I thought this scene felt more sapphic is in comparison to how I don’t behave this way with my friends and maybe we just aren’t touchy-feely people, but I found the scene quite romantic. At the end of the movie when the two are arrested for their crimes, they fall out of touch with each other for years until a journalist comes to write about their story. As the journalist interviews Ramona, she reveals that she has two pictures in her wallet, one of herself and one of Destiny. She states that she always wants to keep Destiny with her even if they don’t speak to each other anymore. The movie ends on a hopeful note that Destiny and Ramona will reunite once again.
While sapphic romance is famously canceled out, implied, or taken over by a straight relationship,“Hustlers” is a movie where I feel the directors could have moved it in a romantic direction. Regardless of whether you view the film as romantic or not, nobody can deny that the two women have an incredibly close bond with each other. In a romantic relationship, after time, two people see each other as family because that’s how close they become. Destiny and Ramona become family and the events that led to them splitting up for good were tragic. Life was always getting in the way of their relationship. Even though Destiny and Ramona did morally questionable things, they still loved each other and supported one another through each endeavor. Regardless of whether it was romantic or platonic Destiny and Ramona loved one another and this film truly encapsulates the lengths women will go for one another.Â
