Can Nicki Minaj Fix Homophobia in Hip-Hop Without Labeling Herself?

NICKI MINAJ:

Maybe-bisexual Rapper Nicki Minaj graces the cover of OUT magazine this month, where she addresses the homophobia pervasive in hip-hop and declares her hopes to curb it, but does not address the relative likelihood that she’ll ever want to f*ck and/or cuddle you, which is unfortunate because she’s pretty awesome, redic talented and smokin’ hot.

Once upon a time we thought Nicki Minaj was bisexual. Why did we think this? We’re not sure. It just seemed true, like knowing that if you lick a pole in the wintertime that your tongue will be stuck there forever. Maybe because Andrea said so. Actually, we still think it’s probably true, but not everyone was so convinced, like Jonah Weiner for Slate.com who earlier this year questioned the “unreliability” of her lyrics’s narrative, claiming they vacillated wildly from homosexual to “no homo.”

Then, in a May 2010 Details interview, she let this comment slide, which cemented our already-certain certainty that Nicki Minaj was indeed the openly bisexual rapper she’s addressed as:

Q: As an openly bisexual rapper, do you think hip-hop is getting more gay-friendly?
A: I think the world is getting more gay-friendly, so hip-hop is too. But it’s harder to imagine an openly gay male rapper being embraced. People view gay men as having no street credibility. But I think we’ll see one in my lifetime.

Then in June she made us feel upside-down heart-shaped feelings (which is like a frown with a weird chin) when she went ahead and redacted her bisexuality to Black Men Magazine:

“I don’t date women and I don’t have sex with women…that’s of course, until Cassie comes available …..”

Clutch Magazine‘s article on the bisexual woman in hip-hop sums up a long list of concerns about homophobia that pre-date even those problematic interviews. But now she’s on the cover of a gay magazine! (Sidenote; people don’t come out in gay magazines, that ruins the point. Except Sean Hayes, but he did so under protest. So don’t get too excited.)

The intro:

“Minaj may or may not be attracted to women (more on that later), but she draws a fierce gay following with her brazen lyrics and outsize persona. Beneath her blunt-cut bangs lies a cunning mind capable of weaving sports metaphors and references to ’80s sitcoms into complex rhymes about scoring with girls and blowing guys’ minds. Lady Gaga’s audience was primed to accept her as a sexually adventurous nonconformist by artists like Madonna and David Bowie, but in hip-hop, Nicki Minaj is a real space oddity.”

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The article cites how Minaj incorporates lesbian themes in her lyrics, like declaring “I only stop for pedestrians or a real, real bad lesbian” [notably absent: little old ladies with shopping carts]:

Minaj may have encouraged all the lady love with lyrics that imply she’s sexually flexible — or at least curious. None of the famous female rappers rumored to be queer have dared utter the L word, but Minaj has used it repeatedly.

Howevs, Minaj doesn’t wanna go there:

“People who like me — they’ll listen to my music, and they’ll know who I am. I just don’t like that people want you to say what you are, who you are. I just am. I do what the fuck I want to do…The point is, everyone is not black and white. There are so many shades in the middle, and you’ve got to let people feel comfortable with saying what they want to say when they want to say it. I don’t want to feel like I’ve got the gun pointed at my head and you’re about to pull the trigger if I don’t say what you want to hear. I just want to be me and do me.”

That’s the kind of thing we normally interpret as “homogay.” But let’s try to stop thinking about ourselves for a second, and think about Lil’ Wayne, star of our favorite documentary of all time, The Carter Documentary, because Nicki Minaj will be touring with Wayne and expects a diverse audience:

“Normally, Wayne probably wouldn’t have gay guys coming to see his shows much,” she says, “but they’re definitely a big part of my movement, and I hope they’d still come out and see me. I think that will be really, really interesting, just to start bridging that gap. We’ll see.”

You should read the whole article at OUT Magazine.

GAGA:

Speaking of queer celebrities using their fame to change things for gay people, there’s been some controversy over Lady Gaga’s political activism and alleged queerness. Yes, despite my passionate Gaga fanhood even I admit that lately I’ve sometimes cocked my head and wondered, “Really Lady Gaga?” But then I decide I don’t really care — she’s getting our issues “out there” and changing the public conversation wherein gay issues –  no matter how pressing they seem with respect to human rights – are percieved as “niche issues.”

After bringing DADT discharges as her dates and mentioning gay rights in her speeches at the MTV VMAs, Yahoo noticed a change in its search traffic:

“After the [VMAs] aired, Web searches soared on everything from “lady gaga guests” to “what does SLDN stand for” (it stands for “Servicemembers Legal Defense Network”). The official site for SLDN has posted a message encouraging those who feel “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” should be repealed to call their representatives in Washington. Lady Gaga is an outspoken supporter of gay rights.”

Today Lady Gaga and Senator Harry Reid exchanged tweets, which I’m guessing Phillip K. Dick predicted would happen one day:

Lady Gaga has SEVEN MILLION followers, btw. Seven million people! The most recent estimate of the homogay U.S. population is slightly over ten million, so that’s a solid number.

See what she did there, Lady Gaga? She just told a bunch of people about an issue that, for as much as we’d like to think otherwise here in our gay bubble of Tegan & Sara and gender theory debates, most people don’t know about, much less care about.

With respect to both Minaj and Lady Gaga’s stories today, it’s important to remember that most people AREN’T gay, and most people don’t care. So maybe we shouldn’t underestimate the power of outspoken allies — just as young homos look to people like Ellen DeGeneres or Neil Patrick Harris or Wanda Sykes to make them feel confident about coming out as gay, there are lots of young strais who could use a Lady Gaga or Nicki Minaj to inspire them to stand up for gay rights, regardless of the speculation or critique that may follow.

If Nicki Minaj did come out bisexual, would people put the same pressure on her to “prove it” by dating girls as they do on Lady Gaga, accusing Gaga of “trotting out the tired bisexual card that seems to be the soup du jour of every female celeb lately”?

In our skeptical-of-bisexuals media climate, maybe the fact that Nicki Minaj doesn’t want to assign herself a label and be subject to the judgments therein is not so much a reflection on Nicki as it is a reflection on how the media treats women who do agree to label themselves “bisexual.” Perhaps that box isn’t really any more comfortable than a dress made out of ribeye, you know?

Bisexuality Open Thread: I Took The Road Best Straddled

I don’t have to make a choice
I like girls and I like boys.
-Peaches

Some days the line i walk
turns out to be straight
other days the line tends to deviate
i’ve got no criteria for sex or race
i just want to hear your voice
i just want to see your face
-Ani DiFranco

So have you heard? About the dawning of a new hetero-flexible generation? Perhaps you have heard about The Bisexuals, perhaps on this very website. Perhaps you saw a television show during sweeps, or read things on the internet sometimes. It’s true, there are approx a billion bisexuals in the world now, yet many feel regularly dismissed, disregarded, ignored and disrespected.

Well, you’ll be happy to know that in 2008, new research found that bisexuality is not a transitional phase among women:

“Bisexuality in women appears to be a distinctive sexual orientation and not an experimental or transitional stage that some women adopt “on their way” to lesbianism, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association. The study of 79 non-heterosexual women over 10 years found that bisexual women maintained a stable pattern of attraction to both sexes. In addition, the research appears to have debunked the stereotype that bisexual women are uninterested in or unable to commit to long-term monogamous relationships.”

BISEXUAL REVOLUTION PREMIERED AT OUTFEST THIS SUMMER

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A 2007 Cornell University study, which sampled more than 20,000 individuals in 80 communities across the U.S., found 14.4% of females surveyed were either lesbian or bisexual. In September 2005, the National Center for Health Statistics’ newest comprehensive study revealed that 14% of women between 18-29 have had at least once homosexual experience. Ten percent of women reported same-sex attraction, reflecting a three-percent jump from the Center’s 1992 study. Go back over a decade to a 1999 Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality study attributed 18-20% of it’s female subjects as having “been sexually intimate with someone of the same sex.” These numbers, of course, are dependent on what women will admit to doing or feeling, but compulsory heterosexuality is increasingly against the norm.

THESE PEOPLE ARE BISEXUAL, DOES THAT MAKE YOU FEEL BETTER

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In 2006, I was doing preliminary research for a non-fiction book project that aimed to make some sort of statement about this new generation of bisexual women. The book’s thesis was, roughly, that this time around, it’s gonna be different than it was with the first wave of so-called “bisexual chic,” which swept the nation in the mid-90’s. As much as we’d like to say it’s always been just about the heart and not the anatomy, and as politically correct and queer-friendly as it is to say so, let’s get real — people choose life partners based on a lot of factors that have nothing to do with the heart, like what your family wants and how much money a person makes. This time, with changing expectations in society, I predicted that more and more bisexual women would feel that they truly had the option to “follow the heart, not the anatomy.” As stigma and homophobia breaks down and women’s rights advance, bisexual women will be more and more visible in queer communities and will be open about their identity and proud.

‘ANYTHING THAT MOVES’ IS A BISEXUAL MAGAZINE THAT USED TO EXIST

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So, in the fall of 2006, I conducted a sort of highly unscientific, absurdly misspelled and statstically ignorant, yet massive, “survey” on the internet. Over 3,000 self-identified bisexuals filled out at least part of the survey and about 500 did the whole thing (it was lengthy). I spelled “marriage” wrong twice and used “it’s” instead of “its.”

806 respondents indicated where they identified on The Kinsey Scale”:

(1) – 7% – Heterosexual, only incidentally homosexual
(2) – 30% – Predominantly heterosexual, but more than incidentally homosexual
(3) – 32% – Equally homosexual and heterosexual.
(4) 19% –  Predominantly homosexual, but more than incidentally heterosexual
(5) 11% –  Predominantly homosexual, only incidentally heterosexual.
(6) 3% –  Homosexual, only incidentally heterosexual.

Other interesting findings [ETA: At 4pm on Saturday I added more statistics and clarified some of these statements due to the fact that some commenters were, much to my surprise honestly, reacting strongly/negatively to what I thought were not only encouraging results, but also, as aforementioned, irrelevant results as this study was not statistically sound or conducted by a professional body. Late adds are all in italics.]

+ 47% of respondents had been in serious relationships with both men and women and 35% with men only.

+ Regarding sexual experiences, 22% reported past hookups with bisexual women, 18% with gay women, 14% with straight women and 3% with transgendered persons. 53% said the majority of their sexual experiences had been with straight men.

+ 43% believe that sexual orientation is more fluid for a woman than for a man and 35% are unsure.

+ 20% said their current choice of partner was affected by laws against gay marriage.

+ 19% agreed to some degree with the statement “I’d prefer to be with a man to avoid homophobia and discrimination,” including 1.8% who strongly agreed. 74.4% of respondents disagreed, including 47.3% reporting that they strongly disagreed.

+ 59% of respondents disagreed with the statement “My family doesn’t care if I am with a man or a woman; they just want me to be happy.”

+ 59% agreed with the statement “lesbians don’t want to date bisexuals” and 11.4% agreed with the statement “men don’t want to date bisexual girls.”

A lot of the stereotypes about bisexuals stem from the incidental fact that most homosexuals identify as bisexual before coming out as 100% Fo’sho Homo for Reals, therefore boosting the rate of those who know a homo who used to identify as bi.

HAY WE’RE BISEXUAL WEIRDO

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55% agreed to some degree with the statement “I feel ostracized from both the straight and the lesbian worlds for my bisexuality.” It brings up an interesting paradox — many sense that straight culture and gay culture are distinctly different entities. Do you feel like you have to navigate between worlds, or that you have no choice, or that it’s all integrated where you’re from? What do you love/hate about being bisexual? What about that word? Bisexuality reinforces the idea of a gender binary and we’re kinda over that whole thang. Queer feels more inclusive (especially of transpeople) but the word doesn’t inspire universal affection? Do you have a bisexual girlfriend who you think is gonna cheat on you because she’s bisexual? Because if so bitch I will cut you.

GIVE US ALL THE GORY BISEXUAL DETAILS!

This Week In Bisexuality: We Are All Made of Mega-Slut

HELLO BISEXUALS AND FRIENDS. Have you been keeping up with assertions about us on the internet? Well, luckily we have. First of all, you may have already come across the news that Vivien Leigh, actress who played Scarlett O’Hara in the classic Gone With The Wind, was apparently bisexual. Oh wait, did I say bisexual? Because obvs what I meant was “a hot mess off-screen — a slutty bisexual who battled mental illness for most of her adult life,” and “didn’t give a damn who she slept with.” Sorry, I get those confused all the time.  According to a new biography, when Leigh wasn’t lounging around in velvet gowns with tiny waists, she was having sex with both men and women, including actress Isabel Jeans and “at least two” other women who remain nameless. Presumably the biography expands on the mental illness element, but the article doesn’t, leaving us to wonder whether bisexuality itself is supposed to be the “illness” in question. Also, it would appear that Leigh’s husband’s former wife was a lesbian, which is weird and I don’t even really know how to fit that in. In conclusion, we get that it’s been a slow news week – we’ve been hurting too on that front – but I would argue that titling this article “Vivien ‘Lay,’ Scarlet Woman” was kind of unnecessary.

This internet development was merely annoying until we also stumbled across NYMag’s most recent Sex Diary – this one titled “The Bisexual Production Assistant Sleeping With Everyone Except Her Boyfriend, Who’s A Virgin.” The Sex Diaries chronicle a week in the life of an anonymous New Yorker, and as we’ve mentioned before, they’re usually better than most mainstream media outlets at reflecting the fact that gay/lesbian/queer/trans people also have sex sometimes. At least usually they are?

The thing is that while the anonymous production assistant is definitely bisexual, she doesn’t actually have sex in the entire week she records, not even according to our wide-ranging and generous lesbian definition of what might be considered sex. And, oh, right, she doesn’t have a boyfriend. She makes this point very clearly when she refers to the man she’s been seeing as “Non-Boyfriend” throughout the entire piece.

For SEO and layout purposes, it’s best to keep article titles short, like under 12 words, and so it’s entirely possible that that’s the only thing fueling NYMag’s slight misrepresentations here.After reading about Vivien “Bisexual Slutface McGee” Leigh, however, I was maybe a little sensitive on this issue, and couldn’t help but wonder: was this editing for brevity, or was this about the stereotype of the bisexual as the girl who always does “sleep with everyone,” or as the girl who’s always dating a man and thus calls the authenticity of her queerness into question?

The most hardcore parts of Bisexual Production Assistant’s week are “one instance of phone sex” and another of “heavy petting,” and many commenters on the piece are full of righteous indignation about the lack of follow-through within the article. In fact, most of them are pretty dismissive of BPA’s sex life in general; to me, though, for someone who says she’s not in a sexual relationship, “five acts of masturbation, one act of phone sex, one act of heavy petting, one make-out-and-leave with ex-girlfriend, multiple instances of office flirtation” really doesn’t sound so bad. Do we have higher expectations for bisexuals’ sex life because we expect them to be sex-starved maniacs? Or do I just not get laid that often and I’m way off? I guess that’s up for you to decide judgmentally in the comments.

And while most commenters were more into putting down Jersey than putting down bisexuality (I guess there’s a reason it’s not NJMag) there were still several who thought the insight that “she decided she was “bisexual” at Mt. Holyoke, and “she’ll be straight again in six months” was both original and funny. To which I can only answer – really? In this article she mentions two male sex/romantic partners, one past sexual relationship with a woman, and one partner of indeterminate gender. Also, she’s 23, which makes it likely she’s been out of school for at least two years. Commenters on New York Magazine articles: what does it take, beyond HAVING SEX WITH BOTH MEN AND WOMEN, for you to buy this person’s bisexuality?  Starring in a major motion picture in the 1940s and then engaging in a string of hush-hush affairs with other international starlets? Because trust me, I’m sure a lot of us would like that too, but sometimes being an underpaid production assistant who has to get up at 5:30 am to commute into the city is the best we can do. For that we apologize.

It’s possible that we’re reading too much into this; the art of taking offense needlessly on the internet is not hard to master, and these are arguably not the most objective or representative samplings of public opinion on bisexuality. Maybe we’re a little softhearted towards Vivien Leigh because she’s pretty and Bisexual Production Assistant because she kind of reminds us of someone we possibly hooked up with a few times. But also, man, you guys! What is your deal! What did we ever do to you?

