When Chappell Roan accepted her MTV Video Music Award for best new artist in September, she had a message for “all the queer kids in the Midwest watching right now.”
“I see you, I understand you because I’m one of you, and don’t ever let anyone tell you that you can’t be exactly who you want to be,” she said, channeling Joan of Arc in a chain-mail ensemble.
Less than two months later, on “Saturday Night Live,” Roan, who has had a rocket-ship year, debuted her lesbian country song “The Giver,” about how only women know how to truly pleasure women.
Not long ago, such proclamations from one of the biggest pop stars of the moment would have been culturally earth shaking. But this year, even as L.G.B.T.Q. issues played a divisive role in the U.S. election, Roan’s ascent only accelerated.
The 26-year-old is just one of a cavalcade of lesbian and Sapphically inclined stars who dominated pop culture this year while making their attraction to women central to their work and their personas. They don’t prioritize or cater to male audiences, and often outright ignore them, finding great success nonetheless.
What’s Changed
The widespread embrace of a star like Roan is a seismic shift from the culture of just a generation or two ago. Then, even the most prominent lesbians — Melissa Etheridge, K.D. Lang, Ellen DeGeneres, Rosie O’Donnell, Wanda Sykes and the Indigo Girls — were still, despite their mainstream fame, generally relegated to spheres of comedy and adult contemporary-type music, their image somehow tinged with asexuality despite their openness.
Mainstream pop culture representation of sexuality between women was almost always manufactured to titillate men: when Madonna kissed Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards, or the troubling stunts in the once ubiquitous “Girls Gone Wild” franchise. Even Katy Perry’s 2008 debut song about bi-curiousity, “I Kissed a Girl,” largely played to men.
For some lesbians of the era who were famous, there was concern that candor would pigeonhole them and limit career options, fears that often led to silence or open secrets.
Jodie Foster first spoke publicly about her orientation in an unplanned declaration during her 2013 Golden Globes acceptance speech for a lifetime achievement award.
“I just have a sudden urge to say something that I’ve never really been able to air in public,” said Foster, then 50. “I already did my coming out about a thousand years ago, back in the stone age, in those very quaint days when a fragile young girl would open up to trusted friends and family, co-workers and then gradually, proudly, to everyone who knew her,” she went on. “But now, apparently I’m told, that every celebrity is expected to honor the details of their private life with a press conference, a fragrance and a prime-time reality show.”
Queen Latifah also refused to address similar speculation for years. “You don’t get that part of me,” she told The New York Times in 2008. “I don’t feel like I need to share my personal life, and I don’t care if people think I’m gay or not.” But at the 2021 BET Awards, during her acceptance speech for a lifetime achievement award, she publicly called her partner, Eboni Nichols, “my love” and ended the speech with “Happy Pride!”
Marriage equality becoming U.S. law in 2015 also changed the public mind-set, as did the contributions of performers like DeGeneres, whose daytime talk show won more than 60 Emmys during its run from 2003 to 2022. And Lady Gaga, in her hit “Born This Way,” proclaimed on national stages, including at the 2017 Super Bowl halftime show: “No matter gay, straight or bi, lesbian, transgender life, I’m on the right track, baby, I was born to survive.”
Loud and Clear
Now a new class of popular artists — including Roan, Billie Eilish, Kristen Stewart, Reneé Rapp, Janelle Monáe, Kehlani, Jojo Siwa, King Princess, Hayley Kiyoko and the members of Boygenius and Muna — are propelling this phenomenon. They are speaking frankly, directly, even explicitly about their attraction to women in their lyrics and in interviews, and offer visuals to match, whether in film, music videos or online.
One of the hottest concert tickets this fall was the All Things Go festival, which many referred to as “lesbian Coachella” or “Lesbopalooza.” Attendees held up homemade signs with messages like “Lesbian Heaven” and “All Things Gay.”
And while many of those moving the dial identify as bisexual, pansexual or simply queer (as well as nonbinary, transgender or gender-fluid), there has also been a burst of stars identifying as lesbians, a term that has had a tumultuous journey, including falling out of favor in recent years.
In a June interview with the online magazine Them, Rapp, who performed at All Things Go alongside her girlfriend Towa Bird, said, “‘Lesbian’ was not a good word for me to hear as a kid, and now it’s something that I have such a close emotional connection to.”
Stewart — the “Twilight” star turned Oscar nominee who starred in this year’s lesbian neo noir “Love Lies Bleeding” — appeared on the March cover of Rolling Stone wearing a jockstrap. For the photo shoot that accompanied her profile, she wore shirts that read “Pride,” “Eat Me” and “Animal.”
“I want to do the gayest [expletive] thing you’ve ever seen in your life,” she said in the interview.
And when Seth Meyers called Stewart, 34, a “lesbian icon” during a March segment on his late-night show, she responded, “That’s right.”
Eilish, who this year at age 22 became the youngest person to win two Oscars, did a similarly candid interview with Rolling Stone a couple of months after Stewart. “I’ve been in love with girls for my whole life,” Eilish said, adding that her desire to be physically intimate with women was a recent realization.
Though she has not claimed any specific sexual orientation, Eilish expresses this desire in “Lunch” — the lead single from her latest hit album — whose playful lyrics are filled with same-sex longing.
Likewise, Monáe’s lyrics and music videos, as for “Pynk” and “Water Slide,” are joyful representations of Sapphic sexual pleasure and connection.
The Other Ecosystems Thriving
It used to be that entertainment and online communities focused on lesbian culture were considered niche, but now they’re booming, especially in the realms of reality TV, social media, stand-up comedy and podcasting.
The Netflix reality show “Ultimatum: Queer Love” was hugely popular, with some of its stars amassing significant online followings. It is set to return for a second season in 2025. And in an amusing twist, a few former participants in ABC’s long-running “Bachelor” franchise, including the former Bachelorette Gabby Windey and the contestant Becca Tilley, are now out and open about their experiences and their love lives online and on podcasts.
Windey is dating the comedian Robby Hoffman, and Tilley is in a relationship with the pop singer and actress Kiyoko, illuminating another phenomenon: Sapphic celebrity relationships that are shared online and celebrated. These couplings pop up in all corners of music, theater, television, reality TV, comedy and sports — replacing a time when DeGeneres and her wife, the actress Portia de Rossi, were perhaps the only famous such couple most people could name.
Today, there are Niecy Nash-Betts and Jessica Betts; Lily-Rose Depp and 070 Shake; Ariana DeBose and Sue Makkoo; Chrishell Stause and G Flip; Ashlyn Harris and Sophia Bush; Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach. The list goes on and on.
And the trio of Mae Martin, Tig Notaro and Fortune Feimster, all stand-up comedians and actors, have a hit podcast, “Handsome,” which recently reached 25 million downloads and was acquired by the podcast network Headgum. It’s just one of several beloved podcasts anchored by lesbian and queer hosts.
This month, Feimster, 44, released her third Netflix stand-up special, “Crushing It,” in which she discusses the trials, tribulations and joys of marriage and life as a lesbian. In a recent interview with Them, she talked about the importance of being out and the arc of change.
“I want to be there to be that representation I didn’t have when I was growing up,” Feimster said. “I didn’t know a single gay person that was out when I was growing up in the South.”
“I go back now and there’s gay people with their partners, and it’s a much more prevalent thing,” she continued. “What a long way we’ve come in that time.”
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