Jen Sabella's blog

When I was a child, I remember telling my mother that I would “absolutely never” get married or have children. She told me that my opinion on the subjects would change as I grew older, but who knew that when I did get older and fell in love, I couldn’t get married anyway — not even if I did change my mind.

Weddings are a touchy subject for many gays, and rightfully so. While some hope to legally marry their partners sometime in the not-so-distant future, others swear off the tradition as heteronormative and want no part of it. After yet another heartbreaking loss with Maine’s Question 1 this week, one might think we gays are ready to step back, take our civil unions where we can get them and let this country treat us as second class citizens forever. Not so much.

Bigots from the National Organization for Marriage can throw their dirty money around all they want, but they will not break our spirit — and most certainly will not prevent us from having a big, themed, lesbian wedding whenever and wherever we want. Just ask Anli and Laura.

The lesbian gamers were wed in September in New South Wales, Australia, where gay marriage is illegal — but that didn’t stop them. The wedding was based on the video game "Portal" and the anime series Revolutionary Girl Utena.

For those of you familiar with Chicago, there are few things as important as our sports teams. I grew up in a city where the Bears were always more important than the corrupt politicians, and scoring tickets to a Cubs versus White Sox game could make you have a lot of friends very quickly.

As a South Sider, my allegiance to the Sox will never go away, but as the city was abuzz with news of a new Cubs owner in recent months, my ears perked up. At first, we just heard about the $900 million bid (which was renegotiated to a meager $845 million) placed by the billionaire Ricketts family, but always-loyal Cubs fans needed to know more about these people, and little by little, we learned. Not only is the Ricketts family really, really rich, but they are also bringing the first openly gay team owner to Chicago: Laura Ricketts.

Laura’s brother, Tom Ricketts, met his wife in the bleachers of Wrigley Field in the '90s, and led the clan on its pursuit of the Cubs when their previous owners, the Tribune Co. went bankrupt last year. Tom took control as team chairman this week, and Laura and her two other brothers, Pete and Todd Ricketts, are board members.

Queen Latifah has noticed a serious decline in female voices in the rap world these days, and, being the Queen MC that she is, plans on doing something about it.

We have discussed issues of homophobia in rap music, before, but when it comes to the mainstream rap world these days, there appears to be yet another problem: The boys club has even more members while the ladies are almost nowhere to be found.

CNN, of all media outlets, noticed the trend recently and published an article last week asking, “Where have all the successful female rappers gone?” The article points out that the days of putting out new female rappers seem to be non-existent, mostly due to a “marketability” issue.

As I get older, I find more and more comfort in having a routine. My schedule is never regular, but one thing I make sure I see every weekday is The Rachel Maddow Show. Whether it’s live or a rebroadcast, Maddow and a glass of wine before bed is all I need.

Rachel has been sick all week, and I’m not the only one who has seriously missed her, which makes just the thought of life without her even harder to bear. At this point, I don’t think anyone needs to worry about her show being canceled, but some believe that the post-election ratings slip could mean trouble for our favorite lesbian pundit.

In the heat of the 2008 presidential election, more people who generally tuned out politics where tuning in than ever before. A younger, more liberal voter base took to the blogs to show their support, and to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow — she was brilliant, she tweeted and her nightly analysis on the election was always spot-on — with a healthy dose of snark, of course.

Whether you caught on to AMC’s Mad Men in its first season, or the buzz is slowly drawing you into its third, most of us by now know of Sterling and Cooper’s gorgeous, red-headed office manager, Joan Holloway. Who we should be getting to know more, however, is Christina Hendricks, the woman who makes Joan our favorite, and apparently has become Mad Men’s gay icon.

In the November issue of the Advocate, Hendricks somehow manages to make herself even more drool-worthy. She’s witty, hilarious, loves the gays and “would love” for Joan to “explore bisexuality” at some point on the series, to which I say "please, please do."

In the interview, Advocate writer Brandon Voss declares that Joan is key in attracting a gay audience to the show, but the actress claims she has yet to feel the lesbian love:

I did get some really nice news that there were some guys dressed up as Joan for Halloween. I haven’t noticed the lesbian attention as much, but I have to say that straight women have been coming out of the woodwork.

