Lesbian Kisses: Hold onto your ears!

An insightful and observant reader has pointed out the odd frequency with which lesbians are portrayed in the media as holding onto the sides of each other's heads while they are kissing. I did not expect to easily find so many examples of this. But here they are, with variations on ear-covering, side-of-head-holding, and upper-neck-grabbing hand positions. We start with the 1985 lesbian classic, Desert Hearts, featuring an earmuffed kiss by Vivian and Cay. Then we fast forward to 1997 when Ellen DeGeneres famously made history and kissed Laura Dern during her coming out season. Next we have lots of ear- and side-of-head fondling on The L Word by not only Bette and Tina but also, as you can see, by Dana and the Soup Chef.
Last, but not least (see previous post with up-to-the-minute images from Black Swan and The Kids Are All Right), we have Dr. Callie Torres holding the side of Dr. Erica Hahn's head on Grey's Anatomy. It's quite a collection. And if we throw in Garbo
in 1933's Queen Christina, we have more than 75 years of lesbian earmuff kissing.

Some of you have offered very insightful explanations of why this unlikely phenomenon is occurring. These theories include:
- Protecting the homophobic viewer from too much unadulterated girl-girl action;
- Preventing the actors from truly getting into it by controlling the intensity of the kiss; and, lastly,
- Suggesting the action is all above the shoulders, as in: "It's OK, my hands are not on her tatas or down her pants — they are right here where you can see them!"
There you have it. An intelligent analysis. Are your ears cold, darling? Let me kiss you.

Book review: Portia de Rossi's memoir

I admit I was not expecting much from Portia de Rossi's new memoir, Unbearable Lightness. Her meticulously documented marriage to Ellen DeGeneres notwithstanding, I just did not have a good grasp of who Portia de Rossi was. I never watched Ally McBeal. I have seen only a few episodes of Arrested Development. Therefore, Portia was a vague figure to me. I could never quite conjure what she actually looked like.

But since reading Portia's affecting memoir—which chronicles her harrowing eating disorder, her shame over being a lesbian, and her frantic drive to prove she was special—I now have a distinct impression of this remarkable woman. This impression took time to develop, however. In the first chapters I was frustrated because Portia was a nebulous character in her own memoir. I did not have a sense of her as a physical person moving through the world—and because I did not come to the book with a clear image of her, she was an elusive presence in the pages. At one point she gave a rare summary of what she was wearing—the uniform of a social outcast, she said. "A vintage Iggy Pop T-shirt, faded black denim jeans, and a pair of perfectly worn black leather engineers' boots." I grew to understand that this hazy presentation of her physicality was likely the author's strategy. Portia de Rossi is clearly an intelligent person, and the writing is decent. Her use of the unreliable narrator device is effective as we experience life through her warped perspective. Her wispy presence is apt, not just because she is starving her body, but because—as a woman whose disorder spirals out of control as her career soars—she is hiding in plain sight.

I also admire that Portia is willing to give us the ugly details of what it means to binge and purge—memorably wiping vomit with her T-shirt after she forced herself to puke into a bag in her car. This is not glamorous stuff. As her disorder expands from bulimia to anorexia, she portrays self-starvation as tedious, disgusting, and frightening. Self-hating insanity. In fact, Portia modestly and, I think, responsibly, downplays her successful Hollywood career and instead concentrates on her personal hell. We clearly get the message that her obsession with her weight was a hindrance, not a help, to her career.

Another achievement of Unbearable Lightness is that we come away convinced that Portia is a good and kind person despite her self-centered obsession with the superficial throughout most of the book. She is loving toward her friends, discreet about her colleagues, and generous with those who contributed to her troubles. Her mother is no angel in this story, but Portia is apparently forgiving, as the evidence suggests Portia would have been within her rights to crucify her "Ma" in this book.

The comic skill that Portia brings to her acting surfaces from time to time in the memoir. In explaining why she changed her name from Amanda Rogers, she says she simply hated her birth name: "It was so ordinary, so perfectly average. It had 'a man' in it, which annoyed me because every time I'd hear someone refer to a man, I would turn my head, waiting for the 'duh.'"

Lastly, I was glad to read about Portia's journey toward coming out, as difficult as it was. Because she now is wed to Ellen, it's easy to forget the importance of her specific lesbian visibility. How many other conventionally beautiful and out Hollywood lesbians can you name?

Coverqueers

While maneuvering a giant plastic carriage through the vast rows of [a store I now boycott], I stumbled upon an aisle of queer women. The Covergirl makeup section displays larger-than-life photos of Ellen Degeneres, Queen Latifah, and Drew Barrymore. I'm wondering, is this an intentional marketing strategy to turn lesbians into Covergirl consumers? Or did Proctor & Gamble not realize the obvious? I mean, there's Ellen. No explanation necessary. There's Queen Latifah, who most of us figured was not straight long before she was recently outed by the paparazzi. Then there's Drew Barrymore, who is quite open about her bisexuality. So, ladies, in support of the Covergirl queers, we might consider expanding our cosmetics purchases beyond mint lip balm.