Read a F*cking Book: Ten Lesbian & Bisexual Poets To Fall in Love With

Hi nerds!  We were thinking today, about your needs, and we decided that some of you could probably use a little poetry in your lives.  We’ve mashed our brains together and made a list (which could never ever be complete enough!) of ten amazing queer ladysexy poets that you should check out right now, if you haven’t already.

1. Adrienne Rich

(b. 1929)

Adrienne Rich is more or less super- famous. She’s a major feminist and queer theorist (“Compulsory Heterosexuality” anyone?) who’s written heaps of non-fiction and poetry books. W.S Merwin said this about Adrienne Rich: “All her life she has been in love with the hope of telling utter truth, and her command of language from the first has been startlingly powerful.”

From “Transcendental Etude”:

There come times — perhaps this is one of them —
when we have to take ourselves more seriously or die
when we have to pull back from the incantations,
rhythms we’ve moved to thoughtlessly,
and disenthrall ourselves, bestow
ourselves to silence, or a severer listening, cleansed
of oratory, formulas, choruses, laments, static
crowding the wires.

Get Adrienne Rich’s books, like
The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974-1977

2. Eileen Myles

(b.1949)

I discovered Eileen Myles when she wrote an essay in The Believer about notebooks. I thought why did I not know about Eileen Myles before today. I asked my friend who knows everything about poetry and she didn’t understand why I didn’t know about Eileen Myles either. I don’t want this to happen to you.

Eileen Myles is “the rock star of modern poetry” (BUST Magazine) and “a cult figure to a generation of post-punk female writer-perfomers” (The New York Times) and we think that means that she’s super-honest and unafraid to get ugly or dirty or otherwise f*cked up. An East Village fixture with a working-class Boston background, she’s worked as Artistic Diretor of the St.Mark’s Poetry project, toured with Sister Spit and performed all around the world including at the Poetry Project, P.S. 122 and the WOW Café. Also she’s published like 15 books and has a “poet’s novel,” INFERNO, coming out this fall. Her memoir Chelsea Girls is one of Emily Gould’s favorites.

Some bits and pieces:

From “For Jordana”:
I think writing
is desire
not a form
of it

From “Dear Andrea”:
I love you too
don’t fuck up my hair
I can’t believe
you almost fisted me
today.
That was great.

From “Him and Others”:
Thoughts. Silly. I’d rather
sink my teeth in your neck,
seriously, knock you down
on the floor — all for love.
You’ll forget my lousy
poems but if I could just
mar you or something. Nothing
nice ever sticks but boy
a scar — If I could ever
really bruise you with
my feelings, them, so infinitely
forgettable & gone.

Get Eileen Myles: Sorry, Tree or Not Me (Native Agents).

Video Promo for INFERNO

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3. Audre Lorde

(1934 – 1992)

In addition to being a poet, Audre Lorde is a mega-important feminist and activist who was at the forefront of a new group of politically active women of all colors challenging the white middle-class hegemony and subsequent ethnocentric goals of 1960s feminism. Lorde pioneered the concept that racism, sexism and homophobia were linked in that they stemmed from people’s inability to recognize or tolerate difference.

“I am a black feminist lesbian poet,” Lorde said of her work, “and I identify myself as such because if there is one other black feminist lesbian poet in isolation somewhere within the reach of my voice, I want her to know she is not alone.”

On the topic of art as protest:

“… the question of social protest and art is inseparable for me. I can’t say it is an either-or proposition. Art for art’s sake doesn’t really exist for me. What I saw was wrong, and I had to speak up. I loved poetry, and I loved words. But what was beautiful had to serve the purpose of changing my life, or I would have died. If I cannot air this pain and alter it, I will surely die of it. That’s the beginning of social protest.”

From “Who Said It Was Simple”:

But I who am bound by my mirror
as well as my bed
see causes in color
as well as sex

and sit here wondering
which me will survive
all these liberations.

Get yourself some Audre Lorde books now.

4. Kirya Traber

I met Kirya Traber when she toured with Sister Spit in 2009. Aside from being a killer slam poet with years of festivals under her belt, she’s also working as the Residency Program Manager for YouthSpeaks.  Her poems deal with feminism, hair, race and Nina Simone, among other things.

From “Roll Call”:

thick and road worn,
dirt stained, jacked up 4 wheeler
truck behind us
one hand
on my mother’s shoulder

“You better watch your little black bitch”

I could smell his breath
tobacco plaque tangy
from across the front seat
and even then, I didn’t know
he was talking about me

Follow Kirya Traber on twitter

5. Alix Olson

(b. 1975)

Alix Olson is a spoken word poet / “red-hot, fire-bellied, feminismo-spewin’ volcano.” She tours the world, has been featured in practically every relevant magazine or newspaper and has put out a couple of albums – Built Like That and Independence Meal – that you should buy and eat with your ears. She interviewed Rachel Maddow for Velvet Park magazine, which is really neither here nor there, but I thought you might like to read it.

Random Book edited by Alix Olson: Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution

6. June Jordan

(1936- 2002)

Harlem born bisexual June Jordan was a Carribbean-American poet, novelist, journalist, biographer, dramatist, teacher and activist with lots of important super-passionate felings about the construction of race, gender, sexuality, politics, war, violence and human rights. She’s one of the most prolific African-American writers of all time with 28 books of varying genres like essays, memoirs, novels, poetry and children’s books. You know how Barack Obama was always saying “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for”? He got it from June Jordan. Or from Alice Walker who got it from June Jordan. You know.

HAY HOLLER BISXEXUALS, she’s got some words about y’all: “If you are free, you are not predictable and you are not controllable. To my mind, that is the keenly positive, politicizing significance of bisexual affirmation… to insist upon the equal validity of all the components of social/sexual complexity.”

Read this interview with June Jordan at BOMB Magazine about “I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky,” an experimental contemporary opera made in collaboration with composer John Adams and director Peter Sellars, that tells the stories of “men and women in Los Angeles struggling to find and articulate love in the midst of moral and physical devastation, tragedy, and upheaval . . . Like all of her work, the opera strives to bear witness to the human ability to survive nightmares of injustice and embrace visions of a more hopeful future.”

“One Minus One Minus One”

This is a first map of territory
I will have to explore as poems,
again and again

My mother murdering me
to have a life of her own

What would I say
(if I could speak about it?)

My father raising me
to be a life that he
owns

What can I say
(in this loneliness)

7. Staceyann Chin

(b.1971)

Staceyann Chin grew up in the part of Jamaica where buses full of white tourists don’t go. Her memoir, The Other Side of Paradise, deals with her mother’s rejection of Chin and her brother, and her subsequent struggle to grow up in the face of poverty and a splintered family.

From Publisher’s Weekly:
“[Chin’s mother] quickly foisted them onto other relatives for good, leaving Chin, at age nine, to fend for herself in the shack of her harsh great-aunt whose boys routinely attempted to rape her.”

Chin moved to New York several years ago and is an out lesbian political activist poet womanchild. She writes things like this, which I think you will like:

Faggot Haiku
Faggots reach into
their own asses we are not
afraid of our shit

8. Andrea Gibson

Andrea Gibson is another spoken word American poet and activist. Her latest album, Yellowbird, features a version of one of her most ridiculously moving pieces, “Ashes,” with music from Chris Pureka. Here just watch this:

Buy Pole Dancing To Gospel Hymns

9. Marilyn Hacker

(b. 1942)

Jan Heller Levi, who sounds pretty important, said this about Marilyn Hacker which is better than what I might say: “I think of her magnificent virtuosity in the face of all the strictures to be silent, to name her fears and her desires, and in the process, to name ours. Let’s face it, no one writes about lust and lunch like Marilyn Hacker. No one can jump around in two, sometimes even three, languages and come up with poems that speak for those of us who sometimes barely think we can even communicate in one.”

“Untitled”:

You did say, need me less and I’ll want you more.
I’m still shellshocked at needing anyone,
used to being used to it on my own.
It won’t be me out on the tiles till four-
thirty, while you’re in bed, willing the door
open with your need. You wanted her then,
more. Because you need to, I woke alone
in what’s not yet our room, strewn, though, with your
guitar, shoes, notebook, socks, trousers enjambed
with mine. Half the world was sleeping it off
in every other bed under my roof.
I wish I had a roof over my bed
to pull down on my head when I feel damned
by wanting you so much it looks like need.

10. Mary Oliver

(b. 1935)

Mary Oliver spent a few of her teenage years living in Edna St. Vincent Millay’s old house, helping Millay’s family sort through her old papers, so you know she’s gangsta. Since the early 1960s, Oliver has published heaps of poetry and prose, including American Primitive, which won the Pulitzer prize for poetry in 1984.  Her work is heavily informed by her reflections on her natural surroundings, conjuring up images of her native Ohio and New England; the Harvard Review described her work as an “excellent antidote for the excesses of civilization.”

From “Wild Geese”:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.

Buy Mary Oliver’s books

Margaret Cho Gets Cho-Dependent: Autostraddle Interview

Margaret Cho‘s career has spanned two decades and every viable performance outlet possible: five stand-up concert DVDs (I’m the One that I Want, Notorious C.H.O., Revolution, Assassin, Beautiful), several roles in film & TV (All American Girl, Sex & the City, Drop Dead Diva) and two memoirs (I’m the One That I Want, I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight), and repeated U.S tours.

Throughout it all, the out bisexual has been a champion and an advocate for the gay community across gender boundaries. Her stand-up material is raw and honest and she speaks frankly of her own sexuality and her big queer life with an explicit self-deprecating/loving edginess that might give even Kathy Griffin some pause. Cho’s a long-time regular of the gay circut, including a gig on Olivia Cruises which inspired these legendary words from the lesbian-required viewing I’m the One That I Want:

“Lesbians love whale watching. They fucking love it. They love it more than pussy. They love it! They LOVE WHALE WATCHING. It’s any kind of sea mammal, really. Whaaallllessss Dolpphhihinns. They go crazy for the Dolphins I don’t know what it is. I think it’s the blow-hole.”

Recently Margaret Cho thought it would be fun to go into the studio with her favorite artists and essentially join their bands (Tegan & Sara, Fiona Apple and Ani DiFranco, among others), producing tracks which laced each artist’s work with her trademark lyrical comedic sensibility.

The result is (Cho Dependent), coming out in August. She’s also returning for a second season of the hilarious Lifetime series Drop Dead Diva and is about to hit the road in August for a stand-up tour to coincide with the CD’s release.

Jess chats with Margaret about tattoos, her romantic relationships with gay men,  celebrities who come out later in their careers, her pick for “the next Gaga,” Adam Lambert, Sex & the City and more.

Jess: Growing up in San Francisco what was your earliest exposure to gay people?

Margaret: Oh, I was exposed very early because my parents owned a bookstore in a gay neighborhood in San Francisco, so all of the people that I was in contact with when I was a very young child, maybe as early as 6 or 7 years old, were gay. I mean, it was not just one person, everybody I knew was gay. And also, interestingly enough, they were all tattooed, everybody was getting tattooed very early, like in the late 70’s, early 80’s. That was a trend in my small community. So, I was in the gay community from very, very young, as soon as I understood what gay was, which even then it took me a while to get it.

Jess: Over the past 10 years you’ve slowly tattooed a great deal of your body. Have you ever gotten a tattoo that you later regretted?

Margaret: No, not one particular tattoo. I do, in a sense, always want to start over. I mean I’ve always wanted to be tattooed and I’ve always wanted to have this on my skin since I was exposed to it as a child. But, now you look at Jon Gosselin’s big back piece and you go, oh you kind of look like an asshole! I realize that my history with tattoos is different than Jon Gosselin’s, but… it’s kind of embarrassing! [laughs]

Jess: Aside from Jon Gosselin, have you ever seen a tattoo someone and thought, “wow, that is the worst tattoo I’ve ever seen?”

Margaret: No, I think everybody who adorns their body… it’s very tribal and it’s very interesting, but I always wonder what is worth somebody’s pain. Tattoos are also a very physically a painful ritual, it’s very painful art, so I always want to know, what is worth that suffering? I think all of them are beautiful to some extent, you know there are some that aesthetically don’t make sense to me, that don’t fit my particular aesthetic, but I think they’re all great.

Jess: I remember reading your blog on being a Christian. What would your advice be for people who have a strong faith and are gay and feel torn?

Margaret: I think that they can seek out a church that does not reject them. There are plenty of places of worship that don’t discriminate against gays and lesbians. I think it’s really important for those people to know that you don’t have to leave the faith or become an atheist just because your church is discriminating against you. I also don’t think it’s very healthy to stay in that church… why be in a community that doesn’t accept you wholeheartedly? And, I think there are so many different kinds of churches that would accept who are gay. To me, it’s a ludicrous idea anyway that churches are against gays. It doesn’t make any sense to me, so I think that there’s a lot of places where you can take your spirituality, and take your relationship with God, and make sure that you don’t feel victimized.

Margaret recording with Tegan & Sara

Jess: Comedy albums tend to go for funny lyrics set to generic tunes. I was really impressed how the songs are actually quite catchy and fully produced. If the lyrics weren’t comedic your song with Tegan & Sara would fit right in on So Jealous or The Con. Same with Fiona Apple, Ani DiFranco, etc. How’d you talk all these amazing performers into collaborating for a comedy album?

Margaret: Well, I’m a fan of everybody on the record, and I approached everybody in a different way. Some people I had known for many years, and others I met through the process of making a record. So, like with Tegan & Sara, I’d been a big fan of theirs for a long time and we had attended each other’s shows, so I definitely wanted to do a song with them when I first started making the album. I wanted to make an album that was funny, but at the same time had a high production value in terms of music, where each song sounded as if this is what happened when I joined that band for a day. Same thing with Fiona Apple and Ani DiFranco – these are the songs that I made with each of these artists who I love and got to join their band. Everybody had a different way of working, but every collaboration was really satisfying and exciting.

Jess: Who were you a superfan of growing up?

Margaret: I always loved Steve Martin and Richard Pryor, as comedians they were really important to me. Also, Joan Rivers was a big deal, I really loved her and still do, she’s great. Musically, the first concert I went to was The Go-Go’s and I’m still a huge fan of theirs, and they were very influential and made me think that we, as girls, could really do anything we wanted. It was so empowering to see them play, and to see them play their instruments, that was just a really great thing.

Jess: What do you make of the crew of female comics who have come out later in their careers?

Margaret: Well, people have different reasons for when and why they come out and what will make an impact. Sometimes when somebody comes out it makes a tremendous impact on society, so in those cases it’s very helpful later on in their careers, as opposed to if they were always out to begin with. I don’t know if it would make as big of an impact [for a career just starting]. I think about Ellen DeGeneres and when she came out, what a big huge deal that was, and how it really changed the way that middle America viewed lesbians. That was really powerful, and maybe that wouldn’t have had such an impact if she had been out all along. The other person I think about is Wanda Sykes, who I love, and she came out in order to further the fight against Prop 8, which I think is very admirable. So, people have different reasons and different times where it’s appropriate for them, and it makes an impact on society then.

Jess: Joan Rivers recently said in an interview that young performers should still keep their sexuality a secret. She mentioned that it was smart of Ricky Martin to wait until the height of his success was over to come out.

Margaret: Ideally I think everybody should be out all the time. That would solve so many problems, if people would just come out from the get-go. But I don’t know how our society would support that, like I don’t know how much homophobia exists within our society. What I do know is that a lot of times when people come out, the responsibility isn’t just about coming out. When you come out in today’s society you have to also become an activist, and a lot of times that activist role is something that people don’t want to play in addition to being an artist. So, I think it’s a personal preference. I feel like everybody’s got their own idea of who they want to exhibit themselves as, what level they want to do, what they want to be seen as.

Jess: This reminds me of Adam Lambert, who waited until American Idol was over but made it clear that he didn’t want to talk about gay political and civil rights issues. He’s stressed that he’s an entertainer and not a politician, which hopefully will relax other celebrities who stay closeted because of that pressure.