We have all had our share of not-so-nice things to say about The L Word over the years. Our frustration mostly centered on the storyline (oh, Ilene) but for the most part, we all miss it, or at least some of its stars. I started watching the show a little late — late enough to not want to jump on the Shane McCutcheon bandwagon — but I could not help myself.

Now, I miss the skinny and scandalous Shane, and I’m not the only one.

In an interview with The Los Angeles Times, Katherine Moennig, now playing doctor on CBS’s Three Rivers, admitted to missing the role that made her every (OK, almost every) lesbian’s dream. She seems to be missing her former make-out partners as well — big shock there.

Moennig said:

At this moment, I miss a lot about [Shane]. The beauty of that character was her unabashed way of viewing life. She was so unapologetic. She was always deemed the bad girl, and that was always good to play. She was a bit dangerous but also extremely screwed up in the head. I was sad to see her go. I miss her soul. I loved the debauchery that she created in her life.

Over the years, there have been hundreds of television shows featuring many stereotypes of people in their teens and early 20s: The school-obsessed nerd, the cheerleader who gets all the dudes, the hospital residents sleeping together while trying to become respected surgeons. It’s time for the hipsters to be recognized, and who better to point them out than Ellen Page?

Last night, The Hollywood Reporter revealed that Page and her Whip It co-stars Alia Shawkat and Sean Tillman (aka Har Mar Superstar) are writing a new show for HBO, taking on the Williamsburg and Silver Lake hipster set. Clearly, it will be a comedy and surely it’s time for someone to give hipsters a much-deserved teasing.

If you are unfamiliar with Har Mar, you might recall seeing him in the Journey parody he made with the actresses earlier this year, or the new video, Crappy Canadian Thanksgiving.

Being athletic never came naturally for me, but I have always appreciated women who excel in sports — specially their physique. The latest issue of ESPN: The Magazine understands this appreciation, and decided to share some seriously hot photos of scantily clad (or nor clad at all) athletes with us.

ESPN’s Body Issue hits stands Oct. 19, but four of the six cover options have already made rounds on the web. My personal favorite is the Serena Williams cover — a nude photo of the tennis star in a very strategic pose — to avoid the whole tape-over-nipple scenario, I’m sure.

This is ESPN's first Body Issue, and, rather than take the thong-on-a-beach approach à la Sports Illustrated, the magazine’s editorial staff had one rule: "Please no swimsuits,” NBA star Stephon Marbury told USA Today.

Recently openly gay Irish comedian Graham Norton got himself into quite a pickle on his show. In what was meant to be a typical, funny segment about inventions that never caught on, Norton ended up making quite a few lesbians — and one of his guests &mdash kind of upset.

Are people being too sensitive, or is it true that lesbians are too often the butt of gay men’s jokes?

I knew of Norton before, but I couldn’t miss the hype that surrounded his remarks that were deemed “homophobic” by several media sources. The segment went down like this: Norton shows an illustration of “jumpsuit for women,” which was invented to allow women wearing a one-piece jumpsuit to pee while sitting down. The woman in the drawing has short hair, which clearly means to Norton that she is a lesbian.

“Now I don’t know why they have got some strange lesbian to be the model for this, but they have,” Norton says with a grin, adding that “obviously the lesbian pissing in a jump suit was a big market.” The joke, likely encouraged by the roaring audience, went on: “So, Lesbian full bladder here, what am I going to do?”

You can always count on Vanity Fair to match their in-depth interviews with some seriously smokin’ photographs, and this month’s cover story on Penelope Cruzis no different. Perhaps the most pressing question posed to Penelope, however, was the one that went something like this: Who was a better kisser, Charlize Theron or Scarlett Johansson?

Of course, Cruz couldn’t answer that question publicly without angering her former on screen lovers: "No matter how I answer that I will be in trouble. Both were pretty beautiful partners."

In 2006, however, when Cruz was asked to name her best on-screen kiss by the New York Post, she gushed, "Can I say Charlize Theron?" "Yes. Charlize, Charlize, Charlize,” speaking of her co-star in 2004’s Head in the Clouds.

This still leaves the Theron versus Johansson question unanswered, since at that point she hadn’t kissed Scarlett yet, but judging by what I’ve seen in both movies — Head in the Clouds and Vicky Cristina Barcelona — the lesbian relationships, however brief, are pretty intense.

