TV

AfterEllen.com’s 2007 Naughty or Nice List

As the holidays are upon us, it’s time to take stock of who did what to whom and how often this past year in the realm of lesbian entertainment. Along with the standard comings out, there were also some televised smack-downs, illicit (and alleged) love affairs, sweet-talking, trash-talking, partner-swapping and the sad trip back into the closet for those unfortunate lesbians and bisexual women (fictional and all too real) for whom the whole lesbian “thing” just didn’t stick.

For the naughty ones, we offer lumps of greenhouse gas-emitting, global warming-inducing coal. For the women (and men) who made good for all lesbian kind, we offer some gold-plated goggles. Why goggles? Because what little visibility lesbian and bisexual women have enjoyed in the media this year has been because of the good work and words of people like them.

NAUGHTY GIRLS (AND GUYS) MAY NEED LOVE TOO, BUT THEY WON’T BE GETTING IT FROM US

1. Venus publisher Charlene Cothran goes straight for God, takes her magazine with her

Charlene Cothran, publisher of Venus – one of the few magazines by and for black lesbians – renounced her own lesbianism early this year, and in doing so, changed the course of Venus. According to the Venus website:

The new mission of Venus magazine is to encourage, educate and assist those who desire to leave a life of homosexuality. Our ultimate mission is to win souls for Christ, and to do so by showing love to all God’s people. We believe that homosexuality is outside of the will of God. We know that many new and longtime Venus readers have been instilled with a belief system that is in line with this teaching but are still living ‘in the life’. Many desire change and wonder if they can be accepted into the family of God ‘just as they are’. The answer is YES! These readers will find the new Venus an anointed and refreshing tool for kingdom work.
In the inaugural straightened issue of Venus (February 2007), Cothran wrote the cover story, “Redeemed! 10 Ways to Get Out of the Gay Life, If You Want Out,” and in it proclaimed: “I must come out of the closet again. I have recently experienced the power of change that came over me once I completely surrendered to the teachings of Jesus Christ. As a believer of the word of God, I fully accept and have always known that same-sex relationships are not what God intended for us.” However, Cothran was still in the giving spirit, continuing to send the revamped Venus to the 38,000 sinners subscribers who had originally signed up for something completely different.

2. Bill O’Reilly rumbles with lesbian “gangs” and teens

With so few lesbian and bisexual women represented on network television this year, perhaps we should thank Bill O’Reilly for throwing us some publicity. Well, maybe not. O’Reilly was obsessed with us this year, attempting to scare up a lesbian panic several times in 2007.

Bill O’Reilly and “Fox crime analyst” Rod Wheeler asserted that the lesbian gang “GTO, Gays Taking Over, are involved in raping young girls” in Tennessee, and that in Philadelphia the lesbian gang “DTO, Dykes Taking Over, are allegedly terrorizing people, as well.” Our weapons of choice? Knives, fists and, naturally, pink guns. Pink? This is obviously a fabrication!

O’Reilly also played the old kiddie “recruitment” card, asking Wheeler, “When they recruit the kids, are they indoctrinating them into homosexuality?”

His sidekick in stupidity answered, “Yes, as a matter of fact, some of these kids have reported being forced into performing sex acts and doing sex acts with some of these people.” Luckily, there were people lining up to debunk his misinformation, but that didn’t stop O’Reilly from doing more of the same. Shortly thereafter, he made a big stink of the fact that at Waukegan High School in Illinois, girlfriends Brandy Johnson and Lupe Silva were named the “Cutest Couple” in a poll for the senior yearbook. O’Reilly thought the whole thing was just a rebellious stunt, but one that was dangerous because it “normalized” homosexuality for teens. Like that’s a bad thing.

So, basically, according to Bill O’Reilly, lesbians of all ages are, in one way or another, in the process of taking over the world. Which means that maybe instead of giving him a big, dirty lump of coal, we should be giving him an AfterEllen.com Vision Award.

3. South of Nowhere‘s Danso Gordon gathers up his “integrity” and goes home

You probably know Danso Gordon best as Clay, lesbian teen Spencer Carlin’s kinda boring, kinda clueless older brother on South of Nowhere. SoN was groundbreaking in its multilayered portrayal of the coming-out process for lesbian and bisexual teens, and you’d think that’s something the show’s actors would be proud of. Well, one wasn’t.

After the second season, Gordon walked away from the show because it “went against my personal Faith and integrity” and was “morally wrong.” We’re still not sure why the show was more “morally wrong” after two successful seasons than it was before he signed on for the role. The N explained Gordon’s absence in the third season of the show by killing off Clay in a drive-by shooting at his senior prom, a revolutionary move that proved that homophobia can be just as deadly for heterosexuals as it is for us homos.