Margaret: Right! And he also strikes me as somebody who was also out to begin with. I mean, his stardom was so fast… Like he barely… He was a star, and then a couple of weeks later he was, ‘I’m gay!’ [laughing] He only waited like 2 weeks and, ‘I’m gay!’ Like, it was real fast! So, I wouldn’t necessarily think of that as even waiting to come out, he was pretty much… I don’t know if I believe in the idea of sensation, but with somebody like that, they are an overnight sensation because the success of American Idol is really an overnight thing. His start was a little bit different than somebody like Ricky Martin, who was a child star and developed within show business. So, his idea of image has been protected since he was like, 5 years old or whenever he joined Menudo. So, I think it’s much more difficult for somebody like Ricky Martin to come out, especially, you know? His fame was many years before Adam Lambert, when you’re talking about Menudo, and then growing up gay as a very, very important Latin recording artist. You know the Latin culture is not as accepting, of course, and it’s very difficult. I think his finally coming out now is really brave, even though it is years later.

Jess: Fran Drescher recently mentioned that the man she was married to for 21 years turned out to be gay. Have you ever unwittingly dated a gay man?

Margaret: Not unwittingly, no. I very consciously dated many, many gay men.

Jess: Really?

Margaret: Even though it’s weird considering my stand-up comedy, I can also be a very non-sexual person. And, sometimes gay men are very romantically interested in me, but not sexually. But romantically, which is a different thing, too. So I’ve actually had quite a few romantic relationships with gay men that are not sexual at all. But in the realm of romance I think that there’s like, many gay men that have sought that of me. Because for gay men, also the idea of romance is sometimes neglected in gay culture. It’s a very kind of feminine ritual, a feminine trait or a feminine ideal of romance, and so I think many gay men who have indulged that with me, not in a sexual way, but in a romantic way. So, I have quite a few gay “husbands”, I think there’s different ways to be a ”husband”, there’s different ways to have “marriage”, and now I’ve certainly had that with quite a few gay men.

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Jess: And what do you get out of it?

Margaret: Oh, I get a lot out of it! I mean, I get a lot of very satisfying connections, and a heart connection, and a love connection. There is love there, just because that isn’t sexual doesn’t mean it’s not as profound and loving as a relationship that I would have with somebody that I am sexual with.

Jess: Isn’t that just a friendship?

Margaret: It is a friendship. But romance is a kind of modified friendship. It sort of goes a little deeper. If you’re not involving sexuality, I think, for me, relationships can be a lot deeper. You can get into a spiritual realm, and that’s really deep, so I’m very happy with my relationships with gay men. Maybe it’s sort of what Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift had, a very romantic relationship that wasn’t sexual, but that was very deep.

Jess: I think a lot of people may not be aware that you’re actually married to a man. I know when Ani Difranco got married she experienced some backlash from the gay community. Did you ever experience anything like that?

Margaret: No, I don’t think so. I think because I’ve always had a side of me that’s very heterosexual too, that it’s not… I identify as queer, my politics are queer, but then I’ve also maintained many relationships with men too, so I think my own fluidity within my own sexuality has always been very present. So I didn’t feel a kind of backlash in that same way, which I thought for Ani was very unfair. She was very happy, and she should have been congratulated, so I don’t think that’s right that there was backlash for that. I think people, when they identify so much with her music, and they equate so much of that with  their own queerness, they feel like the artist has a responsibility to answer to it with their actions in life, and I don’t think that’s appropriate.

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Jess: Were you a fan of either Queer As Folk or The L Word?

Margaret: Oh, I loved them both, yes! I loved them both and I have them all on DVD and I adore them. They’re both great series.

Jess: Who were your favorite characters on each?

Margaret: I love Shane and I love Brian [laughs].

Jess: [laughs] Right? I get the connection.

Margaret: Yeah, they’re like the sharks, which are my favorite!

Jess: Your episode of Sex and the City is one of my favorite things ever.

Margaret: Oh, that was a lot of fun, I was really excited to be on that show because I was such a fan of the show. It’s really very rare when that happens, when you get to be super into a show and then you can step into that show, it’s really amazing. It was also the first time I ever saw anybody use a Blackberry… it was Sarah Jessica Parker on set. She was texting and I’d never seen anybody text before and it was really fascinating! [laughing] I was like a gorilla, watching her text, like “ooh I’m gonna do that someday!” I was like a monkey wanting to do whatever she was doing.

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Jess: What’s your favorite Lady Gaga song?

Margaret: I love Bad Romance, and I love Telephone because I love the video. And I love her, I think she’s great. She is such a bizarre kind of a pop star. She’s just got her own thing happening, and I just think she is so phenomenal. She’s great for queer culture, she’s really innovative and beautiful, and I think she’s a great musician too, so I have a lot of respect and love for Gaga.

Jess: Do you have any ideas of who you think might really tap into the queer community the way Lady Gaga did? To me, Lady Gaga is the gayest thing on the planet, I can’t believe she is as mainstream as she is because it’s so gay.

Margaret: I know, she’s so queer!

Jess: Everything about it is gay. Are there any other acts like that that you know of coming up that you think might be able to tap into that same realm?

Margaret: Kevin Barnes from Of Montreal is someone who I like a lot who is very queer… He reminds me of David Bowie in a lot of ways. He identifies as bisexual, but he is also married and has a child and he lives in the South and his music is so innovative and wild and creative and different… he is like this combination of David Bowie and Prince. He’s so popular in the indie rock scene, which is all abuzz about Of Montreal and everybody loves them. I generally think of indie rock as being very straight and very hetero, so that’s what’s really cool about Of Montreal… I’m a big fan of theirs. Actually Jon Brion, as a gift to me, had Kevin Barnes play bass on one of our songs on the record. That’s the best gift you can give, somebody who I admire, to get him to play on my song. But I think of him as being a real contender for the next Gaga [laughing].

Samantha Ronson is Open to Lindsay Lohan Reunion, Boys, Writing a Novel

Riese: Why do we care about Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson?
Laneia: Because they’re us. Because they look like us.
Riese: Because they’re our age?
Laneia: They’re our age and they looked like us — like a straight girl and a gay girl, which is what we looked like, you know?
Riese: They’re the first and only couple our age who have been out there in public like that, who everyone is watching.
Laneia: They’re us. We get how they feel and we know when they’re fucking it up!
Riese: If there were like five celebrity lesbian couples their age I wouldn’t care about any of them. But because there’s just one, I seem to uncontrollably care.
Laneia: Also, because Lindsay Lohan was in Mean Girls and we liked it. There was something there, like even in Parent Trap, there was something there that I connected to. I have no idea. I don’t know and she’s nothing really super special, she’s not like annoyingly perfect looking like Angelina Jolie or anything. Also, she’s a child celebrity and that’s always fascinating.
Riese: If it was a straight couple, we wouldn’t care ’cause we’d have plenty of stories to pick from. Think of how much bad tv and movies lesbians watch, this story is better than like Curl Girls.
Laneia: Uh-HUH. Also, w/r/t Lindsay — we’ve been there. I mean I don’t have two million twitter followers, but I would’ve had that same meltdown.

– Editors of Autostraddle.com, just now [see also: Leave Lindsay Lohan Alone]

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Samantha Ronson has never really been into the press and doesn’t seem to care that they’re incredibly interested in talking to her. Probably because she knows they only want to talk about the same thing we want to talk about: her on-again off-again LESBIAN relationship with Lindsay Lohan. Finally, Samantha has given a rare interview to The Times UK which covers topics including, but not limited to, Lindsay Lohan. Why now? The interviewer ponders:

One explanation for the timing might be because she had not long signed up with a new management company: Simon Fuller’s 19 Entertainment. It seemingly came on board to help Ronson expand her interests and brand, via a new album she’s recording and strategic media appearances. To make her more, then, than just Lindsay Lohan’s ex.

Later the article mentions that Samantha is working on a new album and an “autobiographical-ish” novel that she actually wrote a few years ago. In 2004, Samantha Ronson spoke to the UK Observer about her new album, which she said was her “random thoughts put to music,” adding, “I write best when my heart’s getting broken.” Who broke Samantha’s heart? We’re not sure but it could be ex-boyfriend Happy Massee. Samantha’s DJ career is thriving — although the well-connected Samantha didn’t seem to have any trouble booking high-profile gigs prior to her relationship with Lindsay, her present booking fees well exceed 10K (how much over depends on who you ask, or how/who they know).

Though most lesbians knew about the Lindsay-Sam relationship (and perhaps had also heard rumors about Lohan’s prior special female friends) way before the mainstream media caught on, few of us had actually heard much about Samantha before the duo began spending time together, despite her relatively prodigious DJ’ing experience.

Ditto for the rest of the world, says The Times:

…the main reason for Ronson’s celebrity is her last romantic relationship. For something like 16 months, from around the beginning of 2008 to spring last year, she was the girlfriend of sometime actress and full-time trouble magnet, Lindsay Lohan. They were the most high-profile lesbian pairing in Hollywood. The first “out” lesbian couple in modern mainstream youth culture. It was a relationship dogged by car crashes, run-ins with the Los Angeles paparazzi, incidents of drunk and drug-driving, legal disputes and a snarky swirl of homophobic comment.

The article mentions Lohan’s father, Michael, who is totally insane and came out strongly against Lohan’s relationship with Samantha, calling Sam “dark, hideous and a disgusting representation of humanity” when the two started dating. That was another moment where many of us, unfortunately, related. Didn’t you wish the New York Post had wanted to publish the letter you wrote your parents about their homophobia, as they did for Lindsay? The downside, of course, was the constant scrutiny, which Ronson didn’t like:

Nonetheless, their relationship went from amicable to personal, and once they came out as a couple in autumn 2008, the paparazzi were on their tail 24/7. “I was like, damn. It would be really cool if we could just go for a walk,” says Ronson in an accent that veers between polite English and hipster American. And so began a romance for our times – a multimedia soap opera that had one section of society gripped and the rest baffled as to how the inconsequential affairs of two people they’d barely heard of should be so important.

Ronson rarely addresses gay topics herself, so it’s interesting to hear her commenting on homophobia (although the term is a bit misapplied here, whatevs):

Reflecting on it now, Ronson appears scarred by the experience. And she is angry at the homophobic slant of much of the media coverage of her time with Lohan, that Twitter was abuzz with reports she abused her lover and that the rumours weren’t quickly rebuffed.

“The fact that Perez Hilton calls me ‘Saman’ – it’s the most homophobic thing ever,” she spits. “The perpetuation of [the idea that I’m] the man in the relationship! OK, yeah, my hair is short and I’m a DJ. But I’m a girl, I’m not a dude. I’m pretty feminine at the end of the day.

Although everyone pressed Lindsay to pick a label, and Samantha’s referred to everywhere as being “openly gay,” it seems both Samantha and Lindsay apparently dislike the moniker:

“Everyone was like, ‘Openly gay DJ Samantha Ronson…’ No! Uh, excuse me! I’m not gay! I’m an equal-opportunity player! I still go back and forth. But I got called so many things by the press that ‘openly gay’ was the least of my worries at that point. Of course, I must be masculine and I must be violent. I’m sorry…” she tails off with a laugh. “When the rumours started that I hit her or whatever, I called Lindsay up and I was like, ‘You need to dead this rumour now.’ ”

It was widely rumored/believed that Samantha didn’t do gay or lesbian venues/events, but this year things started changing for everyone, and Samantha DJ’ed at Girlbar’s Dinah Shore weekend. We went, expecting complete pandemonium, but the scene was fairly low-key. She was a good DJ and looked hot and Lindsay was totally not there.

Samantha also addresses the breakup, recalling how Lindsay has blamed Samantha’s friends and family for their breakup in the past:

Mark Ronson watched the drama engulfing his sister: “I never thought there was anything wrong with Samantha and Lindsay, because that seemed to make her happy. Until I started to see the really horrible, negative emotional impact Lindsay had on her life, and on all of our family. I was, like, this is just bad news, any way you wanna slice it. We all told her that. There were several intervention-type things where we all tried to make her see this.”

Yet, for all her hurt and anger, Samantha Ronson clearly still has feelings for her high-profile ex.

Asked about the current status of their relationship, Ronson offers:

“I love her as a human being,” says Ronson. “And I’m not gonna sit there and negate everything that we had. You know, I could have a thousand times countered s*** with facts. And it’s just not for me.” She adds, in what sounds like a parody of this extraordinary world she inhabits: “I’m sorry, my Twitter page is for me to be like, ‘Dude, I need to pee,’ and [stuff about] American Idol.”

This is unfortunate, as we are constantly baffled and frustrated by Samantha’s refusal to tweet a string of personal, slightly insane things for us to speculate about.

Luckily, the writer leaves us with a shred of hope for these two, which keeps us hanging on!

So you’re not back together? “No!” she exclaims. “Not at all.” Do you want to get back together? “Ah-ha-ha,” Samantha Ronson laughs hesitantly. “No comment on that one.”

And what if they never get back together? Will we still care about Samantha Ronson? Time will tell.

We can’t seem to draw any conclusion from this interview, so in lieu of that, the following ideas:

1. The Parent Trap is on TV right now there are serious gay vibes happening between Lindsay Lohan and Lindsay Lohan.
2. Is the latest “Lindsay Lohan has a new girlfriend” rumor true? ‘Cause Eilat Anschel is hot. Also it’s funny how everyone is freaking out that she’s a former Israeli soldier — every Israeli has to be in the army for two years after high school. Wouldn’t it be interesting if Lindsay was the first one to move onto a new girl, rather than Samantha?
3. When this happened a few days ago, we felt really happy:

Hey Jackie, You’re Not A Lesbian, Also We’re Not Your Chemistry Experiment

LESBIAN ‘PHASES’:

Jackie Clune, who I guess is famous in England or something, wrote an essay for the Daily Mail about how she used to be a lesbian but isn’t anymore. Just after reading the headline — “How I went from committed lesbian to a happily married mother of four” — I obvs had a lot of issues with this article. But it is SO MUCH WORSE once you read it. You should do that now or something, so you know what the eff I’m talking about.

Top 10 Most Unbelievable Sentences/Paragraphs In This Stupid Article:

1. “I had studied feminist literature at university and it opened my eyes to the possibility of sexuality as a life choice.”

2. For I can honestly say that I never felt the need to ‘come out’ as gay or straight — I simply decided to fall in love with women.

3. It’s not that I stopped liking men, just that I felt a relationship with a woman would be a richer experience. After all, given the choice I would choose a woman over a man for a really great chat, an inspiring conversation or to share emotional problems with. A physical relationship with a woman seemed a logical progression.

4. Can you imagine waking up beside a woman when you’ve both got raging PMT?

5. I wanted a bit more difference, a little less talking and a bit more edge and my relationships often paid the price.

6. I had been so committed, I even bought a flat with one of my partners.

7. Was I picking the wrong women or was I simply not cut out to be a lesbian?

8. But I suspect the simple truth is that I no longer felt I needed to be defined by my sexuality. I had outgrown lesbianism.

9. This may sound absurd, but calling myself a lesbian was almost like calling myself a punk or a goth.

10. All I can say is that I believe not every gay person is gay for life. In particular, I believe that many women are capable of feeling attracted to other women – to be with someone who believes it’s perfectly normal to talk about how you feel and wants to know every single thought that passes through your head.

BONUS! 11. Actually I have never thought of myself as bisexual. And I certainly don’t now that I am married. That would be tantamount to admitting that I am thinking of being unfaithful with a woman, which has never been the case.

Most of those sentences are improperly punctuated, and I want you all to know that I know that. This is self explanatory, right? Do I need to say more? This woman is so ridiculous, I can’t even process it. My feelings mostly consist of: you can be friends with women without sleeping with them, feeling unfulfilled by women and longing for the “simplicity” of men probs means you’re straight, bisexuality DOES NOT mean you want to cheat on your husband with women, and homosexuality isn’t a culture you adopt just for funsies to be alternative in your 20s. She clearly misunderstood everything in that college class about feminism and sexuality. I’m glad she’s gotten through her little lesbian “phase,” get it, it’s like lunar phases because all women are ruled by the moon and are crazy emotional.

