One of the amazing qualities of a free market economy is that when there is an economic hole, some entrepreneur will quickly run in and fill it. Twenty years ago, who would have thought we needed the internet on these things called “mobile phones,” and now smartphones are as essential to life as oxygen to some people. A year ago, if you’d suggested that more people would eventually use Pokémon GO on a daily basis than Twitter you’d have been laughed from the room. Entrepreneurial ventures have emerged in the gay and lesbian community as well, from cruise lines to clothes, movies to dating apps, but of course, some gaps remain.
The following are some ideas for jobs in the lesbian community that I’ve had that if they don’t exist, should.
Lesbian Entrepreneur Philanthropist Businesswoman With a Bag of Money
The best ideas die on the vine with no one to make sure they blossom. We need lesbians with spare capital and the desire to see lesbian-run businesses take off. Or if not take off, then someone with the sense of humor to invest in something that’s unlikely to succeed but that will be hilarious while it lasts. After all, if no one will ever invest in projects like Celesbian Sherpa or Rent a Lesbian, those businesses will never get off the ground.
Lesbian Bachelorette
“And the rose goes to…Carly, the lifestyle coach from Tallahassee who stole my heart during our L Word binge watching sleepover party date.”
In 2014, AfterEllen writers envisioned what a lesbian season of The Bachelorette would look like. The exercise proved the wittiness of our writers, but had no effect on Hollywood, which has yet to have a lesbian on The Bachelorette. Now that Logo has featured the Lance Bass-hosted Finding Prince Charming, billed as “the gay The Bachelor,” the time seems right for the lesbian version.
After all, what is The Bachelorette but smut TV at its finest: the intersection of many women’s desire for a happy ending, eye candy, and delicious drama. Why should straight people and gay men have all the fun? What better way to desensitize the public to lesbian romance than by showing that cattiness and sappiness aren’t limited by sexual orientation?
What we do not need, however, is another Shot at Love with Tia Tequila or, possibly worse, Boy Meets Boy (surprise twist: half the “gay” suitors are actually straight and if a straight guy is chosen at the end, he gets $25,000. How did anyone think this was a good idea?). For the lesbian The Bachelorette not to be a parody of queer female culture or an affront to the community, it must be done honestly, although with the same light-hearted approach that The Bachelor and its spin-offs all take.
Lesbian Entrepreneur Philanthropist Businesswoman With a Bag of Money
The best ideas die on the vine with no one to make sure they blossom. We need lesbians with spare capital and the desire to see lesbian-run businesses take off. Or if not take off, then someone with the sense of humor to invest in something that’s unlikely to succeed but that will be hilarious while it lasts. After all, if no one will ever invest in projects like Celesbian Sherpa or Rent a Lesbian, those businesses will never get off the ground.
Getty images Hollywood Lesbian Consultant
Somewhere right at this moment, someone associated with a TV show is thinking, “It will be so dramatic if we kill the lesbian character. Wow, no one has ever done this before. I’m getting chills of excitement. Literally. Feel my skin-I’m like a Thanksgiving turkey right now.” Imma let you finish, but maaaaybe that’s something for which you should pick up the phone and call the Hollywood Lesbian Consultant. This consultant is deeply versed in both Hollywood and lesbian culture and can answer questions such as:
“Will the lesbian community show up at my house with pitchforks and burning torches if I kill this character?” (By the way, has anyone noticed that on the LGBT Fans Deserve Better page there’s a counter showing 383 cumulative lesbian or bi female characters on TV, of which 156 were killed? Do we really have a 40% death toll? Where’s my pitchfork?)
“My lesbian character should have a fling with a guy because sexuality is fluid, right?”
“A lesbian-identified male is a thing, right? Everyone’s heard of that?”
The consultant can also provide suggestions on common fashion trends in the lesbian community for the wardrobe department, inside references to sprinkle in the script, and tips for actresses on how to seem like an actual lesbian when kissing.
I believe that some people currently act in these capacities informally (for example Leisha Hailey and Kate Moennig on The L Word), and possibly even a few informal roles today, but there need to be more. I fear many shows approach lesbian characters with the mentality that they’re “just like straight characters” and no consultation with an actual lesbian is necessary. While that is to some degree true, straight people don’t have to come out and worry about being kicked out of their home or rejected by friends. They generally don’t have to endure the same type of discrimination and don’t have the same U-Haul jokes. The Hollywood Lesbian Consultant is the sanity check shows didn’t know they need.
Lesbian Bachelorette
“And the rose goes to…Carly, the lifestyle coach from Tallahassee who stole my heart during our L Word binge watching sleepover party date.”