4. Jackie Warner misinterprets the term “double date”

In the scintillating second season of the Bravo reality show Work Out, fitness maven Jackie Warner dropped about 100 pounds of dead weight (her ex-girlfriend, Mimi) and was free to cat about Los Angeles. One of her first orders of “business” was to hook up with her employee, super hot fit (and allegedly straight) trainer, Rebecca. They say cats have nine lives, and Warner proved it by using one of those other lives to simultaneously date a former girlfriend, Tiffany.

Despite her athletic balance and grace, Warner was a lousy juggler of women, and Tiffany showed up at her after-work gathering/dinner date with Rebecca. Though I doubt “the hairy eyeball” was on the menu, Rebecca ordered it and shared it with Jackie all night, while Jackie fed sushi to a suspicious Tiffany.

Some felt the developments in Jackie’s love life in the second season perpetuated the stereotype of the predatory lesbian, while others were simply impressed with her ability to multitask. But I think we’d all agree that, regardless of her strenuous training sessions, we’d never seen Jackie sweat that much before.

5. Take my wife, please! Julie Chase on Trading Spouses

On Fox’s reality show Trading Spouses, a sweet lesbian couple from San Diego, Pepper and Judy Lane, faced off with conservative religious homophobe Julie Chase, a charmer who refused to use the restroom in a gay restaurant and who compared being gay to having a birth defect. Pepper weathered the misfortune of having Julie as her temporary “wife,” but in doing so showed her own family in a very positive light. Neighbors and viewers sided with the Lanes, who were portrayed as normal, loving parents to two children. In comparison, the vitriol-spewing Chase came off as a crazy woman with outmoded, hateful beliefs. And thanks to Julie Chase, the Lane family has made a slew of new friends. Pepper Lane told AfterEllen.com: “It’s amazing. I’ll go to the grocery store, and someone will come up to me and say, ‘I would’ve kicked her ‘blank’!’ They say such nice things, almost as if they’re feeling they have to apologize for the way we were treated, feeling as if they wanted to say, ‘Not all straight people are like that.’ It’s been very overwhelming and very humbling.”

6. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but dumb words really annoy us

A variety of celebrities said stupid things about being gay, playing gay, and even looking gay this year. See for yourself:

Sweet! That’s cool. I don’t know if that works for female actors, though. Luckily, this gay thing hasn’t messed up my appeal to the gentlemen, because I have never had any problems meeting men. Maybe they get turned on by the idea of that! – Queen Latifah, in response to a Glamour interviewer’s statement that when male actors are presumed to be gay, it’s a sign that they’ve “made it

I don’t know that it should be called marriage. But the idea of it is the same, and you should have the same quality of rights that a married person has. People think of marriage as something that is between a man and a woman, because it was created by God. Well, let God handle the judgment, too. You stay out of it. – Queen Latifah, in response to Glamour‘s question about her opinion on gay marriage

“God, I don’t know. She was Swedish. They all look like lesbians. You can’t tell!” – Chloe Sevigny in the July 16 issue of New York magazine, on whether an airport security agent who strip-searched her once was hitting on her

There was originally a whole scene where I confronted her about it, and said, “I feel like you’re kind of pushing up on me, what’s going on?” They left that out; they wanted it to be very ambiguous, which is cool. I figured that people would probably run with it, and there was a little misconstruing about it, but at the end of the day, it wasn’t a big deal. – Alicia Keys on playing a lesbian-ish (rather than lesbian) character in Smokin’ Aces

7. Gay today, gone tomorrow

Just as films and television shows giveth, they can also taketh away. A shining example is the hit NBC show Heroes. Earlier this year, the creators announced that a lesbian cheerleader character, described in The Hollywood Reporter as “beautiful” and “sweet” (and to be played by Lyndsy Fonseca) would be joining the cast. But before you could chant “Be aggressive!” NBC announced that Fonseca had moved on to another show. Rather than recast the part, they dropped the character from the squad altogether. Similar fates befell the lesbians on ABC’s All My Children and the Indian-American film When Kiran Met Karen. AMC‘s groundbreaking lesbian couple, Bianca and Maggie (played by Eden Riegel and Elizabeth Hendrickson), parted company for good, and Bianca’s new love interest was revealed to be Zarf/Zoey, a pre-op male-to-female transwoman played by a man (Jeffrey Carlson). Technically, yes, it was still a “lesbian” story line, but without offering the transgressive punch of showing two actresses kissing on conventional daytime TV.

Originally billed as a lesbian romantic comedy starring Purva Bedi, the plans for When Kiran Met Karen took a big turn for the unsexy due to “budget and other constraints.” The director (Manan Katohora) revealed that the film now focuses on a famous Bollywood actress (Kiran), who is engaged to a male music producer but has an affair with a lesbian journalist (Karen). When the press finds out, they try to ruin Kiran’s marriage and career. In addition to the plot changes, Bedi has now been replaced by Chriselle Almeida.

