Best. Lesbian. Week. Ever. (July 13, 2007)

JANE AUSTEN, BITTER LESBIANS AND BAD HATS
Last November I mentioned that the upcoming movie The Jane Austen Book Club (due out Sept. 21), which co-stars Maria Bello, Amy Brenneman, Jimmy Smits, Kathy Baker and Emily Blunt, would include Maggie Grace as a narcissistic lesbian named Allegra. Here's your first look at the group — and Emily Blunt's really bad haircut:

Watch the just-released trailer for a half-second glimpse of Allegra in bed with another woman (don't blink around the 1-minute mark, or you'll miss it):

I liked Maggie Grace in Lost, and this movie looks less boring than the book, but what is up with the continuing lesbians-in-hats trend? In Gray Matters, Heather Graham's character doesn't wear a hat for the entire film — until she comes out, and then suddenly she's got a lime-green monstrosity perched on her head — and at a bar, no less! Papi's string of hats on The L Word would have been comical if her character wasn't so annoying. And remember how Kit was originally going to look on the show, back when it was still called Earthlings and Pam Grier's character was a lesbian?

But don't take my word for it — take Karman and Malinda's, in their excellent summation of the issue in the Top 11 Lesbian Fashion Accessories:

There are so many different styles of hats, and so much can go wrong. Remember the Mad Hatter-style monstrosities worn by the lesbians to their wedding on Friends? Guinevere Turner's backwards baseball cap in Go Fish? That horrible thing squatting on Chastity Bono's head in Bar Girls? Even the normally dashing Marina looked like a lesbian Zorro on The L Word last week when she arrived at Jenny's book reading wearing an oversized, fedora-esque-looking hat.

Memo to costume directors: The stereotype is about lesbians and cats, not lesbians and hats. Get it right, people!

MALINDA NIPS AND TUCKS
Malinda is at the Television Critics Association press tour this week trying to get the dirt for us on all the lesbian characters and story lines coming up on cable and network TV. Today she attended the Nip/Tuck panel, where she asked about Portia de Rossi's character and what's on deck for Roma Maffia's long-suffering lesbian Liz.

Creator Ryan Murphy explained that he heard Portia was a fan of the show, then had a meeting with her and cast her as a lesbian acupuncturist. But, he went on to say, "I never think of a character as straight or gay, I think about what their inner journey will be before their sexuality." Maffia agreed, saying "it doesn't matter the sexuality." Which has me wondering: What kind of "inner journey" entails working for a couple of narcissistic jerks and losing an organ on a bad blind date, exactly?

When Malinda asked Roma (above left, with Joely Richardson) what we could expect from her character this season, she replied, "[Ryan Murphy] only ekes out a little at a time, so what I can tell you is that Liz ... this year she might find love ... yeah, Hollywood is a bigger city than Miami, maybe. So I think that she might find love ... or at least have sex, whichever comes first."