Over the years, I had grown quite fond of seeing Carrie Brownstein rock out at Sleater-Kinney shows. Since then, however, whether she is showing off her stellar writing skills on her blog for NPR or being hilarious with SNL’s Fred Armisen as ThunderAnt, Brownstein has shown serious artistic versatility.

Perhaps, then, I should not be surprised to see her playing the part of a broken-hearted animal shelter worker in the upcoming independent film, Some Days Area Better Than Others.

Last week, Portland-based filmmaker Matt McCormick released the trailer for Some Days Area Better Than Others, which tackles some seriously heavy stuff. The synopsis reads:

Some Days are Better Than Others is about the nuances of communication, the desperation of heartbreak, and the struggle to maintain hope through the passing of time.

“When it comes to politics, Americans have the memory of a goldfish,” a friend of mine said recently. I cannot help but agree with him. It takes a lot to rile the general public these days, and the large-scale protests seem to fade as quickly as they were organized. Unfortunately, just because the general public stops caring about something does not mean it stops effecting people in their every day lives.

Whether we are talking about gay rights, racism or health care, people will continue to be marginalized and fighting for justice whether or not you are still paying attention.

In Amreeka, out filmmaker Cherien Dabis' directorial debut, the problems caused by post-Sept. 11 propaganda manifest themselves in a quieter way — but the repercussions are no less traumatizing for one Palestinian family.

Amreeka tells the story of a woman and her son fleeing the West Bank for America. As check points become increasingly hostile, the woman, Muna Farah, finally gets approved for a green card. She and her son head to a small, Illinois town, where Muna’s sister — who left the West Bank many years prior — lives with her family.

Why do women like horror movies? At first, I found the question in general to be offensive, especially when posed by the usually respectable New York Times.

“Why wouldn’t women like horror movies?” I thought, ready to take on whoever had a problem with ladies who dig slasher flicks.

Then I read further — and wondered why I only seem to like horror movies of the '60s and '70s variety, and why when forced to sit through trailers for movies like Saw be it 1, 2,3 or 4 — I cringe. It isn’t that women can’t handle the blood, violence and suspense — it’s that modern horror films are exploitative, pornographic and void of character, and filmmakers having seemingly no interest in attracting female viewers.

Cue Diablo Cody’s new film Jennifer’s Body, lauded by some and dismissed by others as an attempt for a woman to take back the knife during a particularly rough era for horror films.

If you haven’t experienced rural living in your lifetime, I suppose it’s easy to adopt the many stereotypes that are often associated with life in a small town. If you are queer in a small town, you have probably grown up thinking the big city is where it’s at, Big Gay Mecca if you will. While there may be a level of justification to the gay fear of small towns, a new book by professor, writer and queer activist Mary Gray hopes to inspire and inform skeptics about the plight of LGBTQ youth in rural communities.

Gray, an out lesbian who hails from a small town in California, worked as a queer youth activist in the 90s, and is currently a professor at Indiana State University in Bloomington. Her activist work, including lobbying for harassment protection for queer youth in the California public schools, led her to write a book about the needs of LGBTQ youth in rural areas, titled Out In The Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America.

The book challenges the theory that city life is the only life for gay citizens, and hopes to educate readers about ways they can get involved with other queer activists in nearby towns and make a difference.

“We need to re-examine our assumption that rural places are endemically hostile to queer folks,” Gray told WireTap. “The frequency of hate crimes in cities should signal to us that rural and urban spaces are differently [but] not more or less violent to queer people. Without rural communities and their LGBTQ constituents, national and statewide advocacy groups will be unable to advance basic civil rights issues on a national scale.”

A woman leaving her boyfriend or husband for a woman is certainly not a new phenomenon. Whether you found yourself attracted to men in the past or felt somehow obliged by social constraints to date men even though you weren’t — many women who consider themselves quite gay have had experiences with men in the past.

Lately, however, it seems the subject has been popping up quite a bit. From Oprah Show episodes to celebrity rags, women are telling their stories about leaving the heterosexual world behind to pursue true love, and now two writers are looking to hear yours.

Writers Candace Walsh and Laura André are seeking submissions for their upcoming book, And Then It Shifted: Women Open Up About Leaving Men for Women, and hope to fill its pages with first-person essays from women with different perspectives, experiences and life stories. The timing of the book also comes as more high profile women are going public with their experiences.

