Some Girls Do is a sapphic YA romance by author Jennifer Dugan, published in 2021 by Putnam. Billed as “lesbian athlete meets bi beauty queen”, the novel is an opposites-attract romance between two high school seniors: Morgan, who was forced to transfer due to her queerness, and Ruby, who’s trying to live a double life to make her mother happy. The two girls meet when Morgan runs out in front of Ruby’s car — and while no one is hurt in the near-miss, neither girl’s life is ever the same again.
Told in alternating points of view, Dugan’s novel explores themes such as queer rights, homophobia, isolation, and learning to be yourself. Morgan is an out-and-proud lesbian; she wears sapphic t-shirts and dyes her pixie cut pink to be more visually queer. Though she’s comfortable with her own identity, befriending Ruby helps her understand that different people come from different backgrounds, some of which are less supportive than Morgan’s, in which coming out is downright unsafe. As Ruby opens up to her, Morgan learns that there’s no one right way to be queer.
As for Ruby, she learns from Morgan that queerness doesn’t have to be hidden. Not everyone is as close-minded as Ruby’s mother, who has made it clear that same-sex attraction is unacceptable. As Ruby learns that resources and other ways of living exist, her world expands: no longer is she forced to live a double life, half for her mother, competing in beauty pageants, and half for herself, as a queer woman who loves her car. Meeting Morgan helps Ruby take control of her life and break out of the cage in which she thought she had to live.
As might be expected from two seniors coming from polar opposite backgrounds, Ruby and Morgan don’t always get along. Their attraction is magnetic, but they rarely find themselves in sync, and it takes time and practice for them to communicate in a healthy way. They often misstep thanks to partial information, bad communication, poor word choices, and bad timing—but Dugan’s novel offers hope, too: Morgan and Ruby keep showing up for each other. They apologize. They work through their issues—and often come out stronger on the other side because of it.
Though the book jacket casually labels Ruby as bisexual, Ruby herself is less sure about that label—and about all labels in general, from girlfriend to bi to pan. (“The label thing still freaks me out,” she tells Morgan towards the end of the novel, about labeling her own sexuality.) It might be more accurate to say instead that Ruby is exploring bisexuality as a possibility — she’s slept with men, including lacrosse captain Tyler, because she finds it to be great stress relief, and she’s undeniably interested in Morgan — but she’s only just began her journey into understanding her sexuality, after years of repression and hiding. She tells her ex-stepfather Billy, with whom she’s close: “I might be bi or something,” and it’s one of her most honest and vulnerable lines in the book.