This story contains spoilers for Season 1 of Netflix’s The Hunting Wives.
I will obviously watch any show with even a hint of girl-meets-girl intrigue (not for nothing did I struggle through the entirety of The L Word: Generation Q), but I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the murderous-Republican-bisexual antics in The Hunting Wives, Netflix’s new drama based on the novel by May Cobb.
Not only do Brittany Snow’s shy, troubled, East Coast lib Sophie and Malin Akerman’s small-town Texas bad girl and aspiring politician’s wife Margo have genuine sexual chemistry (who would have expected Sophie to be the top?), but the story—about the murder of a football star’s cheerleader girlfriend in a wealthy East Texas community—has me obsessed in a way that I haven’t been since I turned the final page of my last Gillian Flynn novel.
Obviously, the whodunit aspect of the show—which is sort of like a cross between Duck Dynasty and Sharp Objects—is its main hook. But ever since I started watching The Hunting Wives, I’ve been equally compelled by something else: the way its women dress (or, more crucially, don’t).
When we first meet Margo in the bathroom of an NRA fundraiser, she’s shimmying her way out of a shimmering green mermaid gown, peacocking in Sophie’s direction with the old, “Hon, do you mind zippin’ me up?” trick. (From there, it’s a hop, skip, and a jump to Sophie and Margo sharing a Xanax, and then a whole lot more.) She’s the ringleader of a clique of gun-toting, loudly God-fearing, privately party-hopping, good ol’ Texas girls who are as skinny, straight-coded, and (with one exception) white as you might imagine, and while one of them—Scandal star Katie Lowes as perfect-as-pie preacher’s wife Jill—dresses more or less exactly like Helen Lovejoy from The Simpsons, in buttoned-up florals and floor-swishing skirts, the rest bedeck themselves in Vegas-ready animal prints and cleavage-baring cuts that make them seem ready to celebrate Trump’s second presidential win at the drop of a hat. (I did actually live in Texas for about a year and a half, but I was in bluer-than-blue Austin, so for all I know, maybe it’s normal to go hyperfemme while hunting boar.)
And then there’s Sophie, whose outfits get marginally more eye-catching and quintessentially Texan as the season’s action progresses. In her innocent-yet-wannabe-boho printed sundresses and structured blouse-and-pants ensembles for church (a clear no-no in God’s country, where women wear dresses to praise the Lord), she looks exactly like someone from Boston just guessing at what it means to dress like someone from Texas.
Now, if you’re expecting to spot some Pride flags or Bushwick mullets on this hot new gay-discourse generator, think again; not one of the women who love other women on The Hunting Wives is actually out (with the possible exception of Sophie), and when you’re guarding a secret of that magnitude while blasting country music at shooting parties and spouting racist invective against “illegals,” your outfit isn’t just clothes. It’s also a disguise, one as effective and important as the camo suits these women’s husbands slip into for their hunts, while their wives lez out back at home. The show’s approach to subtly Sapphic style may be best typified by Margo’s bestie and secret ex-lover, Callie, a cop’s wife who will slant a hunting cap and jacket over her long, scarlet Republican hair while slaying target practice in the kind of navy or dark red bodycon dresses beloved by Fox News anchors.
Are the outfits on The Hunting Wives actually good? Good lord, no (if I may borrow a pattern of speech from Jill), but they’re very, very good at communicating what the show is about: sex, sin, and not-so-subtle rage at an “all-American” way of life allegedly being threatened by the very existence of undocumented migrants and meddlesome, judgmental East Coasters. Having a midday rendezvous with your secret queer lover, then slithering back into your skintight dress, kissing your doting husband goodbye, and stopping by Kendra Scott on your way to insert yourself into a murder investigation? All in a day’s work for these broads!
