Sydney Pollack’s 1982 film Tootsie resurfaced as a source of controversy in the wake of its adaptation into a Broadway musical because of the story’s transphobia, homophobia, and sexism. In American Theatre, critic Christian Lewis explains how Tootsie uses the contrast between Michael Dorsey, the straight cisgender lead, and his Dorothy Michaels persona—which he adopted to land a role in a soap opera—as fodder for “crude and transphobic bodily humor or gags about bras, wigs, and heels and how ridiculous it is that Michael would use them.” The same tropes are used in the film; much of the comedy hinges on the disparity between Michael’s performance as Dorothy and the “normal” behavior expected from a straight cisgender man like him. The jokes are not just limited to Michael’s gender performance in his Dorothy drag, but also derive humor from the sexual situations he gets stuck in—such as attracting the desire of a male co-star as well as the father of his co-star and love interest, Julie Nichols.

While the quagmire of Michael/Dorothy’s performance of gender is fascinating, this post primarily concerns the character of Julie. In spite of the baggage that comes with a film that presents dated ideas about gender and sexuality, I still find myself drawn to Tootsie because of the unresolved ambiguity of Julie’s sexuality. Julie is blonde, beautiful, moderately famous and already entangled in a fraught relationship with the director (Ron) of the soap opera she stars in, and Dorothy is her new homely, older female co-star who has caught the eye of her widowed father, Les. How could Dorothy, perhaps the most unlikely candidate possible for winning her affection, be the one who troubles Julie’s understanding of her sexuality?

Julie opens up more to Dorothy when she invites her to spend the holidays at her father’s house in upstate New York. In typical romantic comedy fashion, Julie and Dorothy must share a bed, and they share a heartfelt moment when Julie describes one of her only remaining memories of her mother:

I remember her helping me pick out this wallpaper. I’d chosen one with great big purple flowers on it. And she said to me, “Just remember that once you choose it, it’s gonna cover the walls of your room for a long, long time.” So I tried to imagine what those big purple flowers were gonna look like on the walls of my room every night when I was falling asleep and every morning when I was getting dressed. So I said to her, “Which one would you choose, Mom?” And she said, “The one with the daisies and the little rosebuds because daisies are such homey flowers, and rosebuds are so cheerful and always waiting to bloom.” I made a million plans looking at this wallpaper. I was always waiting for these rosebuds to open.

Not only does this memory of wallpaper with daisies and rosebuds evoke sexual imagery while Julie is just inches away from Dorothy in a tiny double bed, but those rosebuds perennially on the cusp of blossoming mirror Julie’s own burgeoning sexuality as she falls in love with a woman. Julie does not know it yet, but Dorothy will be catalyst that pushes open the petals of her rosebud and gives her insight into her true desire for the first time.

Later in the film, when Julie returns to her apartment, where Dorothy was babysitting her daughter, Amy, we learn that Julie broke up with Ron because of Dorothy, and she describes being in a relationship with Ron as “living a lie.” Dorothy opens Julie’s eyes to Ron’s shortcomings and helps her realize that she should not settle for less—that is, someone who cannot make her happy the way Dorothy does. In spite of the balm of Dorothy’s friendship, Julie “has never felt lonelier in her whole life” because “it’s as though” she “want[s] something that” she “just can’t have,” or perhaps something she does not yet realize she wants.

Michael takes advantage of Julie’s passionate admission by leaning in to kiss her, but Julie anxiously pulls away. Michael desperately attempts to reveal his true identity to Julie, but she firmly states that she has no interest in a sexual relationship with Dorothy before he can tell her the truth. Despite Julie’s aversion toward seeing Dorothy “out of [her] clothes” as Michael pleads, she confesses to having “the same impulses” as Dorothy. In a curious statement, she tells Dorothy that she is responsible for the encounter because she is “just not well-adjusted enough.”

What does Julie mean by this? Well-adjusted to what? Implicit in her statement is that lesbians are not well-adjusted women because they indulge these “impulses,” while well-adjusted women learn to bottle them up and put them away.

The idea that Julie has been conditioned to stifle and conceal her attraction to women is bolstered by an exchange between her father and Michael after he dramatically reveals his true gender identity on a live episode of the soap opera. Les says to Michael, “The only reason you’re still living is because I didn’t kiss you.”  Considering that Les admits he would murder Michael had his deception escalated any further, Les clearly harbors virulent homophobic beliefs. Julie no doubt picked up on his homophobia while she was growing up and while she may not harbor prejudice against homosexuals herself, she instinctually knows that dating women would mean that she has to sacrifice her relationship with her father—one of the few family members left in her life after her mother’s death.