Does that cover it? What do you guys think? (@dailymail)

GAY PARENTS:

We’ve covered a lot of this territory before, but it’s worth bringing up again, especially while gay adoption is still illegal in certain states. Basically, gay parents are great parents! There are many reasons why. Unplanned pregnancies are pretty rare, so gay couples are almost always quite prepared to raise kids. Gay people are real, compassionate humans which is mostly what it takes to be a good parent. Studies show that kids raised by gay parents are often happier and well-adjusted. So yeah, let’s toast all the LGBT parents out there! Keep on raising awesome people! (@cnn)

BOOKS:

A gay teen from Kentucky has started a viral campaign against his school’s library for not including gay books. This story combines a lot of our favorite things: out teens, books, youth activism, and the Internet!

“The world needs more librarians who serve the purpose of finding the right book to put in the right person’s lap,” Brent blogged. “There are tons of gay teens, struggling to find a group to fit in. LGBT YA lit helps us find out that no, we aren’t alone and no, we aren’t worthless or disgusting. It helps us discover that we are part of a group. The LGBT group.”

Check out his blog, which is entitled Naughty Book Kitties, <3 forevs. Also look at that photo of him! He looks so ready for battle.

UTAH:

Christine Johnson, a Utah representative who recently served as a surrogate mom for two gay men, is moving to South Carolina. She’ll be the executive director of South Carolina Equality. She also plans to come back a few times to see the baby. (@

EUROPE:

The European Court of Human Rights decided that countries in Europe don’t have to grant same-sex marriage rights.

The court said that individual countries were best placed to decide on their own laws on this this issue.

Two Austrian men brought a case to the court saying their fundamental rights were breached because Austria does not recognise same sex marriage.

But the court said there was no Europe-wide consensus on the issue.

PETITIONS:

The US Supreme Court has ruled that names on anti-gay petitions in Washington State are indeed public record. The high-court ruling against Protect Marriage Washington, which organized a petition drive for a vote to repeal the state’s domestic partnership law, says disclosing names on a petition for a public referendum does not infringe on the signer’s freedom of speech enough to warrant overturning the state’s disclosure law. (@bostonherald)

DADT:

Soledad O’Brien sank her teeth into the DADT issue as it currently stands, which is basically in limbo until December. There isn’t much new info here, but we always love testimonials from soldiers who have experienced the problems with this policy firsthand. It really brings everything home.

Women Are Dirty Bisexuals, Men Are Just Dirty. Or Gay. Or Straight.

BISEXUALITY IS FOR THE GIRLS:

In most respects, this Gawker article surpsingly par for the course as far as mainstream writing on bisexuality goes — it seems to confuse “bisexual female” with “bisexual female celebrity.”

Thanks in part to our famous bisexual women who are married to men, the world seems to think of bi women as ladies who will venture to the Sapphic side for fun or to please a man.

…bisexuals are basically just straight people who like to get a little funky. Just look at Paquin and Mullally* who are both in monogamous relationships with men. Sure, they might think about a little lady love every once in awhile, but they’re basically in the same relationship as every other breeder on the planet. Lady Gaga admits that she’s never actually let another woman ride on her disco stick, and her Sapphic proclivities seem to be a way to bind her closer to the gay community that she fights for and that continues to play remixes of every one of her singles at every one of their social gatherings.

Famous women coming out as loving both peen and vag is kind of nice, in a way. It may be a little meaningless, but it’s like breaking in the public for hardcore homosexuals.

*Well firstly, Mullally is not bisexual, she has redacted officially!

Secondly, there are plenty of bisexual women out there who don’t ascribe to the bisexual-with-a-boyfriend/husband mold embraced by out bisexual celebrities such as Anna Paquin, Angelina Jolie, Megan Fox, Amanda Palmer, Ani DiFranco, Drew Barrymore, Miranda July, Pink and Amber Rose.

A growing number of bisexual female celebrities either have had or are possibly still having relationships with women: Kristanna Loken, Nicol Paone, Nicole Pacent, Sophie B. Hawkins, Lindsay Lohan, Kim Zolciak and, our favorite person ever, Tila Tequila.

But more importantly, there are a number of bisexual women outside of both Hollywood and the music industry who are having relationships with men or women (“following the heart, not the anatomy,” as not-actually-bisexual character, Alice Pieszecki, said in The L Word). Imagine that: a world outside of Hollywood! Where things are like, not a big f*cking deal! Wheee!

Howevs, once you look past Gawker’s stock photo of two conventionally attractive, skinny, white, blonde women kissing, you’ll see that they do take the time to question something which most mainstream media outlets don’t — where are all the bisexual men?

As the article points out, Vanessa Carlton just came out as bisexual, joining other pretty famous ladies Anna Paquin, Lady Gaga and Ke$ha, but where are their male counterparts? They must be out there! According to the Kinsey Institute, there are totes bisexual men. All the moderately famous and well-liked male public figures can’t be completely straight. Are they just afraid Ramin Setoodeh will write a shitty Newsweek article about them?

Gawker seems to think that, because it’s “sort of meaningless” when women like Vanessa Carlton come out, it shouldn’t be very daunting for the hypothetical famous bisexual dudes who we assume exist.

It’s old data, but here is a handy graph:

We’ve discussed this point at Autostraddle, with Riese arguing that, because she feels most everyone is kinda bi, saying it out loud shouldn’t be such a big deal.

Gawker’s take is a little different, arguing that since Paquin and Carlton are both currently with dudes, they’re basically straight. Which is, you know, wrong. But I think the majority of America agrees with them; so probably if John Krasinski or someone came out while dating a lady — is he dating anyone? Probably, I have no idea — it would be no biggie, right? We’d send him a fruit basket and move on with our lives?

No, actually! That is not true. As Gawker acknowledges, there’s a double standard on this issue, but it’s a little more complex than just that. Remember the Real World D.C., which you only watched because of cute (bisexual!) Emily? There was also a bisexual dude, Mike. The footage was edited so that a hetero storyline was created for Emily, confirming for the viewers what people like to believe about bi women, that they’re “basically straight.”

But the footage of Mike hooking up with dudes WAS included in the show, and guess what? Everyone thought he was gay! Everyone! The other cast members, viewers, everyone — regardless of Mike’s insistence on his identity.

There actually are bisexual men in the world! In the early ’90s, there were quite a few: Kurt Cobain, David Bowie, Billie Joe Armstrong, Dave Navarro and Mick Jagger. Also, bisexuality seems to be historically more common amongst artists, musicians and writers over the years: Sammy Davis Jr, James Dean, Lou Reed, Jack Kerouac, Jim Carroll, Brett Easton Ellis and Neal Cassady.

But yeah, I guess that’s not exactly Lady-Gaga-high-profile level. And bad science often perpetuates the idea that all women are bisexual while men are not. So this leads to the commonly-accepted idea that women are somehow more flexible in their sexuality, which is, of course, perpetuated by the media. But the perpetuation itself is a chicken/egg issue. I mean, do we believe that female sexuality is more fluid than male sexuality? Yes. But society has also created a huge double standard with regard to the issue of bisexuality, prompting a perceived difference between male and female sexuality. This issue came up in the Prop 8 trial, too!

To most of the world, man-on-man sex seem scarier than any other type of sex, because it means that at least one man has to be vulnerable, which isn’t allowed. It’s also different because men have penises, which either get hard or don’t, so it’s less likely that they’ll take experimentation very far if it doesn’t excite them, whereas many women are content to rub on the KY for life, while fucking some dude and thinking about chicks.

Basically, the real double standard is that:

1) No matter what a woman says about her sexual identity, it won’t be taken seriously because of the patriarchy, especially if the identity she chooses is “debatable,” like some people view bisexuality.

2) Men aren’t allowed any grey area. They’re either straight like Rambo, or GAY GAY GAY GAY like the gay emperor of Gaytopia.

Bisexual people quickly get used to the idea that almost no one will take their identity seriously, and I think that the hypothetical bisexual men Gawker is wondering about are included in this. Who can blame them, really? Maybe there are dudes out there who really would be willing to come out as bisexual for the cause, but because society would twist it into them coming out as gay, they’re just going to sit this one out until America has grown up enough to understand what words mean.

If Gawker is right that bisexual people are “queer training wheels” for a country that’s still uncomfortable with same-sex attraction, it might take a few more Vanessa Carltons and Lady Gagas before we’re ready to wrap our heads around identities that don’t fit into the cookie cutters we’ve been using all this time. Also maybe a few less articles with skinny blonde white women kissing. Just saying.

Vanessa Carlton is Bisexual and Katy Perry Don’t Mind It When Rihanna Kisses Girls

PERRY:

Remember when we listened to Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl” and Rihanna’s “Te Amo” and compared them in terms of a) tolerability and b) homosexiness and c) recognition of and/or commodification of queer women? I bet you thought it was going to end there, but no! Instead we have this video of Katy Perry herself talking about Rihanna and “Te Amo,” which was a little more meta than I thought this conversation was really going to get. Apparently she really likes Rihanna, which is the first thing Katy Perry and I have ever had in common. (@ontd)

+
Also apparently the senior brand manager at Trolli candies is shocked and appalled by the behavior of the gummy bear in Katy’s “California Gurls” video. “Those are definitely not Trolli Gummi bears in the video because Trolli Gummi Bears would never be that rude.” (@jezebel)

LINDSAY:

Amid all the drama about whether or not Lindsay’s anti-alcohol SCRAM bracelet had been set off, someone apparently failed to take into account how much Lindsay loves kombucha tea. I can attest that it is at least a little alcoholic and also that my roommate loves it, so it’s probably fine and Lindsay is probably totally clean. (@gawker)

FATHER’S DAY:

Did you know that Presidential Father’s Day addresses were a thing? Apparently they are, and Obama has taken this opportunity to give a shoutout to gay dads. In his statement on Friday, he talked about how many different kinds of “nurturing families” there are, including those with “two fathers.” (@theadvocate)

VANESSA CARLTON:

Vanessa Carlton came out as bisexual at Nashville Pride on Saturday, bringing you one step closer to that fantasy of yours where every attractive woman in America is at least a 4.5 on the Kinsey scale. According to our sources, she also told the crowd that her lyrics can be applied to men or women, and sang through a version of “Ordinary Day” with switched-up pronouns. This is an important development in the world of entertainment and gay media because “A Thousand Miles” was very significant to Managing Editor Sarah when she was 14.

PROP 8:

Maureen Dowd wrote an op-ed about the closing arguments of the Prop 8 trial, which basically says all the same things as our own Prop 8 closing arguments recap except that hers includes the quote that apparently “Ted Olson now prides himself on being an ‘honorary lesbian.” I guess that’s why she writes for the New York Times. (@nytimes)

LIARS:

Hey have you read Riese and Crystal’s recap of Pretty Little Liars yet? There is a very pretty lesbian character in it, and the recap was good enough that I watched the pilot even though I don’t believe in TV, so that should tell you something.

THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT:

The Kids Are All Right, which features Julianne Moore and Annette Bening as a lesbian couple, premiered this weekend at the Los Angeles Film Festival, and we have photos! Here’s one of Julianne Moore. I feel like lesbians like her. Prove me right.

Nicki Minaj Redacts Bisexuality, Tegan Keeps a Diary & Logo Awards NewNowNexties

NICKI MINAJ:

Nicki Minaj is recanting her bisexuality! She tells Black Men Magazine: “I don’t date women and I don’t have sex with women…that’s of course, until Cassie comes available …..” This is in direct opposition to many statements to the contrary and once-upon-a-time rumors that Nicki was once a Queens “Stud” who slept with rapper Remy Ma. That might not be true, but really, who knows anymore? Granted, this is clearly a magazine aimed at a heterosexual male demographic, thus the title “Black Men Magazine,” but gawd REALLY NICKI REALLY?

A few elements of the self-proclaimed “Black Barbie” have fascinated and confused critics. A few months ago, Jonah Weiner wrote on Slate.com about Nicki Minaj, asking Who’s That Girl?

In several songs, rapper Nicki Minaj describes herself as a proud bisexual—she has a special weakness, we learn, for ample-bottomed girls. In others, she is defiantly straight: insisting that she prefers men, dropping “no homo” disclaimers to drive the point home. In “Brrraaattt,” she plays a thug, firing semiautomatic weapons at her rivals. In “Cuchi Shop,” she plays a madam in charge of a stable of prostitutes. In interviews, she announces herself as a would-be role model for young girls. She says she’s from Queens, N.Y., but in several songs she slips into accents that suggest she’s from England or perhaps the San Fernando Valley.

Hip-hop is full of unreliable narrators, but over the course of her short career, Nicki Minaj has taken unreliability to near-whiplash extremes.

Following the story in Black Men, Trish Bendix wrote for AfterEllen.com:

Assuming that Nicki is telling the truth, that she’s not really bisexual, this is certainly a huge issue. A large part of her appeal and her career has been her innuendos.

If we take Nicki’s statement that she doesn’t date or sleep with women as a truth, than I think it is fair to be disappointed if not upset how she portrays herself as an artist. She spits lines like “I only stops for pedestrians, or real real bad lesbian,” signs her female fans’ boobs and makes reference to bedding other women.

Female musicians exploiting and then redacting alleged bisexuality is one of our least favorite things EVAH, like when Pink did it and when Christina Aguilera did it.

TEGAN & SARA:

Tegan Quin has been keeping a tour diary for Paper Magazine, and it’s just PRECIOUS:

I need to pull it together and stop napping. I’ve been in Ireland for four days and so far I’ve napped three times. One of the naps lasted 12 hours. I’m not really a “nap person” in my regular life. In fact I think that naps should only be for babies, the elderly, pot heads and sick people. But apparently I’m all of those things now because I cannot stop napping.

She opens her second diary entry with: “ My name is Tegan Quin and it’s been two days since my last nap.”

BIG BROTHER:

Someone on Big Brother had a lesbian dream about someone else or something.

NEW NOW NEXT:

Logo’s NewNowNext Awards aired last night! The show, which was taped on June 8 in LA, was hosted by Nicey Nash and Cheyenne Jackson. People won things for doing stuff. Some of our favorite people were there!

Adam Lambert had a little thing on the NewNowNext Awards. He also cut his hair, apparently.

Check out the NewNowNext blog’s Top 7 moments from the show. Winners included Lea Michele, Johnny Weir and even the tumblr Lesbians Who Look Like Justin Bieber. Paula Abdul, RuPaul, and Aisha Tyler also showed up. We imagine the after party was ridic homofabulous!

Oh and the Real L Word cast was there, too.

TOY STORY 3:

You know what’s hard? To actually make a funny movie, and a sad movie, and an exciting movie, and a thoughtful movie, and an artful movie, and a challenging movie, and a sophisticated movie, and a surprising movie, all at once. To make it with integrity and wit, to never insult your audience — whether that audience is five or 35 or 65 — and to do it again and again and again, eleven times and counting. That’s a miracle.

That’s why the people of Pixar are currently America’s most important filmmakers. And that’s why Toy Story 3 is the best movie of the year.

KATY PERRY:

Katy Perry banned straight men from the set of her music video shoot — ladies and gays, ladies and gays only.

STEPHEN IRA BEATTY:

Daily Mail reports: “The eldest daughter of Warren Beatty and Annette Bening is living as a young man after changing her name. Kathlyn Beatty, 18, is now known as Stephen Ira and is said to be planning a sex-change operation.”

ILENE CHAIKEN:

Is interviewed in TV Guide Magazine about The Real L Word and the possibility of an L Word Movie.

TV Guide Magazine: Is there still an L Word movie in the works?
Chaiken: I would love to do an L Word movie. It’s about when I can find the time to write it. I know what the movie is. I know that my cast really wants to do it.

TV Guide Magazine: Except Mia Kirshner.
Chaiken: She doesn’t want to do it.

TV Guide Magazine: Well, her character Jenny is dead.
Chaiken: Exactly. Mia’s not happy about being dead. I think she should have embraced it. And I was sad that she wasn’t into it. But everybody else is dying to do it.