In 2014, AfterEllen writers envisioned what a lesbian season of The Bachelorette would look like. The exercise proved the wittiness of our writers, but had no effect on Hollywood, which has yet to have a lesbian on The Bachelorette. Now that Logo has featured the Lance Bass-hosted Finding Prince Charming, billed as “the gay The Bachelor,” the time seems right for the lesbian version.
After all, what is The Bachelorette but smut TV at its finest: the intersection of many women’s desire for a happy ending, eye candy, and delicious drama. Why should straight people and gay men have all the fun? What better way to desensitize the public to lesbian romance than by showing that cattiness and sappiness aren’t limited by sexual orientation?
What we do not need, however, is another Shot at Love with Tia Tequila or, possibly worse, Boy Meets Boy (surprise twist: half the “gay” suitors are actually straight and if a straight guy is chosen at the end, he gets $25,000. How did anyone think this was a good idea?). For the lesbian The Bachelorette not to be a parody of queer female culture or an affront to the community, it must be done honestly, although with the same light-hearted approach that The Bachelor and its spin-offs all take.
Lesbian Entrepreneur Philanthropist Businesswoman With a Bag of Money
The best ideas die on the vine with no one to make sure they blossom. We need lesbians with spare capital and the desire to see lesbian-run businesses take off. Or if not take off, then someone with the sense of humor to invest in something that’s unlikely to succeed but that will be hilarious while it lasts. After all, if no one will ever invest in projects like Celesbian Sherpa or Rent a Lesbian, those businesses will never get off the ground.
Getty Images Rent a Lesbian
It’s not just a Hollywood trope that some children want to stick it to their parents or other authority figures by engaging in shocking behavior, and what’s less egregious than showing up at a family event with-surprise!-a lesbian? Rent a Minority is a satire and the idea of a rent-a-lesbian has certainly been jokingly suggested before (slash this possibly really happened in real life), but if companies and political action groups can rent “protesters” and “fans,” why shouldn’t there be actual ad hoc part-time work for lesbians looking to stretch their acting chops in over the top roles such as “angry butch feminist” and “belligerently challenges all your opinions vegan”?
The renter has the joy of seeing their family wilt with horror or frisson with anger at the sight of the newest “member of the family,” while the Shakespearean lesbian in question gets to play into homophobic stereotypes. For added panache, Rent a Lesbians will attend office parties and hold hands with the renter the whole time.
It may seem retrograde to play into the very stereotypes with which our community has struggled historically, but it can be quietly subversive and hey, free food and money. There are lesbians who would do it for free, to be honest.
Getty images Hollywood Lesbian Consultant
Somewhere right at this moment, someone associated with a TV show is thinking, “It will be so dramatic if we kill the lesbian character. Wow, no one has ever done this before. I’m getting chills of excitement. Literally. Feel my skin-I’m like a Thanksgiving turkey right now.” Imma let you finish, but maaaaybe that’s something for which you should pick up the phone and call the Hollywood Lesbian Consultant. This consultant is deeply versed in both Hollywood and lesbian culture and can answer questions such as:
“Will the lesbian community show up at my house with pitchforks and burning torches if I kill this character?” (By the way, has anyone noticed that on the LGBT Fans Deserve Better page there’s a counter showing 383 cumulative lesbian or bi female characters on TV, of which 156 were killed? Do we really have a 40% death toll? Where’s my pitchfork?)
“My lesbian character should have a fling with a guy because sexuality is fluid, right?”
“A lesbian-identified male is a thing, right? Everyone’s heard of that?”
The consultant can also provide suggestions on common fashion trends in the lesbian community for the wardrobe department, inside references to sprinkle in the script, and tips for actresses on how to seem like an actual lesbian when kissing.
I believe that some people currently act in these capacities informally (for example Leisha Hailey and Kate Moennig on The L Word), and possibly even a few informal roles today, but there need to be more. I fear many shows approach lesbian characters with the mentality that they’re “just like straight characters” and no consultation with an actual lesbian is necessary. While that is to some degree true, straight people don’t have to come out and worry about being kicked out of their home or rejected by friends. They generally don’t have to endure the same type of discrimination and don’t have the same U-Haul jokes. The Hollywood Lesbian Consultant is the sanity check shows didn’t know they need.
Lesbian Bachelorette
“And the rose goes to…Carly, the lifestyle coach from Tallahassee who stole my heart during our L Word binge watching sleepover party date.”
In 2014, AfterEllen writers envisioned what a lesbian season of The Bachelorette would look like. The exercise proved the wittiness of our writers, but had no effect on Hollywood, which has yet to have a lesbian on The Bachelorette. Now that Logo has featured the Lance Bass-hosted Finding Prince Charming, billed as “the gay The Bachelor,” the time seems right for the lesbian version.