All of this is a reminder of an age-old maxim: Don’t count your lesbians before they’ve hatched!

IF YOU CAN’T SAY SOMETHING NICE (ABOUT LESBIANS), THEN … YOU BELONG ON OUR OTHER LIST

1. Stephen Colbert makes “lesbian” The Word

Presidential candidate (Is he serious?) and “ballsalicious” political satirist Stephen Colbert couldn’t get enough of the lesbians this year. Or, more specifically, he couldn’t get enough of the AfterEllen.com lesbians this year.

On his Comedy Central hit show, The Colbert Report, Colbert gave a snarky shout-out to two AE productions, scribegrrrl’s Talking to Manatees podcast and the online talk show She Said What? on his “ThreatDown” segment. The shows made his list because they don’t have the word “gay” in the titles, making them part of “the army of products trying to turn me gay.” In an episode of his show that aired in May, Colbert told the audience, “Ladies and gentleman, I learned something tonight that I did not know: I do not have a favorite lesbian. I have got to fix that!”

So what the hell was he talking about?

Before the show began, Colbert took questions from the audience. One of them (yes, Brooke was our plant) asked Colbert who his favorite lesbian was. Much to his chagrin, he was stumped! Colbert repeated the question, muttering, “I don’t know,” and then, “I did have a nice chat with Melissa Etheridge the other day.” Giving up, he asked Brooke, “Well, who’s your favorite lesbian?” When she pointed to her girlfriend, AE writer Dara Nai, Colbert jumped on the bandwagon and proclaimed, “You’ll do.”

2. Coming out: the gift that keeps on giving

It’s tried-and-true, but we never get tired of celebrities coming out as lesbian or bisexual. Australian musician Missy Higgins came out as bisexual on her MySpace profile this year, and Maori singer-songwriter Anika Moa came out as a lesbian in an interview on New Zealand’s TV 1.

Moa told them: “I had to cover it up, because I didn’t want anyone to judge me, or think, ‘Ooh, she’s dirty … This is the first ever interview where I’ve admitted that I’m gay and I’m willing to talk about it. So we’ll see how the album sales go.” Model/actress Eve Salvail (The Fifth Element and Pret a Porter, aka Ready to Wear) also came out this year on the “Coming Out Stories” episode of The Tyra Banks Show. Salvail came out in an interview with The Advocate in 2000, but did it all over again for Tyra “because it’s you.” Does that count as re-gifting?

3. Straight actors want to be our friends

Ana Ortiz, Sara Ramirez, Rebecca Romijn, Kate Walsh, Becki Newton, Rachel Griffiths and other stars from Ugly Betty, Brothers & Sisters and Grey’s Anatomy participated in GLAAD’s “Be an Ally & Friend” campaign, encouraging people to watch their mouths when it comes to using homophobic language.

   

Somehow, they avoided tacking the words, “That goes double for you, Isaiah Washington!” onto the end of the segment. All of this good will and self-restraint too? What’s it like to have friends like that?

4. “A little less conversation, a little more action please”: Kyra Sedgwick, Sarah Shahi, Hillary Duff and Chaka Khan (literally) sing our praises

Ever notice how your stock goes up when a hot girl likes you? Hopefully the same holds true for our collective stock, thanks to the love and praise we lesbians received from some extremely fine celebrities this year.

In her appearance on Inside the Actor’s Studio, Kyra Sedgwick (The Closer) shared fond memories of her make-out scenes with Losing Chase co-star (and AfterEllen.com Hot List-er) Helen Mirren.

Then, in an interview with The Advocate, she bragged about how fabulous her real-life lesbian best friend Valerie is and told us which female stars she would most like to hook up with. Sedgwick said: “Jodie Foster. She totally does it for me. I think she’s so amazing. And Salma Hayek. That would be really hot.”

Not to be outdone, L Word alum Sarah Shahi spoke to our own Malinda Lo this year at the Television Critics Association conference in Los Angeles, and when asked if she had anything to say to her lesbian fans, told us, “I thank them for staying so loyal to me and for coming with me on the ride of The L Word, and I hope they continue on with me.” Later, in an interview with The Advocate, Shahi was asked, “In 2006 you were number 66 on the Maxim Hot 100, but this year you were number 5 on the AfterEllen.com hot list. That means lesbians have better taste in women than straight men, right?” Shahi replied, “Of course! Lesbians do everything better.”

Shahi went on to say that she’d happily play gay again (especially opposite Penelope Cruz or Rachel Weisz), noting, “[W]hen I was on [The L Word] … I definitely felt I was representing a group of people who had very little representation on television. And I felt, Leave them the f— alone. [Gay couples] are no different than heterosexual couples – sometimes they even function better than heterosexual couples. That was the biggest revelation I had … What is the big f—ing deal? They’re just like everyone else; leave them alone.”