Funny Grrrls

Today's topic, suggested by another super sexy reader, is this: The persistent and annoying myth of the humorless lesbian. I know, I know. It's such a bore. But, alas, the stereotype does persist. Recently I watched a few minutes of a very bad movie on Logo, and even a film about gay men contained a cheap shot at so-called humorless lesbians. Why is this so? I think we should approach this problem two ways: 1. We will refute the myth with examples of lesbians who are funny, and 2. We can examine why this specious criticism began and in whose interest it endures.

First things first. Let's establish the truth. Lesbians are funny. In fact, I, the Sapphist Gazetteer, am officially funny, as I like to remind anyone within earshot when I'm grouchy. Indeed, I was voted Class Clown during my senior year in high school. There you have it. But if that is not enough evidence, let us consider the following list of some of the most celebrated comics of our time: Lily Tomlin, Ellen Degeneres, Jane Lynch, Wanda Sykes, Rosie O'Donnell, Sandra Bernhard, and, uh, Stamie. Out lesbians, all. (In case you forgot how funny Rosie was before she went off the rails, take a look at her in the old days doing standup.) And even when we look beyond the specific category of comedienne, we find lesbians and queer women in popular culture who are known for their comedic roles. They include: Cynthia Nixon (who won an Emmy for best supporting comedic actress on Sex and the City), Portia de Rossi (see her doing the chicken dance on Arrested Development), and Queen Latifah (have you seen Beauty Shop?)

Even if we go back a ways, we find queer women who are funny. Tallulah Bankhead, for example. Very funny. Very queer. And Patsy Kelly, who debuted on Broadway in the 1920s and had a long film and television career, including a role in one of my personal favorites Please Don't Eat the Daisies (with Doris Day!) and the original Freaky Friday (with Jodie Foster...) Patsy Kelly proudly called herself a dyke. And she's looking pretty cute in the cap and pea coat.

There are also countless other lesbians in the world of comedy who should not be overlooked. They include Lea DeLaria, comedienne and jazz singer, who was the first openly gay comic (male or female) to appear on national television in the US; Sara Gilbert from Roseanne—who has a new morning TV show called The Talk on CBS; Amanda Bearse from Married with Children. Alison Bechdel created the classic lesbian comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For. And let's not forget the many, many hilarious lesbian stand-up comics: Kate Clinton, Julie Goldman, Marga Gomez, Vickie Shaw, Jennie McNulty, Suzanne Westenhoefer, etc. You get the picture, and I'm getting tired of making the list.

But perhaps the best piece of evidence I can throw at the humorless lesbian bullshit is Fran Lebowitz. Everyone should have a copy of her 1978 classic, Metropolitan Life, which somehow made it into my rural New Hampshire childhood home and gave me hope that I might escape my surroundings. In one piece, Fran examines the pros and cons of children. On the pro side, she writes: "Children do not sit next to one in restaurants and discuss their preposterous hopes for the future in loud tones of voice." On the downside, she writes: "Notoriously insensitive to subtle shifts in mood, children will persist in discussing the color of a recently sighted cement-mixer long after one's own interest in the topic has waned." Oh, it's still genius.

Now that we have established that lesbians are truly and officially funny, on to the next question: Why does this myth persist? In addition to the cheap shots present in gay boy films on Logo (tsk,tsk), I have to believe that part of the problem is straight people. Not to blame heterosexuals with broad brush strokes (after all, I do love many of them dearly), but it's possible that lesbians might be mistaken as humorless because we generally do not show appreciation for the Jackass series.

Thick Necks

It has come to my attention that the Sapphist Gazetteer's "thick neck theory" is a fan favorite. (You know who you are.) The theory simply states that lesbians—typically butches—have a disproportionately higher likelihood of having thick, sexy necks. Here, then, is a closer examination of the evidence:

Mary Cheney

Julie Goldman

Ellen Degeneres

Rachel Maddow

Choosy moms choose lesbian babysitters

In a recent survey, moms chose Ellen DeGeneres and Portia De Rossi as the celebrities they would most trust with their kids. A parenting website, ParentDish.com, sponsored the online survey in honor of Mother's Day. With more than 10,000 responses, Ellen and Portia won easily with 33 percent. Lovely Jennifer Aniston placed second with 22 percent (which was enough to beat out Angelina, heh, heh.)

The "celeb best mom" title went to Jennifer Garner, who, by the way, the Sapphist Gazetteer saw not long ago in Harvard Square (on my way to see Sarah Waters, see May 1 post). Let me just say that I spotted her because I noticed a Very Attractive Woman chasing a cute little kid down the sidewalk. I did a double take and realized the Very Attractive Woman in jeans was Jennifer Garner. We've loved her since she first appeared as Sydney Bristow on Season One of Alias.

And for a Jennifer Garner/Michael Jackson connection, you can see Garner charmingly performing the Thriller dance in this clip from "13 Going on 30."