TV Guide Magazine: If you do the movie will we find out who killed Jenny?
Chaiken: If I were to do an L word movie I would like it not to be about who killed Jenny but have a very different storyline. It would be more like the beginning of the show and the celebration of lesbian life and romance, that comedy of manners.

TV Guide Magazine: Is your L Word spinoff with Alice imprisoned for killing Jenny completely dead?
Chaiken: Yes. And since Showtime didn’t pick it up, I’m going to say that Alice did not kill Jenny. That was a little disappointing because I thought we made a really good pilot. And it wasn’t an L Word spinoff really. That one character was in it but it was a very, very different show.

Christina Aguilera: Girls Are Pretty, Crazy, Fun, But Nothing Compares to Penis

CHRISTINA AGUILERA:

Christina is all over the June issue of OUT magazine:

“I don’t get to kiss all the girls and the boys,” she says. “But my husband knows that I get into girls. I think it’s fun to be open and play.”

Nevertheless, Aguilera knows what this girl wants. “I don’t think I could ever really be with a woman because that’s a lot of…” Aguilera pauses. “Yeah, there’s a lot of estrogen and I’m a lot to deal with when it’s that time of the month, so I can’t imagine it times two.” She then shakes her head and adds, “And you know, I love dick. To be honest, that I cannot live without.”

She may not ever be with a woman, but make no mistake, she has the full support of her gay cadre. Aguilera’s friend and collaborator Sia explains, “I feel like Christina’s probably supporting the majority of the lesbian scene in Los Angeles because she really only works with gaylords, like her dog walker, her personal trainer, her cowriters.” As Stein puts it, “Bisexual or not, Aguilera is queer in the word’s most literal sense.”

Seriously. Seriously now. That is just the most annoying thing in the world to say. You can buy a penis if that’s your primary concern. And although wearing a strap-on does not feel like being a man with a penis, being fucked by one does not feel all that incredibly different so JUST STOP SAYING THAT THING.

Remember last year when Pink was asked about her bisexuality, and she said, “I never said I haven’t [been with a woman]. I just said, going forward, I like penis.” That was annoying too.

Let’s refresh. These things are boring, and we are over hearing them:

1. Girls are crazy and have so many feelings!
2. I love penis!

Can’t you just say, “I’m straight! But kissing girls is fun!” Because you know, that’s fine. It is fun! Some lesbians like to kiss boys too for fun. Kissing is fun! We should all kiss each other a lot!

Also, there’s now an Xtina version of the hilarious Gaga/Illuminati rant we posted a few weeks ago. Enjoy. (@vigilantcitizen)

TEEN / GAY / OUT:

So, remember when the world was flat and you were a closeted teenager? Hopefully some of you are thinking, “Um, no…” because you’ve been out and proud since you could articulate complex sentences. M. Sharkey’s project, Queer Kids, celebrates some brave m*therfuckers. (The original article, The Battle For Gay Teens, was published in October 2005 in TIME Magazine.)

GLEE:

Do you want your Glee an hour earlier? Yeah? Then I bet you’re totally happy to learn that Fox is probably rescheduling Glee for 8 p.m. EST. High five! (@variety)

ALSO: Listen to the Glee cast singing “Bad Romance” (we can’t figure out who’s singing what, and we can’t wait ’til we find out):

(@johnmoon)

LAW & ORDER:

Law & Order is about to be shelved for good, and Riese may not make it out alive. Facebook got Betty White on SNL, maybe it can also save this BASTION OF MODERN ENTERTAINMENT?

BIANCA:

All My Children has recast its lesbian character: Eden Riegel, who won an Emmy as Bianca Montgomery, left the show and has now been replaced by Christina Bennett Lind. (@hollywoodnews)

PLAYING STRAIGHT:

Another list of gay people who are good at playing straight people, this time from OUT Magazine. (@out)

POWER COUPLES:

Vice magazine does power couples like no one else, and we’re enamored. (@viceland)

EILEEN MYLES !!!!!! and Leopoldine

Cass Bird & Family

JOKES:

Bitch magazine explains problematic jokes and why some sh*t just isn’t funny. (@bitch)

HOT 100:

AfterEllen has a list of hot girls or something. It’s a giant deal, it’s like the presidential election. Olivia Wilde won though. I know that b/c I saw it on Grace the Spot.  Also, if you haven’t seen it yet, we also have a list of real, live Hot Girls. Maybe you are one of them!

Cynthia Nixon: Gay Identity a ‘Political Stance’, We’re All Bisexual.’

CYNTHIA NIXON:

Cynthia Nixon is on the cover of The Advocate’s 2010 Pride Issue, talking about Sex and the City 2, gay parenting, her fight against breast cancer in 2006 and her relationship with her partner Christine Marnoni. In fact, much to our lesbionic delight, most of the article is about two of our most favorite things in the world:

1. MIRANDA FUCKING HOBBES

2. LESBIAN LOVE

Nixon met Marnoni in 2001 while campaigning to reduce public school class sizes in 2001, and they got closer in 2003 when Nixon was going through her split with her partner of 14 years, Danny Somebody. Kristin Davis remarked that though she knew Nixon & Marnoni were really good friends who worked together on important stuff, she didn’t suspect anything sexual going on:

“They’d be on the phone and writing speeches,” Davis says, “and I thought, She’s really into this [the schools campaign]!”

When Cynthia Nixon and Christine Marnoni became more and more than just friends, Nixon suddenly faced a lot of questions about her new relationship:

“Shortly after we started seeing each other—like a month after—we got a press inquiry about it,” Nixon says. “And I thought, This is crazy.”

Nixon hired a publicist who recommended that Nixon deny everything. Nixon, “more optimistic than Miranda ever was,” pushed the publicist for a plan beyond lies and hiding, as she didn’t really see how she could hide her TRUE! LESBIAN! LOVE! forevs! She asked her publicist:

‘That’s the whole thing? We never move past that? We’re at the playground with the kids, and pictures are taken of us, and we say, ‘No, she’s my friend?’ ”

Obvs Nixon eventually ditched that publicist and was ultimately introduced by her manager Emily Saines to openly gay publicist Kelly Bush, who recommended that Nixon just go ahead and confirm the rumors. 

“And I was like, ‘Really, we can just confirm?’ So that’s what we did. It was so fantastic.”

As she’s said in the past, Nixon tells The Advocate that there was no grand lesbian revelation, nor does she feel it was something she’d hidden — or even felt — all her life. In fact :

“I identify as gay as a political stance,” she says. “If anybody, prior to my meeting and falling in love with Christine, had asked me about what I think about sexuality, I would have said I think we’re all bisexual. But I had that point of view without ever having felt attracted to a woman. I had never met a woman I was attracted to [before Christine]. And maybe if I’d met her when I was 20, I would have fallen in love and only dated women. But maybe if I’d met her at 20, I wouldn’t have responded at all. Who knows?

Nixon says Marinoni sealed the deal by being great with Nixon’s kids.

The Advocate writer points out that Marinoni is “clearly different than the women we’re used to seeing Nixon with. Marinoni dresses in men’s clothes. She looks butch. She’d clearly be the odd woman out at brunch with Miranda, Samantha, Charlotte, and Carrie.” Probs true, as Marinoni has never worn a bird as a hat, a headband as a skirt or a gigantic flower as a pair of pants.

Nixon on her attraction to Marinoni:

“A lot of what I love about her is her butchness. I’m not saying I fell in love with her in a sexually neutral way. I love her sexuality—it’s a big part of what I love about her—but I feel like it was her. It wasn’t something in me that was waiting to come out. It was like, This person is undeniable. How can I let this person walk by?“

She also speaks about raising children with two mommies, her diagnosis with breast cancer in 2006, how she’s definitely “a Miranda” herself, and how Miranda’s character has evolved & changed over the years. There’s also some cute quotes from Charlotte I MEAN KRISTEN DAVIS.

In conclusion, we love Cynthia Nixon, think it’s awesome what she’s doing for butch visibility with her wife and we will probs find SATC2 label-whored to the max but will go see it anyhow because our love knows no bounds, and also MC Hammer called for Samantha and wants his freaking pants back.

[Cynthia Nixon is More Than Just Sex: The Advocate]

KATIE MELUA:

25-year-old smokin’ hot UK pop/rock singer Katie Melua is questioning her sexuality:

“We live in the 21st century – questions of sexuality are not outdated, but I don’t think the lines are very clear and they are not always clear to me. I can tell you that I’m single, which is not lovely, but it is what it is. I really don’t think whether you are gay or not is the whole identity of a person. It’s just one side; it doesn’t have to be the thing that defines you.”

True ‘dat Katie. Unfortunately it’s the one thing we’re required by gaylaw to be obsessed with. Katie Melua‘s 2003 album, Call Off the Search, went platinum in the UK in 2003 and her follow-up Piece by Piece did even better in 2005. Rumors that she was dating openly lesbian photographer Lara Bloom in 2006 were never confirmed and are therefore probs not true, but here’s a photo anyhow, ’cause we think they have cool hair:

Her new album, The House, comes out soon and might offer a bit more insight, like the lyrics from this track, “Moment of Madness”:

When we drank too much beer
Lost our fear
Our defenses were down
You got up, tried your luck…

I saw your thighs
And I fell to my knees
Oh my god what is this?
It’s a moment of madness.

I just want to stare at your hair
And imagine you open your door
In your drawer
There’s some leather in there.
I refuse / You persist / It’s a moment of madness.

We’ve done an informal Autostraddle Bisexual Roundtable on this topic and determined there’s really not much to say about a man’s thighs, even if you do enjoy being penetrated by what’s between them. Amirite bisexual/straight ladies? Holler.

JULIE GOLDMAN:

Julie Goldman is featured on the cover of South Florida’s longest running lesbian magazine SHE, talking about The Big Gay Sketch Show, things that make her laugh, The Nicest Thing, and of course Julie & Brandy in Your Box Office:

...I want to say the things no one else will. I think my style is on the “masculine” side and I’m proud to be out there representing the “lady gentlemen,” while being totally un-P.C. and irreverent.
—Julie Goldman

You can read the interview online in the SHE digital edition!

DARIA:

GUESS WHAT TIME IT IS DARIA TIME! The DVD set of 53 shows is released tomorrow (but you can pre-order now) apparently “still delights” and is “filled with extras.” (@tmc) Also, Bitch Magazine’s blogger tackles this monumental occassion in depth.

MODERN FAMILY:

Why Won’t ABC Let Modern Family’s Gays Share a Smooch? (@queerty)

WRITTEN ON THE BODY:

Wanna lez out to Written on the Body? Young Creature has a mix tape for that. (@youngcreature)

LEA MICHELE:

Glee’s Lea Michele is on the cover of Women’s Health, wearing what appears to be a table runner stolen from Chi-Chi’s as a mini-skirt. In the article she talks about what she eats, and climbing walls, and how much fun everyone has being in GLEE. (@ontd)

GAY, GAY SUMMER:

Queer Sighted has six summer 2010 flicks qualified as ‘gay’ or ‘gay-ish’ for ‘ya. (@queersighted)

LENA HORNE:

Singer/actress/civil rights activist Lena Horne is dead at 92. (@ew)

FAMILY GUY:

“Family Guy, the enormously successful equal opportunity offender, on Mother’s Day aired the episode “Quagmire’s Dad,” about Quagmire’s father who was supposed to be a panty chaser, but turns to be a big homo — or rather, a transgender MTF. Lots of gay and trans jokes have the queers upset!” (@queerty)

We’re Ready to Talk About Christina Aguilera’s “Bisexual” Music Video Now

CHRISTINA AGUILERA:

Oh hey did you watch the new video for Christina Aguilera’s single “Not Myself Tonight?” Probably, we’re a little slow to the game for this one because we couldn’t decide if we cared or not. Luckily now we have lots of other opinions at this point too to share with you. Here, firstly, take a gander:

There are a lot of spikes, leather, and bondage gear that I don’t even know what it’s called in this video; there are also a lot of people upset about similarities between this video and Gaga’s stuff. Are you one of them? Do you have feelings about the overt bisexuality themes? Are you mostly just interested in the scene where Xtina unties that girl’s corset with her teeth? If you’re not sure how to feel, we have helpfully rounded up some other peoples’ opinions for you:

+ Hortense at Jezebel: “Everyone steals from everyone in pop culture: if you look solely at the work of music’s platinum blondes over the past 30 years or so, you can easily find style similarities between Christina and Gaga and Gwen Stefani and Madonna and Dale Bozzio of Missing Persons and Debbie Harry of Blondie and Cherie Currie of the Runaways and Wendy O. Williams of the Plasmatics, not to mention the influences each of these women brought to their own style via hundreds of years of icons that came before them. Aguilera’s “Not Myself Tonight” (again, NSFW) may have similarities to many of Gaga’s videos, but the major influence is clearly Madonna, who also pops up as a major influence in Gaga’s work, most notably her recent “Telephone” video.”

+ Queerty: “The mainstream female pop music category has, for months, been dominated by a one Lady Gaga. Christina, a former reigning queen of this genre, took some time off to have a baby and put on a deep red lipstick, but returns with a creative video for what’s really a mid-level song. Bubble dresses and cigarette sunglasses aside, we’re pleased to have another thin blonde re-enter the fray.”

+ Christina: “It just comes with the territory. That, in particular, is not even worth wasting the breath to comment on,” she told the Bert Show on Q100 in Atlanta Tuesday morning (April 20). “I’ve been around for over a decade and I think my work speaks for myself. [When I was younger] I would have engaged, been a little upset [about the comparisons]. There’s a bigger picture out there. I’ve got my son, my family, my work.”

+ Sia Furler:

+ MTV: Has a really good rundown of all the references and homages of the video, but really we just want to talk about Bad Romance: “From Christina’s cat-like crawl across the floor to her red lingerie, there’s a whole lot of “Not Myself Tonight” that’s reminiscent of “Bad Romance” though, for brevity’s sake, let’s just focus on the black pair of Carrera shades she wears at the beginning of the video. Gaga can be seen rocking an identical pair in “Romance,” although hers are white.”

QUEERTY HAS A BETTER VIDEO WITH GIRLS MAKING OUT IN IT:

It’s by a band called “Complicated Universal Cum” which is gross, but whatever:

Complicated Universal Cum – I can hardly wait from Fake Diamond Records on Vimeo.

WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS DINNER:

Obama was really funny at The White House Correspondents Dinner last night! (@gawker) Here’s the entire video! Watch it and LOL!:

GAGA:

New favorite Gaga rumor: There’s a rumor circulating that Lady Gaga had her leg amputated, including this “quote”: “This is the latest fashion I’m starting… I’m a world leader when it comes to wacky and weird shit.” (@gawker)

COMING OUT:

Also, if you missed it, we figured out who logically must be coming out on May 5th on People Magazine’s cover. Because there’s nothing like a false positive to inspire a tentative tipster to leap forward and set the record err—straight— this pontificating led to our intended result: now we know for real who’s coming out on May 5th: Chely Wright. (via gawker & queerty)

CHRIS COLFER:

Chris Colfer was on Ellen being super cute and like mega funny and talking all cute about Lady Gaga!

ARTIST:

We love finding out about new artists! Photographer Allison Michael Orenstein has a new series of portraits focused on transpeople and “creative types.” They are, in a word, smokin’. (@theadvocate)

ELLEN:

As far as I know Paris Hilton hasn’t done anything in like two years; I like to think that she was just waiting for the right opportunity, namely to work with Ellen. We can’t embed the video, but trust us, you will not regret clicking over. #perfect (@queerty)

Audiostraddle Weekly: Tegan & Sara Aussie Trip, Nicki Minaj’s Bisexuality

AN HORSE’S NEW VIDEO

An Horse has released a new video for their song, “Postcards.” It’s a nifty stop motion animation of Kate Cooper and Damon Cox crafting the anatomy of an emo businessman (or at least, that was my interpretation of the final product.) Watch carefully for the tiny paper poop making its way through the intestines. Watch the vid below and if you haven’t already, check out our interview with Kate Cooper here.

+

NICKI MINAJ CONFIRMS BISEXUALITY (DUH)

Silencing claims that Nicki Minaj has never actually come out as bisexual is this interview with blackgaygossip.com (yes, that’s a website). Here’s an excerpt.