Getting more specific were Chaka Khan and Hilary Duff, who sent personalized messages (both audio and video) to AfterEllen.com. Below is Duff’s video love letter:

You know you’ve made a real contribution to society when a former Disney child star and a former Black Panther (oh all right, a former volunteer for the Black Panther’s Free Breakfast for Children Program) can find common ground in their love of your people.

5. Tila Tequila takes a shot at being “a bisexual,” lets us watch

MTV’s latest reality dating show, A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila, has all the ingredients of a trashtastic hit: girl fights, stripper poles, disgusting “food” challenges and a bisexual Maxim model who is looking for love in some very interesting places. And though it dips into some tedious stereotypes (the bisexual “anything that moves” dilemma, “man-hating” lesbians, etc.), the show’s star, scrappy Tila Tequila, is surprisingly straightforward and vulnerable about her coming-out process, even if she does insist on calling herself “a bisexual.”

Plus, one of her two finalists, Dani Campbell, is a self-described “futch” girl who is unlike all the other “lipstick lesbians” we usually see presented as objects of desire on television (when they bother to give us any lesbians at all). Say what you will, but there’s never been anything quite like it on TV before. Where else will you ever see “a bisexual” giving her lesbian girlfriend’s grandmother a lap dance? This year on A Shot at Love, being naughty was very nice indeed.

6. Joss Whedon provides comic relief for Buffy fans

It’s been almost five years since Buffy the Vampire Slayer went off the air, and, like that girl you never got over, lesbian fans still pine for its return. But series creator Joss Whedon has taken some pity on us and this year offered the consolation prize of Buffy comics. In the comics, Willow is still kicking ass (but not kicking it with Kennedy), and even errant slayer Faith has returned. One Faith-centric issue, written by Lost co-producer Brian K. Vaughan, centers around evil slayers, and Vaughan recently explained that “when it comes to who will slay a Slayer, Giles turns to Faith. She’s the person to go for, as she says, ‘dirty deeds, done cheap.'”

7. Girls talk: Patricia Cornwell, Cat Cora and Jodie Foster open up

It’s not quite the same as doing a big coming-out interview (though AfterEllen.com is ready and willing if either of them are interested), but this year both best-selling mystery writer Patricia Cornwell and Iron Chef Cat Cora spoke at length to the press about their respective lesbian partners. Cornwell gave a candid interview to The Daily Telegraph, talking about not only her new book but also her relationship with her partner, Dr. Staci Gruber, and why she’s passionate about marriage rights for gays and lesbians.

Not to be outdone, Cat Cora was the poster girl for domestic (partner) bliss in a recent issue of People magazine. In it, she shared with readers her grandmother’s Special Mustard recipe and a glimpse of her Thanksgiving holiday spread. The recipe for that? One part statuesque blonde (Jennifer), two parts adorable sons and a pinch of Donna Reed for good measure. (In addition to our naughty and nice lists, we also have an AfterEllen.com wish list, and on it are interviews with both Cornwell and Cora. Hopefully we’ll be quoting their candid and thoughtful interviews with us in our 2008 year-end reveiw.)

Finally, lesbian favorite Jodie Foster made several interesting comments about her personal life this year in interviews promoting her film The Brave One. In response to a More magazine reporter’s question about a ring she was wearing, Foster referred to it as “an enternity ring” that she never takes off. And in an inteview with The Denver Post, Foster said of her work as an actor, “I need to have something that doesn’t belong to my mom, doesn’t belong to my kids, doesn’t belong to my partner.” That “partner” has been long assumed to be Cydney Bernard, and Foster mentioned her by name when she was recently honored with the Sherry Lansing Leadership Award at the 16th annual Women in Entertainment Power 100 breakfast. In her acceptance speech, Foster thanked “my beautiful Cydney who sticks with me through all the rotten and the bliss.”

Perhaps Foster has taken some inspiration from Germany’s celebrity journalist Anne Will and her partner Miriam Meckel, who last month finally acknowledged their much-rumored five-year relationship by saying simply, “yes, we are a couple” – and subsequently saw their popularity with the German public actually increase.

But maybe all of this talk about partners is a public relations technique that Cornwell, Cora and Foster have taken from a popular T-shirt slogan: “I’m not gay but my girlfriend is.”

We’re hoping that those who made the “naughty” list this year will be inspired by their “nice” colleagues to clean up their acts in 2008. If not, we might just be inspired to replace the lump of coal with a Red Ryder 200-shot carbine action BB gun with a compass in the stock. They might just shoot their eyes out.

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