"As Dr. Lisa Diamond’s recent groundbreaking book Sexual Fluidity makes clear, women’s sexual desire and identity are capable of shifting,” the book’s site explains. “Cynthia Nixon, Carol Leifer, Wanda Sykes, Portia de Rossi, and countless, less well-known others have left the fold of heterosexual identity to enter into or pursue same-sex relationships."

I have always been obsessed with magazines. Sure, I read a fair share of blogs, but that never stops me from walking into any given bookstore and stocking up on my favorites. I was the 12-year-old with a subscription to Sassy, YM and Seventeen, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

However, in recent years not only have I watched some of my favorite magazines bite the dust (Jane, Punk Planet) but I’ve watched some come close — and make it out alive.

One of the survivors is Bitch, which combines feminism, activism and pop culture into one snarky and smart publication. About a year ago, the rumors started circulating: Bitch was on its last leg. Advertising money slowed, like it did with most print publications, and they were asking their readers for help.

Readers responded, and the magazine raised even more cash than expected with plenty of time to publish their next issue. One year has gone by, and Bitch readers continue donating what they can to save one of the (very) few print magazines we feminists have left.

In recent weeks, female magazine readers were stunned by something so shocking, so rare and completely intoxicating in the pages of the usually standard Glamour magazine: A belly.

A gorgeous woman had the sheer audacity, among the couture-clad and airbrushed models, to sit, even when she was not the magazine standard Size 0.

Tucked safely into Page 194 of the publication was Lizzi Miller, a 20-year-old plus-sized model who Glamour says was chosen for the photo because of how confident and happy she looked in her own skin. While it doesn’t sound like very many people are talking about the accompanying story, it’s “What Everyone But You Sees About Your Body,” no one could stop talking about Miller, whose tummy was right there for the world to see — and she was smiling about it.

I’ll admit, I was a little young to fully appreciate the peak of comedienne Sandra Bernhard’s fame. My minimal knowledge of her, however, always included the fact that she is a lesbian, a liberal and gives good mock when it comes to overrated celebs.

Though Sandra has been keeping busy over the years (Hello, Charlotte Birch) she recently teamed up with producer Ted Mason (Modern English) for a new rock album, Whatever It Takes, and has taken her acclaimed one-woman show, "Without You I'm Nothing,” on the road again, more than 20 years after its debut.

Bernhard is loud, outspoken and generally has no problem being offensive, which I admire. She also has made no apologies about being a lesbian — ever —which always requires a certain amount of balls — in Hollywood, at least.

Being Arabic in America has been tough for a while now, but post-September 11 America brought out a lot of racism disguised as patriotism and this theme is nothing new. America goes to war with a country (or a region), and (some) of its citizens and leaders seem to forget there are Americans from that country, too.

Someone who knows this all too well is director Cherien Dabis.

Everyone has been hopping on the Mad Men bandwagon as of late, and who can blame them? With the amazing set design, gratuitous (and accurate for the time) drinking and smoking and the insanely hot cast, what’s not to like? Oh, the plot is pretty great too.

While January Jones is smokin’ as Betty Draper, and Elisabeth Moss is great as Peggy Olson, Christina Hendricks’ Joan Holloway takes the cake — in the show and in real life. Aside from being a total babe, Hendricks is funny, loves food and cocktails and is quite photogenic, as Esquire displayed in their September issue.

“I love to cook. I just got a deep fryer, and it's amazing,” Hendricks told Esquire writer Ryan D'Agostino, who was lucky enough to have a meal with her in L.A. for the interview. “The first night we got it, we made homemade poppers. I mean, what's the best deep-fried thing ever? Cheese poppers.”

While decent movies with lead lesbian characters are hard to come by these days, a few minutes of cheap girl-on-girl action has become a staple in Hollywood pictures. Sure, it can be hot, but is the painfully obvious “shock value” factor as frustrating to actors as it is to the rest of us? Apparently, to actress Amanda Seyfried it is.

When discussing the makeout scene between herself and Megan Fox in upcoming Diablo Cody film Jennifer’s Body, Seyfried seemed less-than-enthused.

“We knew that it was going to play a really big role in publicizing the movie,” Seyfried told WENN. “We kind of rolled our eyes at the idea of having to make out."