Q: As an openly bisexual rapper, do you think hip-hop is getting more gay-friendly?
A: I think the world is getting more gay-friendly, so hip-hop is too. But it’s harder to imagine an openly gay male rapper being embraced. People view gay men as having no street credibility. But I think we’ll see one in my lifetime.
QED, friends. QED. Read the full interview.
+

JENNIFER KNAPP COMES OUT

We mentioned it already, but we’re going to mention it again. Christian musician Jennifer Knapp has come out as lesbian! She’s the Kelly Clarkson of the Christian music world, so this is big news. Read the full story.

TEGAN & SARA ARE COMING DOWN UNDER

Crystal wants to remind our Australian readers that the biggest event on the lesbian calendar is rapidly approaching – Tegan & Sara are touring in May and concerts are selling out fast! Extra dates have been announced for Brisbane and Melbourne, so get in quick. Crystal and Stef Mitchell will be there armed with press passes to capture all the action for Autostraddle, so we hope to see some of you there!

Note: Crystal wrote that headline, interpret it how you will.

HOW MUCH DO MUSICIANS MAKE?

Infographics are so hot right now. Check out this one that reflects how much musicians earn from digital sales compared to physical cd sales. The graphics speak for themselves, so start feeling bad about your iTunes store purchases now.

CRYSTAL CASTLES TOUR NORTH AMERICA

Electronic duo Crystal Castles have announced plans to play 12 North American tour dates in support of their upcoming sophomore album. They’re still playing  a lot of European dates before crossing the pond, so be sure to check out the full tour schedule at their official MySpace. If you’re unfamiliar with Crystal Castles, check out “Untrust Us” below and ready yourself for full-on addiction. (more…)

Lindsay Lohan’s PR Machine De-Gays Lesbian Relationship with Sam

LOHAN:
Well, finally it looks like the Lohan PR machine has clamped down and is safely restoring Lohan’s image in at least one area — her certified sex appeal to men. She has told The Sun that if she doesn’t get back together with Samantha, she’ll date a man next.

Although Lohan’s bisexuality was well-known within gay circles before Samantha Ronson became Lohan’s official Plus One, Lohan is now reading the standard script (likely fed to her by agents & handlers) — that her attraction to Sam was a surprise as she’s never liked women before and — hello magic 8 ball — she’ll defo never fall for another lady again! LOL!

Hold your aggressive comments for just a minute, angry ladies /otherwise-identified persons! (We’re sure you’ll find a reason to leave one anyhow, but hear us out first, it saves time.) Yes, we realize that being with Samantha and then “returning to men” still “qualifies” Lindsay as “bisexual” (whatever that means). But context is everything. We’ll get right back to that — first, here’s the interview:

Reports The Sun:

“I never really thought about women before, it kind of just happened with Samantha. It surprised me. We’re still in touch. We live in the same apartment building in LA and see each other often. She has always been one of my best friends.

“If I wasn’t with Samantha, I would probably be with a boy next. She’s the only woman I’ve been attracted to.

“We love each other. We might reconcile the relationship, maybe. I don’t know.”

It’s all about context.

The “I just went gay for one woman” storyline is a PR favorite and a certified technique employed to safely restore the perceived heterosexuality of a starlet, particularly when most mainstream media has been eagerly anticipating said starlet’s return to their heterosexual spank banks since Sam & Lindsay had their first public row.

But here’s why it matters that Lindsay’s people are making her tell this story now, and why it’s disappointing: this isn’t just a Hollywood story. Perhaps your first girlfriend tells a similar story? Perhaps you once did? Perhaps you’ve seen this story hurt people in seminal works including Tipping the Velvet, Brokeback Mountain, Rubyfruit Jungle, The Well of Loneliness…

We’re not discounting that many humans “go gay” for just one person, but officially declaring the rest of the gender off-limits so declaratively is a fundamentally problematic declaration when utilized to safely return to socially-sanctioned heterosexuality. (No, it’s not the same the other way around.) So confidently predicting the future is almost transparently employed to restore image or ensure self-rationalization.

Nikki Stevens on "The L Word" - very Lohan-esque

Of course, Lindsay’s affection for Sam cuts through even this public rationalization — notoriously keeping tabs on each other via public interviews with other people, it’s like, “FYI Sam, that doesn’t mean you! We can still get back together!”

Lohan on Feb 20th at Harrah's Las Vegas

This shit trickles down, y’all. Bisexuality, we know, is misunderstood, and until gays become socially accepted, your parents & friends might still be hoping that just like Lohan, that girlfriend of yours is an anomaly, and after her, you’ll also be able to declaratively ensure a permanent return to penis. And hell, if you are bisexual, maybe you will only date dudes after! But maybe you won’t! Nobody knows yet, the future is a large & uncertain place.

After all, when it comes to the rest of her narrative, Lohan is anything but certain, telling OK Magazine regarding her career, “I don’t know. I can’t decide what’s going to happen. I don’t want to know, actually. That’s the nice thing about life. It’s a bit mysterious.”

Honestly, the fact that it took this long (as far as we know) for her to say this is a minor miracle! And perhaps suggests Lindsay Lohan is a lot stronger and more self-actualized than people want to paint her out to be. Regardless, we’re hopeful she’ll continue to be herself regardless of what public image she’s encouraged to maintain.

Lindsay also talked extensively about her relationship with Samantha Ronson. It was a favorable review:

“I think Samantha was growing as a celebrity and a musician and I think that might have scared her family. But I’ve always been her biggest supporter and, yeah, I love her.

“All the fighting stuff was just because all her friends had got involved and made me an outcast, which wasn’t fair to Samantha. I think it was a jealousy thing in terms of her becoming more famous than the rest of them.

“She kind of does what she wants now. It’s changed, so who’s to say we won’t be together again?”

But she is happy to talk about Sam and claims most of their time together was happy and peaceful, despite dozens of pictures of Lindsay looking worse for wear after nights out with Sam ended in tears.

She says: “Maybe I was upset, or we had a tiff about something stupid.

“A picture can tell a thousand different words and lies. They want the negative, they want the drama. They want to say, ‘Oh Lindsay’s distraught, here we go again, should Sam leave?’.

“Mostly it was great. Everyone has ups and downs, it’s normal. But in front of the public eye they’re going to take the downs and make it seem like they’re a million times worse. That comes with the territory.

“It was a big deal for me because I’ve never had a relationship as public as that, especially being with a girl for the first time. That was really scary for me. But I didn’t care because I love her.”

MUPPETS:
As you know, we are big fans of The Muppets here. And we were excited therefore to see this list of the Top Ten Sexiest Muppets — well, first we saw it on ohnotheydidnt where the poster managed to make this seemingly innocent list kinda violating, like kicking it off with Kermit bent over and his you know what open. (@ontd, @hecklerspray)

JOHNNY WEIR:

GAGA: Advertising Age has a great editorial about why Lady Gaga is the perfect star for this moment in time and how she’s used social media to accelerate her whirlwind climb to the top.

All parties who work with her on her label, management and marketing teams cite Gaga herself as the ultimate brains behind many of her creative and social-media ideas and tactics.

“When you’re dealing with someone as good as Gaga, a lot of it is how to stay the fuck out of the way,” said Steve Berman, Universal Music’s president of sales and marketing. “Gaga has worked tirelessly in keeping up daily if not hourly communication with her fans and growing fanbase through all the technology that exists now.”

Yes, AND WE LOVE HER FOR THAT. (@adage)

TELEPHONE: New deets keep leaking about Beyonce and Lady Gaga’s music video for Telephone. “I am such a huge fan of hers. We just filmed her video two weeks ago in Los Angeles, and it’s gonna be so crazy,” said Beyoncé, who also worked with Gaga on her clip for “Video Phone.” “I don’t want to give too much away because I don’t want her to be upset, but it’s a part two of ‘Paparazzi.’ She’s just so smart and she’s becoming an icon in her own right.” (@mtv)

BEST BUDS: Natalie Portman and her production company are working on a movie called “Best Buds.” You guessed it, it’s a stoner comedy, and yes, she’ll be starring in it. If you’re like me and your roommate once made you watch Pineapple Express every night for 10 days straight, this is very good news. (@newsinfilm)

LEZZYS: Hey kids, guess what? We’re nominated for a Lezzy Award! Isn’t that cute! You should probs vote for us if you have time. Vote in the NEW BLOG category, if you would. Thanks, you lovely readers, you! (@lezzys)

TIME: Oh hey, speaking of contests, Time Magazine is taking suggestions for best 25 blogs of the year. All you have to do is tweet your suggestion @Time. We’d love you forever if you picked us! But you don’t have to. Freedom of choice and all that. (@time)

Much Ado About Bisexuality

LABELS: Marcus Morgan of The Guardian wants to “Put the B back in LGBT” because “bisexuality is often dismissed or disparaged, so many come out as gay instead.”

Morgan has some progressive thinking and worthwhile analogies, especially when talking about the confusion over labels:

Oddly, the only people not confused about bisexuality are the bisexuals themselves, with groups like The Bisexual Index advocating a clearer definition – they simply suggest anyone who is attracted to more than one gender should consider identifying as bi. It’s not about amount of attraction either, just as simply preferring lettuce to liver doesn’t make you a vegan.

He’s also aware of the scorn bisexuals can face from both the straight and gay communities:

For a bi on the gay scene, the closet has two doors, a bit like an airlock – behind one of them is a cosy atmosphere with no pressure, and behind the other is what appears to be a vacuum.

However, his primary point is a little problematic. He suggests that everyone is bisexual — but he’s not talking about Girls Gone Wild, he’s talking about y’all homos who claim to be all-homo and apparently are not. Who knew?

A lot of the people using the LGBT scene are bisexuals in the closet – they came out as gay or lesbian because they knew that would get a good reception.

We’re all told bisexuality is a phase that everyone goes through and grows out of, and no one’s a ‘proper’ bisexual, even though everyone’s bisexual really.

So basically the spin to his argument is that more gays should admit that they are also bisexual, because once upon a time they dated people from the opposite gender. This is similar to the case recently made by Michael Eurie of Ugly Betty, who identifies as “queer,” in the February Advocate:

I’ve been in a relationship for a while now, and if you just met the two of us together we’d be ‘gay.’ But that somehow means anything that happened before [we met] didn’t count-and I don’t feel that way. I know that some people feel that way. They were with women, but it always felt wrong. But it didn’t for me. It felt right at the time. It didn’t work out, but it also didn’t work out with other men-many times. That’s why ‘gay’ never seemed right.

So is everyone bisexual? in Jezebel’s reaction to Morgan’s article, they say “no.” In general, labeling anyone — without their consent — is a bad idea and takes away individual agency. Labels aren’t all bad, especially when they’re self-defined. I appreciate that Marcus Morgan is trying to destigmatize bisexuality, but it’s just as limiting to call everyone bi as it is to say that bisexuality is a myth. Jezebel adds:

Someone who identifies as bi would be more qualified to answer these questions than I am. But I will say that while a label can limit, being part of a community can empower — and it might not be entirely beneficial to define a community so broadly that it includes people who would never admit to being part of it.

I’ve discussed bisexuality with a lot of people over the years, including our Editor-in-Chief Riese (who has much more informed views on the subject, as she once wrote a book about female bisexuality and identifies as ‘queer’). It seems to me, based on limited observation and a few original thoughts, that the Kinsey scale is still a pretty useful tool. Sexuality (and gender, too) isn’t black and white, and as Morgan points out, the myths that accompany even the popular definition of bisexuality are incredibly rigid as well: “Bisexuals are supposed to be equally attracted to men and women – always androgyny, but never to trans people – and always at the same time. They supposedly need to have identical amounts of sex with both, and don’t notice the differences between them (which might get painful in bed, I reckon).”

We’re all special snowflakes, right? It’s hard to imagine that two categories — or three! — would ever be sufficient for any aspect of identity — and gays and bisexuals alike benefit from expanded definitions of sexual expression. The idea that there’s only one way to have sex or have a relationship is at the core of our legal & cultural struggles.

Invalidating other people’s identity should be something the queer community avoids at all costs — and trying to tell gay people that they’re actually bisexual seems a bit counterproductive as well, and not exactly as expansive as it is when approached from the opposite direction. In the end, we’re all fighting for the same things: the freedom to self-identify without consequence.

See Also:

+ The Klein Sexual Orientation Grid. (@klein institute)
+ The Bisexual Resource Institute
+ Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics by Jennifer Baumgardner.
+ Interview with
+ Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life (Riese says she read this entire book, it is like 5,000 pages long), by Marjorie Garber.
+ Bi the Way: a documentary about bisexuality (the trailer is here)

MARRIAGE: As a performance art piece supporting marriage equality (two of our fav things!), two straight strangers got married in Florida. Brian Feldman, the artists, put out a call for willing ladies on Craigslist. [Hannah] Miller turned up for her courthouse ceremony in a short thrift-shop bridal gown and a veil, with a rainbow-colored bouquet of paper flowers to toss. When someone congratulated her, she demurred.

“Actually, I think you should be shaming me. This is a disgusting thing I have to do. It’s terrible — no offense to Brian.” (@orlandosentinel)

SINGLE MAN: The Guardian also has an article looking at the treatment of gayness in Colin Firth’s latest movie, A Single Man. The promotion materials have been, predictably, de-gay-ified. What’s less obviously explicable is the attitude taken by some of the supposedly enlightened. A widely approved line seems to be that A Single Man is about grief as anyone would experience it. Its protagonist could just as easily have been heterosexual. To suggest otherwise would imply that gay people are different, and we’re all now much too grownup to think along such distastefully primitive lines. (@guardian)

MADDOW: A Washington Post profile of Rachel Maddow focuses on how her sexuality affects her coverage, focusing on the DADT issue. Her show may have launched Dan Choi’s activist career, but Maddow says she doesn’t see herself as an activist, just a journalist. “It is useful for me to tell my opinion on some things I cover. But I’m not trying to get people to march in the streets or call their congressmen. I don’t believe that’s my role.” (@wapo)

NEW HAMPSHIRE: Just months after the loss of marriage equality in Maine, as well as New York and New Jersey, the New Hampshire House will vote Wednesday on a proposal to repeal gay marriage in the state. The judiciary committee has recommended the House kill that measure, as well as a proposed constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman. (@wcax) (@ap)

STILETTO: Sunday night, Team Autostraddle attended a Valentine’s Day benefit for The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation at the Maritime Hotel/Stiletto. Our BFF Grace Chu was also there and has a cute recap of the night. Don’t miss the picture of our photoblogger Robin, for reals! (@gracethespot)

L to R: Alex, Carly, Riese, Robin, Brooke, Sam

Miss February, Riese, Alex, and Stylist Sarah

[riese add thoughts here? i wish i could insert a screenshot of your wonderful email, as i feel that about wraps it up]

The Girls of Candy Slice Comedy: The Autostraddle Photoshoot & Interview

Recently I had the opportunity to photograph the hilarious and hot ladies of Candy Slice, a NYC all-female comedy troupe of eight who met in the improv program at the famous Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theater and named their group after late comedian and SNL-star Gilda Radner’s “Candy Slice & The Slicers.”

The troupe performs their monthly variety show, “Up Late With Candy Slice,” in Manhattan, and their self-produced videos have garnered over a million hits on YouTube, including their very own behind the scenes spoof of the Beyoncé and Lady Gaga video for “Video Phone” (which also appeared on Perez Hilton):

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The most amazing thing about that video? They wrote the parody BEFORE the actual “Video Phone” video was released! They’re obviously oracles.

In the era of Tina Fey, Wanda Sykes, Amy Poehler and Kristin Wiig, Candy Slice is an example of a growing trend of confident, funny ladies taking over the comedy scene.

For the shoot, I had the help of talented wardrobe stylist, Sara Medd, who brought the bright threads, accessories, and lots of sweet props. We listened to Gaga, played with hair fans, and ate a lot of candy. Riese and Alex came by to ask the girls some inappropriate questions.

