So, as a magazine junkie, I’m a sucker for those “50 Most Iconic/Controversial/Well-Designed Magazine Covers” lists that seem to come out near-monthly. I don’t know why I click on them every time, as it’s always the same magazines, it’s not like one day I’ll wake up and be like, OH MY GOD JOHN AND YOKO IN ROLLING STONE I DIDN’T SEE THAT ONE COMING.
So I thought I’d make a list of the 50 Most Iconic GLBTQ Magazine Covers.
The problem is, it turns out, that people really don’t like to put ladies on magazine covers and finding 50 ICONIC covers was hard! Turns out that by “gay,” everyone means “dudes.” I know this comes as a giant surprise to you, my friends of all genders and sexual orientations — but literally every major mainstream-magazine’s BIG STORY about gay people had DUDES on the cover with a special emphasis on white dudes. Whether it was published in 1977 or 2011, stories about gay people in genreal are illustrated by dudes.
On top of that, so many of the iconic “celebrity” covers that sprang to mind — Adam Lambert in Rolling Stone, Clay Aiken/Lance Bass in People, Neil Patrick Harris in New York Magazine — were gay guys. And the last thing I wanted to do was make an OUT magazine-esque list (read: 80% men) for this fine lesbian publication.
Consequentially, I decided to leave men out of it altogether and just focus on Lesbian-Containing magazine covers from all over the newsstand, whether iconic or just emblematic of the times or just good-looking. This process took me literally ten days.
And I am proud to present:
+
100 Lesbian Magazine Covers
 criteria: all of these magazine covers are from print magazines AND every cover, if it includes recognizable people, contains at least one woman who identifies as gay/bi/queer/lesbian or did so at the time of the magazine’s printing. except michelle rodriguez, but we had to include that cover b/c that’s the one where everyone thought she came out even though she didn’t come out.
Check yourselves out, you crazy diamonds! [Click to enlarge/see the gallery. There are two 50-photo galleries below for your delight.]
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Magazines Featured in this Gallery:
+ GO! Mag
+ DIVA UK
+ Curve
+ The Advocate
+ OUT
+ LOTL
+ She
+ FlawLes
+ Alice
+ g3 mag
+ Dirty Queer
+ Maui Time
+ The Stranger – Seattle
+ qNotes
+Â Girls Like Us Magazine
+ Out Northwest
+ Velvet Park
+ Cherrie
+ IKONS
+ Riverfront Times
+ SF Weekly
+ Boston Globe
+ People
Out of Print:
+ Vintage lesbian magazines including The Furies can be found at rainbowhistory.org
+ Outweek
+ Girlfriends
+ Jane and Jane
+ BOUND
+ On Our Backs
For more magazine cover fun, visit Newmanology!