Seyfried plays Fox’s nerdy best friend, Needy Lesnicky, in the film, which she actually is excited about.

As most of us know, queer women are wildly underrepresented in the fashion world. While gay men seem to have the scene covered, lesbians aren’t so visible. But, as out writer Michelle Tea noticed while following Beth Ditto and co. around during Paris Fashion Week, another group is even less visible: Poor folks.

Anyone who has read Tea’s books (such as Valencia or The Chelsea Whistle) knows her background — she's a lower middle class girl from Chelsea, Massachusetts — and anyone who knows the story of Beth Ditto knows she's a poor girl from a po-dunk Arkansas town who worked her way onto the covers of fashion magazines.

In The Believer’s 2009 music issue, Tea follows Ditto and manager Tara Perkins (also the lady behind the Sex Workers Art Show) around Paris and, like many of us, wonders "how did this happen"?

While many of us have written off the “sexy schoolgirl” aesthetic as a misogynistic joke exploited by men, pop stars and ill-advised college students on Halloween, every so often the subject comes up and needs to be addressed by someone other than a man justifying his attraction to underage women.

Today, my friends, that someone is me.

As a graduate of the largest all-girls Catholic high school in the United States, let’s just say I’ve heard the whole “Ooh, you went to McAuley. Did you wear a little plaid skirt?” from creepy men, old and young, many, many times. To some, schoolgirls are nothing but objects of fantasy. The knee-high socks, short skirts and — of course — pig tails. The reality of a same-sex high school (as I’m sure some of you have experienced) is nothing of the sort.

This week, Australian journalist Sam de Brito discussed the prevalence of the “sexy school girl” in pop culture, likely prompted by the upcoming Diablo Cody film, Jennifer’s Body. The film stars the actress I love to hate, Megan Fox, as a possessed high school cheerleader who kills her male classmates.

Homophobia in hip-hop is nothing new. For years, the subject has been discussed among journalists, artists themselves and activists. Where a mainstream pop performer would likely be chastised for saying something like “You can't be f---in’ people in the ass and say you're gangsta," as Method Man did in 2003, the hip-hop world generally responds to these tirades by shrugging its proverbial shoulders.

While the gay community clearly has a long way to go in terms of social acceptance on a mainstream level, Slate writer Jonah Weiner thinks the times may be changing — in the hip-hop world that is. Weiner’s recent article discusses the rise of the phrase “no homo” in contemporary hip-hop, and points out that while some may find it much of the same — homophobic rappers horrified of being emasculated — he thinks it may be a good thing. He writes:

No homo, to those unfamiliar with the term, is a phrase added to statements in order to rid them of possible homosexual double-entendre. "You've got beautiful balls," you tell your friend at the bocce game — "no homo."

Simply, Weiner explains, “no homo” is a “That’s what she said” for homophobes. So why is it a good thing?

If contemporary feminism taught me anything growing up, it was that I could be whoever and whatever I wanted to be. A doctor? Why not! First woman president? Sure! Over the years, women are in more powerful career positions than ever before (in America, at least) and while workplace sexism clearly still exists, we can’t help but wonder why Hollywood continued to wage war on career-minded ladies.

NPR tackled the issue this week in an episode of Fresh Air, featuring commentary from movie critic John Powers. Powers realizes that the demonization of working women in Hollywood movies has always existed, but took his opportunity on Fresh Air to discuss the recently released romantic comedies that many consider misogynist: The Ugly Truth and The Proposal.

Despite the fact that both films are executive produced by their stars — Katherine Heigl and Sandra Bullock, the film still reeks of sexism. Powers explains:

In The Proposal, Sandra Bullock plays a boss from hell who's literally forced to kneel before her good-guy assistant. In the lousy new comedy The Ugly Truth, Kathryn Heigl plays a control-freak TV producer forced to hire a loutish commentator — that's Gerard Butler — who gives her a pair of vibrator panties. Predictably, it's the lewd beast who tames the brainy, high-powered beauty.

As NPR mentions (and as we all know) this theme is nothing new, especially in romantic comedies. Modern rom-com career ladies seem to have a lot in common: they are beautiful, obnoxiously anal-retentive, socially awkward, uptight and, of course, completely unable to “snag a man” due to their career obsessions.