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Hi! I’m Riese! This is our interview, which we did on camera. Because so much of the pleasure of the Candy Slice Comedy Group is PHYSICAL, we’ve included some screenshots here & there for you. But probs you will be craving more, which is one of two reasons why we’re putting together a behind-the-scenes video of the interview and our subsequent photoshoot to debut later this month. The second reason for the video we can’t tell you yet, it’s a BIG SURPRISE. Get excited, these girls are f*cking hilarious… and cute! And maybe one or two of them are maybe partially or fully gay… which is really just the icing on the cake of awesome.

So here’s our interview with Jennifer (who is also our Calendar Girl for January!), Anna, Kirsten, Shamikah, Claire, Regina and Julie!

In the Beginning …

Riese: How did you guys all meet?

Jennifer: Well, we all met at UCB. Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre.
Anna: That’s not true. That is a lie! Tell the true story.
Kristen: It’s sort of a – sort of a… we are all involved in UCB but most of us met through Shamikah.
Shamikah: None of them had a brown friend. Alright? This is what happened: each of them was trying to get a brown friend and I was like “Oh my gosh all of you do improv.” So then we all got together and MESHED.
Claire: It was our conduit.
Jennifer: I’m brown in the summer!

Riese: What was the timeline?
Kristen: We started getting together – there were six of us over the summer and then we brought in two new members in the early fall, Julie (she waves) and Tracy who is not here, but she’s still in the group.
Anna: Tracy plays Lady Gaga in the Beyonce/Lady Gaga video.
Alex: Where is that bitch? Get her here.
Anna: I wish that we could, but I think she’s out of state. What state is she in?
Kristen: I think she’s in St. Louis.
Anna: I thought she was in Illinois?
Regina: I think St. Louis is partially in Illinois.

The Candy Spice Girls

Alex: So which one’s like Sporty, which one’s like Scary? What sort of Slices do we have here?
Kristen: (to Shamikah) You’re our Ethnic Slice.
Shamikah: You can tell she only has one brown friend, she doesn’t know what else to say to the brown people.

Claire: Jennifer’s definitely Sexy Slice.
Kristen: She’s even sexy by accident, when she’s not trying.
Shamikah: Yeah, we’re like, “What funny thing can we do?” And Jen’s like, “I can do the salsa in a bikini. That’s funny right? That’s funny.”
Jennifer: That’s me. Yeah.

Anna: Claire’s really good at playing a stripper. I don’t know why.
Claire: I like it.
Shamikah: Claire plays guys. She’s played a man in like every skit.
Claire: And I like playing guys.
Anna: She’s a man or she’s a stripper.
Riese: So you like to play sexually powerful roles.
Claire: Yes I do.

Julie: Kristen is a wizard in most of the skits.
Kristen: Or a ninja.
Jennifer: A ninja wizard. She’s really good at playing E.T.
Kristen: Or E.T. Mythical creatures, magic …
Julie: They all do this ..

Regina: And then it’s in your face and it’s scary. It’s wizardry!

Anna: Regina’s like the “voice of reason who sounds like she’s been smoking since she was five years old” type.
Regina: [in long time smoker voice] Yeah, they have to listen to this a lot. That’s what they get. It keeps them in line. The little gal-pals, they love it.
Anna: I think my favorite is when she played Tinkerbell in one of our shows. And she was in her Tinkerbell costume and she was just like “Mwahhahhaaaaa”. It was terrifying for the children.
Regina: They loved it.

Hopes & Dreams

Riese: What’s your ultimate dream as a group?
Anna: To go to Disneyworld.

Kristen: No but we want to make stuff up, we want to be able to do whatever we want and produce it. So our dream is a place where we can all come together, and if we have an idea we also have a platform, people to act in it and funny people to do what they need to do. What’s really awesome about these girls is that you’re like, “Hey put on this wig and act like a giant in fairyland,” and they’re like, “OK”. And that’s a cool thing. Right?

[EVERYONE AGREES]

Kristen: Orrrr act like Adam Lambert, whatever you wanna do.
Jennifer: Or E.T.
Alex: I heard a little something about an Adam Lambert video. Did you guys do that?
Anna: Ohhhhh — yeah. Claire is gonna be playing Adam Lambert. She plays a really good Adam Lambert. She also plays Josh Groban in a sketch we have coming up. Give us your Josh Groban.
Riese: Yeah, do it. (pause) DO IT!

Claire: [singing] You raised me up, so I can stand on mountains. You raised me up!
Shamikah: So we were doing this in an elevator in Regina’s building and there was a guy with his poodle and I was like, “It’s okay, can your dog be in the video? Keep singing Claire!” And he was like — [does “brush your shoulders off” motion]

Anna: We like to make fun of social networking sites like Facebook a lot. We just find them ridiculously funny, even though all of us are obsessed with them.
Jennifer: Not all of us. Julie is not on Facebook.
Julie: (shakes her head and points) Neither is Kristen.
Shamikah: Kristen goes on the Candy Slice Facebook.
Kristen: And I’m on Twitter. Forty-two followers.
Regina: What!? Suck on that!
Anna: Remember back in the day when you wanted to hang out with your friends? But you had to call their house and if they weren’t home you couldn’t – it was like their mom and she was like (deep mom voice), “Oh, she’s at the mall, sorry.” And you couldn’t get a hold of her? That’s Kristen.
Kristen: (waves) Hi!
Anna: Then pagers came out and she wouldn’t have any of that.
Kristen: Oh yeah, I’m mysterious.
Claire: Julie’s good at playing psycho killer housewives. And her facial expressions are awesome.
Julie: I’m either myself or a disaffected version of myself [says this in a disaffected voice]. And those are the two things that I work on.

Life on Stage

Kristen

Riese: Have you had any ideas for skits that totally failed that you thought were going to be awesome?
Kristen: Most.
Anna: No.
(laughter)
Alex: You guys perform onstage, right?
Claire/Shamikah: January 22nd.
Regina: (angry smoker voice) Mark your calendar Alex. Mark it right now.
(laughter as Alex marks her calendar)

Alex: Tell us about those shows.
Kristen: Let’s tell them about our terrible, terrible improv show.
Anna: Which one?
Kristen: We had a terrible, terrible show that was really bad. It was a Halloween show and we decided to wear costumes and…
Anna: Someone said it was a bad idea in the first place. [it was Anna]
Kristen: Anna thought it was a bad idea in the first place. And she was right. She’s always right. She’s not always right. Right?
Anna: Wrong.
Kristen: OK, so we all went 100% on our costumes and forgot that we had to show up and do improv, so every single scene was reduced to screaming or some sort of…
Jennifer: Airplane, we had an airplane scene!
Kristen: With screaming and everybody in the scene. Then we had sort of the lowest common denominator in improv is like “I’m black” or “rape” and we had that in every scene practically. So we were really mad at ourselves.
Claire: It was a great learning block.
Kristen: And we all made ourselves watch the video of it. Which was so painful.
Jennifer: But it was cool because we are all in costume, so maybe you didn’t know. I was the Grinch. I was the Grinch!
Claire: I was dressed up as a piece of shit.
Regina: Literally, she was.

Shamikah

Shamikah:We wanna do a show that’s like late night, but with improv in it. We’re gonna be Chelsea Handler soon. [Anna disagrees] She’s the only female on late night! She is! There’s nobody else!
Anna: We’re like the Sarah Silverman, if Sarah Silverman was more than one person.
Riese: Wanda Sykes.
Kristen: Oh yeah, that’s right.
Shamikah: She does late night?
Regina: C’mon, brownie.
Shamikah: How do I not know what every brownie is doing? So our show is like; we do an interview, and then some improv, a musical guest, it’s like a late night TV show.
Alex: That sounds cool.
Regina: Improv for musical guests, which is actually really awesome, audiences really enjoy that.
Kristen: And our guests are celebrities.
Jennifer: A-listers.
Shamikah: We had Angelina Jolie.
Kristen: Amanda Peet.
Jennifer: Brad Pitt, those kids, they join too.
Shamikah: Those kids, we had to improvise with them, improvising with kids is not easy.
Anna: Especially when they don’t know English.
Shamikah: Or how to talk.
Claire: They just always try to steal the spotlight.
Kristen: Especially babies are the worst though because they are just so cute.
Shamikah: Oooh actually, we did have a recent video semi ruined by a baby. I shouldn’t even say that, but the baby wouldn’t stop! We thought it would be a good idea to have the baby in it, but she just cried the whole time.
Kristen: Candy Slice hates babies.
Anna: No, no stop, that’s bad PR.
Regina: The number nine Candy Slicer will not be Baby.
Jennifer: We lovvvve babies.
Shamikah: Candy Slice kills babies!
Regina: What? Comedy! COMEDY!
(laughter)

Regina

Leaders of the Pack

Riese: Do you guys have positions within the group?
Anna: Yes. I’m the marketing director. Everyone, spit your gum out.
Shamikah: I’m the creative director of the group.
Riese: (to Claire) What’s your position?
Claire: Jen and I are co-chairs of the Social Chair.
Riese: Oh, what does that entail?
Claire: Basically we do the party atmosphere. Par-taaaay!
Riese: You sound like your job is like the culture guy on Queer Eye.
Jennifer: (puts a tissue over her mouth) I use the tissues and I try to lure you to come to our shows. (laughter) No, we create events, you know, we put amazing events together.
Shamikah: Fundraisers…
Jennifer: Fundraisers, and like everything under the sun.

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NEXT:
“We all do different things, whether that’s Kristen doing her Dungeons & Dragons thing, or the rest of us, doing normal people things.”

Jillian Michaels: First Lady to Ever Come Out (Bisexual) in “Ladies Home Journal”

COMING OUT: Biggest Loser coach & personal trainer Jillian Michaels told Ladies Home Journal she would be glad to be in a healthy relationship with anyone, male or female. SheWired asks: “Really, did she really just sort of admit to her lesbian tendencies in Ladies Home Journal of all places?”

Just Jared has this transcription from the upcoming cover story:

On love: “Let’s just say I believe in healthy love. If I fall in love with a woman, that’s awesome. If I fall in love with a man, that’s awesome. As long as you fall in love…it’s like organic food. I only eat healthy food, and I only want healthy love!”

Firstly, are we the only ones who for some reason has thought this entire time that Jillian Michaels was already an out lesbian? Or are we just getting her confused with Jackie Warner and Lacey Stone and the woman with the cute hair who was on the Sweet cruise Brianna Stockton? Let us google this for ourselves.

Okay! Back! This is why: because there was a lot of gossip about her r’ship (ex-relationship or friendship)? with Vanessa Marcil on the interwebs! Like when Page Six said that Jillian Michaels and Vanessa Marcil were canoodling:

Meanwhile, NBC’s “Biggest Loser” trainer Jillian Michaels was seen canoodling on the dance floor with actress Vanessa Marcil.

Jillian said on her facebook: “My baby is FINALLY home. So funny. I never used to care about being away from people I dated. I loved having the space. Now, I seem to count the seconds. Am i getting old and soft?”

UPDATE: Commenter “KK” has informed us that Jillian is NOT dating Vanessa Marcil, but rather she is allegedly dating Heidi Rhoades, who works at Nettwerk Music Group, they used to work with Uh Huh Her. This is Heidi, Kathy Griffin, and Jillian:

DRUGS: Casey Johnson’s death is just the latest in a string of celebrity deaths linked to drug use. Lindsay Lohan spoke to RadarOnline about how prescription drug use is ruining lives.

“When are people going to realize that these drugs cause you to do things you normally wouldn’t and will ultimately destroy your lives!?

Knock me all you want, I am trying, not lying! It’s time to take a stand folks. Now! God bless Casey and her family.”

(@nydailynews)

There’s plenty of Casey news out there today, we’ve updated some of it in our post about the passing of the 30-year-old heiress. Here, MTV looks at Casey’s family tree.

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TRANS: Korean Actress Lee Na-young, “a symbol of cheery Audrey Hepburn-esque grace and femininity,” will be playing a transgender character in the upcoming comedy “Lady Daddy,” “complete with a necktie and a mustache.” There’s a lot of quotation mark abuse in this article:

Photo caption: “In the upcoming movie “Lady Daddy” actress Lee Na-young, left, stars as a transgendered woman who must “revert” to being a man when a boy claiming to be her son comes knocking at her door.”

Na-young says she always wanted to play a male character ever since she saw Cate Blanchett play Bob Dylan in “I’m Not There.” She says “that she never questioned her gender identity but was felt comfortable with the shoot because she prefers sporting a boyish style.”

“Lee Na-young was still pretty and goddess-like even when she cross-dressed as a man,” complimented her co-star Kim. “I think I would be able to fall in love with a cross-dresser if she is like Lee Na-young.”

SATURDAYS: Do you know who The Saturdays are? I didn’t. Turns out they’re a band from Britain, but for now, all you need to know is they posed for FHM’s February issue. And oh my stars:

The best part is that they tell you how to date each girl! Obvs that’s for guys. But a girl can pretend:

GAGA: “If you’re a dancer, or know anything about dancing, you know a little about Laurieann Gibson. She just confirmed via TWITTER that she is going to be doing the choreography for ‘Telephone’. Laurie Ann also choreographed the music video for Lady Gaga’s ‘Bad Romance’.” (@ontd)

HEROINES: Hayden has no complaints about her lesbian scenes –  “I absolutely enjoyed playing that kind of complicated relationship. Oh, yeah. I kissed a girl and I liked it.'” E reports that “Hayden admits the new element in Claire’s story has made the series more exciting for her – in fact she can’t wait to get her script each week to find out what she’ll be up to next in the superheroes drama.” (@daily record)

ELLEN: The Ellen Show is back on air after a two-week hiatus. Here’s an inside look at her new CoverGirl commercial and other funny funny stuff:

SHERLOCK: The woman in charge of Arthur Conan Doyle’s estate has made it clear that Sherlock Holmes won’t go gay. After Robert Downey, Jr., made a “latent homosexuality” joke on late night tv, the lady flipped out. She announced she would never approve of a gay Holmes because it would go against the books. (Holmes & Watson are one of the most ambiguously gay couples in fiction, but whatever.) I think all that did was prove which side of the homophobia fence she’s on. (@cinemablend)

ROSIE: On her radio show on Monday, Rosie O’Donnell went into a little more detail about her new girlfriend: “The former talk-show host admitted that because she never really dated anyone once she got famous (she began her relationship with her former partner Kelli Carpenter in 1997) that she wasn’t prepared for the kind of attention that comes from a new celebrity coupling.

“I felt like Madonna for a moment. Truthfully I’m not really that kind of famous where people follow me,” O’Donnell said. (@cnn)

“The Real World” Recap: Washington DC, Show Me Your Bisexuals!

Hey, remember that MTV show The Real World? It premiered in 1992 and was secretly replaced in 2002 by what we’ll call “The Real World Gone Wild.” The original Real World placed a carefully selected six to eight 18-to-25-year-olds into a house in a carefully selected city to see what would happen when this diverse human group “stopped being polite and started getting real.” (With cameras in their faces.) It was a social experiment; a compelling & entertaining mini-doc which provided a fairly representative emotional portrait of twentysomething America at that time.

Then something changed. Jezebel has this look back at the last ten years of The Real World, and well — it’s nothing like the first eight. Amid an increasingly reality-saturated market in the genre they’d basically invented, the show began floundering in the ’00s. In 2001, unbeknownst to the cast, The Real World installed night-vision cameras, Big Brother-style, in its Chicago house to capture hookups. In 2002, things stopped getting polite and started getting stupid.

The Real World Las Vegas marked the beginning of the end. The insanely (if traditionally) good-looking cast shacked up on the top floor of The Palm; that glossy slick shrine to commerce, and bada-bing, bada-boom, bisexual threesome in the hot tub! Brynn, Trishelle and the mutual object of their affections, Steven, went at it and it was hot, but ordinary. The season ambled on; they went to the gym, worked at a bar, and threw forks at each other. Also; they cried a lot. In previous seasons, you could count on ME to be the one crying a lot. Ensuing seasons pursued substanceless drama; actions spurred not by cultural conflicts or challenged ethics or bizarre living conditions but by alcohol, primal sexual desire, or a desire to be famous. The San Diego House’s rap sheet included alleged rape & unrelated arrests and the entire Key West cast was employed at a spray-tan salon.