This scene between Michael and Les is also interesting because, in part, it serves to reinforce Les’s heterosexuality. The film contrives no such scene to firmly establish Julie’s sexuality despite the fact that hers is called into question because of her feelings for Dorothy. On the one hand, Les’s feelings for Dorothy were normative because he was under the impression that she was a woman. On the other hand, Julie’s feelings for Dorothy cannot be explained away by Michael’s deception—she developed non-normative feelings for Dorothy while under the impression that she was a woman. Only after Michael’s gender identity is revealed can one construe Julie’s attraction as heterosexual, but by that same logic, one would have to claim that the deeply homophobic Les had sexual feelings for Michael.

This paradox begs the question: Does Julie have feelings for Michael or are her feelings only for Dorothy? The film’s ambiguous ending with Julie agreeing to resume speaking with Michael does not definitively answer the question, but we can look to clues elsewhere in the film to get a better idea.

For example, Julie tells Dorothy that she wishes a man would approach her by saying, “Hey, listen. You know I’m confused about this too. I could lay a big line on you, we could do a lot of role-playing, but the simple truth is I find you very interesting and I’d really like to make love to you.” Naturally, Michael uses this information to make a pass at Julie while he is not in character as Dorothy and uses Julie’s fantasy introduction line on her almost verbatim, but Julie responds by throwing her drink in his face. Julie’s reaction could easily be explained away by a bad mood, Michael’s smarmy delivery of the line, or just the realization that her fantasy is not all that fantastic. But what if the truth is that she just does not find Michael attractive, or that those words are off-putting coming out of any man’s mouth just by virtue of his gender?

Regardless of Julie’s reasons for rejecting Michael, he is completely incompatible with Julie’s values because Julie prefaced telling Dorothy about that fantasy pick-up line by saying that she wished a man could be honest with her. Not only does Michael deceive Julie for months on end about his true identity, but he is not much more respectful of the other woman in the film with whom he is intimate, namely his friend, Sandy. When Sandy catches him stripped down to his underwear in the midst of testing a dress for Dorothy’s look, rather than telling her the truth or inventing a better excuse for his state of undress, he has sex with her so that she will not find out that he got the soap opera part for which she also auditioned. For the rest of the film he conceals the Dorothy persona from Sandy even though it results in him standing her up on more than one occasion and completely ruining their friendship of six years.

Michael may have used Dorothy as an opportunity to portray a “strong woman” type on a popular soap opera, but ultimately his assumption of the character was exploitative; he uses Dorothy to get closer to Julie, but this comes at the expense of his relationship to Sandy, who he abandons because he has no interest in sleeping with her. Michael claims that he has learned newfound “respect” for women through being Dorothy, but clearly it extends only to women he finds attractive. Notably, after Michael’s grand unveiling of Dorothy, Les and Julie both get an earnest apology, but Sandy disappears from the film entirely after she witnesses Michael’s outburst on the soap on television. Sandy’s absence from the rest of the narrative is necessary because she is a viable alternative love interest for Michael; in order to erase any suggestion that Julie may actually be a lesbian, she must reconcile with Michael now that she knows that he is a man.

Michael’s treatment of Sandy even bears a resemblance to Ron’s behavior toward Julie. Ron tries to justify his infidelity by telling Dorothy, “I never promised Julie I’d be exclusive. I never said I wouldn’t see other women. It’s just I know she doesn’t want me to see other women, so I lie to keep from hurting her.” This is precisely why Michael makes up excuses instead of telling Sandy that he is interested in someone else. When Michael finally admits to Sandy that he is in love with another woman, he defends himself by claiming, “We never said we loved each other. We went to bed together one time,” and asks Sandy not to pretend that their relationship is “something else.” In both cases, not having defined the relationship becomes a justification for lying. Julie meant to escape the kind of relationship that is riddled with lies when she left Ron but choosing Michael may result in more of the same deceit. In fact, Dorothy responds to Ron’s explanation for cheating on Julie by saying that she knows him better than he thinks she does, so perhaps Michael recognizes Ron’s pattern of behavior in himself.

When Michael attempts to reconcile with Julie at the end of the film, she is initially reluctant to hear Michael out. Really, she confesses to Michael, not meeting his eyes, she just “miss[es] Dorothy.” It is only after Michael says, “You don’t have to. She’s right here,” and explains how inhabiting Dorothy’s persona allowed him to be kinder to women that Julie eases up enough to tease Michael about borrowing one of Dorothy’s outfits. It is only after Michael asserts that Dorothy is a part of his identity that Julie is willing to consider a heterosexual relationship.

If the conversation between Julie and Michael at the end of the film is meant to signal the beginning of their relationship, we should think of the resolution as a tragedy. Julie gives Michael a chance so she can attempt to recapture her chemistry with Dorothy, the woman she is really in love with. But Michael is not Dorothy. Dorothy died when Michael ripped off the wig and smeared the makeup off his face on national television. Julie settles for a partnership that keeps her father from disowning her, and for a man who is really just a shadow of the woman she loved.