This movie speaks to a lot of Sapphics precisely because there is something so casually and joyfully gay-and aspirational-about Tie-Dye Girl and Hallie’s relationship. She was fun, sporty, cool and she had Tie-Dye Girl by her side. I know I certainly aspired to be Lindsay Lohan as Hallie in The Parent Trap long before I came out of the closet. And eventually, after some drawbacks that demand the twins engage in more shenanigans to achieve their mission (namely, they must face the presence of a classic Disney trope, the Evil Stepmother, Meredith Blake, portrayed by the deliciously camp Elaine Hendrix), they do. When the parents find out, they will have to meet again to make the switch, with the juvenile hope in the twins’ heart that they will immediately fall back in love. The first step of the plan is to go back to their respective homes as one another: Nick gets Annie, who’s pretending to be Hallie, while Elizabeth gets Hallie, who’s pretending to be Annie. Now, putting the pieces together, the twins decide to reunite their family-by first reuniting their parents. Each was raised by their divorced parents away from one another-father Nick (Dennis Quaid) took Hallie to Napa, while mother Elizabeth (the late Natasha Richardson) took Annie to London. The basic plot of the movie-which is based on a children’s book by German author Erich Kästner, and a 1961 film by the same name-follows twins Hallie and Annie (played by the singular Lindsay Lohan), who meet at a summer camp and figure out the secret that each of their parents has kept from them throughout their lives: they were separated at birth. It is admittedly a bit odd that The Parent Trap has become a queer classic, considering the film’s premise. The film, though not explicitly queer, still provides a sort of utopia of queer acceptance, connection and love. At a time when my life felt scattered and incomplete, the fantasy world of The Parent Trap, and the warm and maternal presence of Chessy, provided me with a dream of gluing the pieces of it together. You kept the twins’ secret and you made me feel like if you were in my life, I would have been loved.’”Īs an only child of divorce, and a queer kid, this rings true to me. “Especially,” she continues, “from kids who in those years felt a little … like their lives were not as safe, or they weren’t as accepted, like, kids from the LGBTQ2S+ community still write me now and say, ‘You made me feel accepted. She says that she still receives comments disclosing that watching this movie makes people feel safe. In a recent interview on The Jennifer Hudson Show, Walter revealed, as she’s done in many other interviews, the depth of love that ’90s kids (now, I suppose, adults) have for The Parent Trap, and specifically, Chessy. But The Parent Trap remains a comfort watch for a generation of ’90s queers. And by god, it’s true what they (Fleetwood Mac) say: even children get older, and I’m getting older too. The movie that made Lindsay Lohan (welcome back, we missed you!) also made me. If you didn’t religiously return to your local home video rental store and wear down their copy of The Parent Trap as a kid, we’re not the same. Walter herself certainly won’t have that-her Twitter bio still carries the tag: #ChessyForever, referring, of course, to the famously beloved nanny in the 1998 Disney classic The Parent Trap, which will soon celebrate its 25th anniversary. But let us not forget-especially those of us who are ’90s kids-the origin of our adoration for Walter. Actress Lisa Ann Walter is in fashion nowadays, with a wealth of well-deserved love for her latest character, a fiery Italian with a spiky facade and the biggest of hearts named Melissa Schemmenti, on the critically acclaimed ABC mockumentary Abbott Elementary.
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