We like girls making out in hot tubs, obviously. But we can handle a little more than that, too, like interesting girls making out in hot tubs, and you did it so well before!

But is it really a choice, or has The Real World’s original intent gone old-fashioned in a world where most 18-25 year olds are no longer shocked by homosexuality or unable to fathom the idea of growing up poor? Did the show change to compete with trashy reality TV or did it change because there weren’t enough hearty meanings to mine anymore? Many homophobes know better now anyhow and would hold their tongue on camera. No one wants a glaad alert taken out on their ass. That’s so gay.

Regardless, it’s unfortunate because  The Real World was one of our earliest allies for the good kind of visibility. Queers all over the world saw a life they could live & a city where they could love and be loved. We saw living breathing people with supportive communities. We saw semi grown-up gays who were unashamed to be gay, which was practically revolutionary.

The Real World is where many American teenagers saw their first gay person — Norm, Pedro, Genesis, Dan, Ruthie, Danny, Beth — and Pedro put a human face on the AIDS crisis that no one ever forgot. But when TRW became just another 22 minutes of fodder for The Soup, the show ceased its boundary-breaking representations of sexuality in favor of representations of sex. Bisexuality wasn’t something “lipstick lesbian” Genesis grappled with, it was something girls did when they were drunk in the hot tub.

But maybe it’s us — we’ve heard so many tragic stories on television told by the people who lived through said tragedies that we’re just desensitized. An alcoholic parent becomes the required story of a certain character type, rather than a real, full, visceral aspect of a unique person’s personality.

Anyhow, because The Real World: DC‘s bisexual girl actually seems more intelligent than the Ikki Twins, we thought we’d check it out!

The recent Brooklyn season (featuring Katelynn, the program’s first trans cast member) gave critics some hope for the show’s future, and so many fans are hoping that D.C redeems itself. This season, many of the kids are all doing actual political work (at The Human Rights Campaign, The Washington Blade, Africa Action and the gay bar Halo!). Also we have a crush on Emily!

The most striking difference at first glance between older seasons and new seasons is that these kids are very self-aware of their on-screen portrayls. They know their roles. Also possibly many of them are ready for a lifetime of related gigs: hosting Miami Club nights, speaking at colleges and competing in The Real World-Road Rules Challenges. There’s no shame in that — who wouldn’t want to get paid to do athletic challenges to compete for more money on the beach with a bunch of good-looking people — but it’s another thing that’s Changed and which applicants are prepared for. Reunion specials are almost repetitive and hardly something you would’ve taped (on VHS), like you did when the first few seasons held their “reunions.”

We have a lot less Andres, Dominics, Mohammeds, Aarons, Irenes, and others content to vanish at the shows conclusion.  This isn’t just the start of six months, this could be the start of a career. So who’s ready to be America’s Next Top Token?

So the first episode of The Real World DC aired last night.

On a scale of one to ten, I don’t think Emily the bisexual is going to make out with a ton of girls like Tila Tequila did when she was on MTV.

The Real World: D.C.  Premiere Recap: Looks Can Be DCeiving

1. Real World 2.0

Did you know this season was especially special because of the magic of real-time tweeting? A tweeter known as RealWorldDCNEWZ has been reporting on the show’s every moves. The Washingtonian provides a run-down of exactly how they already know about everything that happened and who everyone is — it feels meta, maybe, if I know what meta means. This facebook group has tracked the cast all season and has a lot of weird photos about just how “real” it feels to have cameras around you everywhere. Cast members weren’t allowed to tweet or facebook from the house though.

The Anti Real World blog has also been keeping close tabs on the enemy.

In this video, a Real World crew rudely tries to block a news anchor trying to interview fans outside the house:

2. The Cast:

Ashley is 22, from California, and moved to Texas to be with her boyfriend and then they broke up. Ashley loves Barack Obama. She also loves talking & gasping. When she was a kid her stepdad tried to kill her but Christ got her through it. This picture of her is the worst picture of her ever taken, she’s way cuter:

Mike is 21 and from Colorado. You probs already know that he’s a bisexual, but that won’t come out until later, at their first meal around a large table (that’s how this show works, pay attention). Mike works for a rental car company and owns a large boat.

Andrew is from Denver. He’s a virgin who keeps saying he’s not a virgin. Actually I don’t know if he’s a virgin, but I’m pretty sure he’s a virgin. (watch andrew’s greatest moments here.) In Andrew’s home tape, Andrew is wearing a robe and socks, drinking wine in front of a fake fireplace while talking about ladies. He’s a comic book artist. Obvs. Unfortunately Andrew’s comic book stardom dreams were deferred when his comics were accused of being offensive to “lesbians and women and stuff like that.”

Emily on Andrew: “”He’s making me laugh, he’s not wearing a Jesus shirt, I think we’re going to get along.”

Emily! Hello our favorite poetess bisexual Emily! Emily was raised in a church cult. They lived, breathed & ate the bible. But a girl can only eat so much Bible before she starts to crave some tattoos and body piercing.

Andrew on Emily: “I wanted to improve my chances of getting laid by forcing Emily to be my roommate.”

Callie is 21 and from Texas. Just like my ex-boyfriend who yelled at me for cursing in D.C’s Ronald Regan Airport, Ronald Regan is Callie’s favorite president. The producers drop Callie, looking cherub and wide-eyed and small-townie, in the middle of D.C. where one black man is playing his bongo drums. A few cars drive by. The camera swerves aggressively around Callie, which might be why she thinks she is lost and keeps looking at maps. We cut to her Home Video where Callie explains that where she comes from, there are no bongo drums or cars, only a Jail and a Greyhound Bus Station, and Momma and Poppa sure have been real quiet since they went down to the basement for moonshine last week

Ashley on Callie: “It kinda bugs me that Callie doesn’t know where she stands on the political spectrum, but I’m kinda hoping she goes left. Because left is right.” (wink!)

Ty is hails from the bad part of Baltimore. His Mom abandoned him and when he was five he got adopted. In his home video he shows us crackhouses and his Hot Muscles. His girlfriend apparently dumped him at the bus station ’cause she doesn’t like him living with a bunch of other girls. That’s cold. But Ty doesn’t care, he’s about to go live with a bunch of girls!

Erika is from Chicago and likes rock ‘n roll and rock ‘n roll accessories; like tattoos & fast cars & Manic Panic. Her boyfriend isn’t as cute as her, but is probs very nice. Her musical goal is to meet producers, get in the studio, and record her material. Good plan. Rumor has it she left the show early ’cause of rumors circulating about her past. That could be a rumor though.

Josh on Erika: “I’m gonna be so hung up on the fact that the girls are so hot, oh my gosh, it’s gonna be hard to keep it in the cage. I’m kinda hung up on Erika.”

Josh is 23 and from Philadelphia. He also loves music, which means he’s Erika’s type but omg, they both have significant others so now they can’t bone OR CAN THEY. Josh was in lockup and in gangs but now he’s on the up-and-up. So basically he’s gonna be the one who keeps his cool while everyone else flips out about cereal bowls.

As the cast members meet each other in twosomes, they mostly gush to each other about how well they think they’re going to get along. This will be very useful in Tribal Council.

3. Guess What the House is Big

OH MY GOD LOOK AT THE HOUSE IT’S SO BIG JUST LIKE THE HOUSE IN ALL THE OTHER SEASONS OF THE REAL WORLD

ASAHHHH OH MY GOD THERE’S A HOT TUB OMG THERE’S A HOT TUB

IT’S LINCOLN!

HELLO! THAT IS SO MY BED RIGHT THERE

Mike & Ashley both refuse to sleep under a picture of Ronald Regan, I have a feeling Callie is gonna eat that sucker right up if she’s not too full from eating Emily’s leftover Bible or the Subway Sandwiches Product-Placed all over the house.

4. Central Typecasting

The first 15 minutes of a Real World premiere is always the same. You know, 4-6 of the eight cast members will drink some Snapple, claim some beds, play the Casio, listen to Erika “sing,” talk crap about each other in interviews, get boners, go to the bathroom, try to figure out when it would be appropriate to get drunk and/or naked, wonder who’s secretly gay or Asian, squeal and seem overall v.excited about life as they wait for the Gays and Ethnics to arrive.

Everyone thinks Andrew is the weirdest person they’ve ever met, clearly they’ve never checked out the kids hunched over those fancy decks of cards in the corner of the lunchroom. Those are his friends on Second Life.

Ashley says, “I’m waiting for the really hot black guy with the big muscles to come in!” Aren’t we all, sweetie. And speak of the Angel of Christ, the doorbell rings!

Ashley: “You guys we have roommates!” [Ashley runs exicted to the door, is greeted by a black guy with big muscles]
Andrew: [from downstairs] “I hope he’s black!”
[Ashley, thrilled, brings her catch downstairs]
Ashley: “I told you he was gonna be a black guy!”
Andrew: “Where’s the lesbian?”

Emily says Ty looks like her ex-boyfriend. I wanted Ashley to look like her ex-girlfriend, but I’ll settle b/c Ty is defo the cutest boy and he keeps his clothes neat in the closet which is nice. Later Callie & Erika will move all his clothes for him when they decide to switch rooms, and they’ll use a towel to transport his clean underwear, and this will confuse me.

These kids are all so happy! It must be because they’re between 18-25 so they don’t know yet about how life is. What do you think, Micheal Sera Andrew? I think Andrew is trying to be meta on purpose, and I like that in a man.

Andrew: “I kid around about it, but I’m not racist. I’m a big basketball fan. You can’t be a basketball fan and a racist.”

5. The Gods > The Gays

Emily reveals that she’s bisexual and “open” to things right away, which goes over well per ushe as there are no Southern Virgins or John in the Cowboy Hats to jump in and condemn. The guys, just like they did in ’92, and always will, mostly nod with smarmy approval, thinking about Trishelle and Brynn in the hot tub.

Unfortunately Emily’s revelation is not followed by Dani Campbell’s surprise guest appearance and subsequent trip to the hot tub with tequila. Actual tequila, the drink, not the girl.

The cast collectively laments the lack of a gay guy, which happens every season so they can give us shots of the gay guy awkwardly wondering if his hair looks bad.

Later, at the first meal around an large table, as I predicted, Mike reveals his bisexuality when the crew is sharing how many people they’ve each had sex with. Then we snap to the other kids expressing surprise, but really the best they can get is Ashley saying she did not expect him to say that.

Mike: “Yeah I like to snowboard, yeah I have a different sexuality than you do.”

I was ready for the other dudes to say they are either “cool with it” or “want to switch rooms” and then for Callie to say that in addition to never seeing snow or eating a turkey drumstick in her life, she’s never known a bisexual.

Actually, Ty says he’s never met a bisexual guy before, and before I can angrily type that he probably has, he just didn’t know it, he says, “Well, I probably have, but I guess I just didn’t know it.”

But the whole table ends up fighting anyhow, but not about sexuality … they fight about religion. This is the photo that MTV has captioned as “Mike shocks everyone by revealing he is bisexual”:

Righttt … this is where we’re at now, we’re down to oldest and most impossible to reconcile debate ever of all time which is the existence of God. This topic is where lines are drawn — and for Ashley and Ty, it means they’re never going to hang out again EVER!

Turns out half the cast is Christian and goes to church and is deeply connected to their religion (the shocker this time is that open-minded Ashley and bisexual Mike are the ones most dedicated to their religious beliefs, rather than innocent Mormon Julie or whatnot). Mike is the kind of Christian that drops Jesus dying for your sins into casual conversation. Erika says they put up a big rainbow outside her church which makes me want to eat cupcakes with her, it’s like she’s over there with her little white flag, like Dido or something. I don’t even care that the idea of a gigantic rainbow over the entire church feels a little The-Gatesy to me.

Ty says there’s not a man up in the clouds between Mars and Saturn. Ty says God doesn’t exist. Chaos ensues and everyone is struck by lightning.

6.  Life Isn’t Like Facebook Kids You Can’t Just See Someone’s Everything Whenever

Erika & Ashley listen to Josh’s confessional and hears him say he has a crush on Erika. Later, Ashley listens to Ty & Mike being bros and having a mature convo to smooth over the Godfight last night. Earlier, So far this show has been basically Harriet the Spy meets High School Musical meets that show The Real World that used to be on MTV.

Ashley: “I’m not spying, I’m listening in, ’cause I’m trying to understand where Ty is coming from!”

7. Andrew has a “snugglebear” named “Snowball.”

Andrew: “Do I think Emily is someone I might score with? … eh, in my dreams.”

At the commercial break, that dude Mark from the first Road Rules is still hanging out on the teevee, wearing Ed Hardy, sporting a hot rod ‘do and some chicks.

We return to Emily discovering that Andrew told her a bunch of lies when they first met, like about being a cage-fighter, and a photography teacher and a skydiving instructor and so on. At first I thought he was supposed to annoy me, but he’s oddly refreshing for being so faithful to his own personality.

Andrew: “Look at me. I’m not a cagefighter. I’m a lover.”

Well are you looking forward to this season? are you going to watch any episodes? did you even watch this one? Did you ever like this show in its previous seasons?

Do you remember when it was about lovers, not cagefighters?

Real World DC’s Bisexual Emily: Writes Poems, is Adorable, Was in a Cult, is “Wild at Heart”

THE REAL WORLD: MTV’s The Real World la-la-la-loves itself a bisexual lady and for the DC season, premiering tonight, we have been granted Emily Schromm. The 21-year-old hadn’t been east of Illinois prior to joining the cast, and confesses in interviews that she hadn’t seen much of The Real World before going on it.

Down-to-earth, inquisitive, cute and smart; Emily grew up in a Fundamentalist Christian cult in Missouri and used her “athletic tomboy” prowess to get her into sports and back out into the real world after leaving the cult. From her MTV bio: “Since then, she has grown progressively more open-minded and experimental even when it comes to dating and she shares Ty’s skeptical view of religion. For her, D.C. will be another new adventure, another step in her growth outside the cult.”

In Emily’s preview video, she goes to visit her old church and cries just being there, probs because it is mega windy and all her lovely soft hair is getting in her eyes! But seriously look how cute she is! We’re going to love her no matter what!

On the topic of her bisexuality (video here – our transcription is mediocre): “I feel like guys haven’t really caught my eye … I think I’m picky either way. I’m kinda talking to a girl, but I’m not that impressed with her. I feel like it’s more of my first into the maybe-lesbian world, so I feel like that’s why I’m testing it out… if it’s something I’m kinda inclined to, then go with it. And it’s me just being open and honest about myself.”

“Never knew how hard it could be
To let the whole world really see me
Opening a book in a thunderstorm
Without allowing a page to be torn.”
(Emily Schromm)

On Emily’s twitter, she crushes on the super-hawt Aria from our least-favorite band ever, The Paradiso Girls, goes skiing with Mike from the show, and gets nervous watching previews. She also says cute things like:

I heart sportsbras. i’m over this whole try-to-look-like-you-have-boobs thing.

Top 8 thankfuls: tequila. my mom. coffee. the ocean. tattoos. rain to play in. rocks to climb. doggies.

In an interview with Starpulse, the interviewer asks if Mike is her boyfriend. She says; “Oh no (laughing). He is more like my twin since we look alike and we are the bisexuals of the house.” Glad that she still identifies as bi, this should be a good season!

In Emily’s blog, “My Breath of Fresh Air,“ Emily writes poems and reflects on her fear of commitment, her desire to take risks, her athletic hobbies and describes herself as “Wreckless. Young. Stubborn. Unpredictable. Sensitive. Tough. Unorganized. HAPPY. This is me.” Her prose is full of earnest hope — she takes a journal she refers to as her “Buddha Book” to South Padre for Spring Break to stay grounded and quotes Tennesee Williams and talks about being wild at heart! — that we really debated linking to it here b/c we don’t want it to go away, but it would be a**hatty to mention it and not link, right?  In her most recent post she is (we think) hesitant about the upcoming premiere: “This is life, raw as ever/And it was my choice to share… the beauty in the breakdown/Is about truely [sic] finding what’s within.”

If you’re in DC, go to the viewing party and tell Emily about Autostraddle!

Oh, reason #545 we love Emily?