After all, what is The Bachelorette but smut TV at its finest: the intersection of many women’s desire for a happy ending, eye candy, and delicious drama. Why should straight people and gay men have all the fun? What better way to desensitize the public to lesbian romance than by showing that cattiness and sappiness aren’t limited by sexual orientation?
What we do not need, however, is another Shot at Love with Tia Tequila or, possibly worse, Boy Meets Boy (surprise twist: half the “gay” suitors are actually straight and if a straight guy is chosen at the end, he gets $25,000. How did anyone think this was a good idea?). For the lesbian The Bachelorette not to be a parody of queer female culture or an affront to the community, it must be done honestly, although with the same light-hearted approach that The Bachelor and its spin-offs all take.
Lesbian Entrepreneur Philanthropist Businesswoman With a Bag of Money
The best ideas die on the vine with no one to make sure they blossom. We need lesbians with spare capital and the desire to see lesbian-run businesses take off. Or if not take off, then someone with the sense of humor to invest in something that’s unlikely to succeed but that will be hilarious while it lasts. After all, if no one will ever invest in projects like Celesbian Sherpa or Rent a Lesbian, those businesses will never get off the ground.
Getty images Celesbian Sherpa
Celebrities travel internationally all the time, doing things like press junkets, volunteering, and personal travel. It can be exhausting to plan all that out if you’re not an A-Lister with a full staff dedicated to getting you from point A to point B. Besides, who will hold your teacup Chihuahua and get your double mocha latte iced Frappuccino with skim milk while you hold a hammer with one hand in front of a house you just watched other people build and take a selfie with the other hand?
Enter the Celesbian Sherpa. The Celesbian Sherpa is a jack-of-all-trades able to handle visa issues, plan travel itineraries, book the cheapest first class flights and luxury hotels, and use TripAdvisor to ensure maximum tourist highlights. The Celesbian Sherpa will even take pictures of you so you don’t have to bring a selfie stick. The ideal customer base is celesbians and the lesbian community’s favorite straight celebrities, although the Celesbian Sherpa would never turn down a road trip with Adele through the Irish countryside.
In case the duties of a Celesbian Sherpa are unclear, here’s an example just to show how it works: a celebrity, we’ll call her Shmamielle Mormak, goes to Southeast Asia for charity work. I, the Sherpa, get us motorcycles as transportation because I, too, am a motorcycle aficionado, and then we backroad our way around, sampling street food and generally doing good works. Because I am a black belt in karate, I provide the side benefit of also being a bodyguard. I choose our hotels and bellboy baggage around once there, leaving our celebrity free to take selfies by the pool. Because I am fluent in several languages, we are able to travel in multiple parts of the world without need of a translator. Additionally, I am a fount of knowledge and have mostly memorized the guidebooks in advance of the trip, providing witty and excellent commentary as we go.
At the end of the trip, our celebrity leaves with a bunch of Instagram and Twitter-worthy pictures, a glowing tan, and a new bestie because we have now have scheduled Skype sessions once a week to keep in touch.*
*True fact: I actually do have all those qualities. Call me, celesbians!
Getty Images Rent a Lesbian
It’s not just a Hollywood trope that some children want to stick it to their parents or other authority figures by engaging in shocking behavior, and what’s less egregious than showing up at a family event with-surprise!-a lesbian? Rent a Minority is a satire and the idea of a rent-a-lesbian has certainly been jokingly suggested before (slash this possibly really happened in real life), but if companies and political action groups can rent “protesters” and “fans,” why shouldn’t there be actual ad hoc part-time work for lesbians looking to stretch their acting chops in over the top roles such as “angry butch feminist” and “belligerently challenges all your opinions vegan”?
The renter has the joy of seeing their family wilt with horror or frisson with anger at the sight of the newest “member of the family,” while the Shakespearean lesbian in question gets to play into homophobic stereotypes. For added panache, Rent a Lesbians will attend office parties and hold hands with the renter the whole time.
It may seem retrograde to play into the very stereotypes with which our community has struggled historically, but it can be quietly subversive and hey, free food and money. There are lesbians who would do it for free, to be honest.
Getty images Hollywood Lesbian Consultant
Somewhere right at this moment, someone associated with a TV show is thinking, “It will be so dramatic if we kill the lesbian character. Wow, no one has ever done this before. I’m getting chills of excitement. Literally. Feel my skin-I’m like a Thanksgiving turkey right now.” Imma let you finish, but maaaaybe that’s something for which you should pick up the phone and call the Hollywood Lesbian Consultant. This consultant is deeply versed in both Hollywood and lesbian culture and can answer questions such as:
“Will the lesbian community show up at my house with pitchforks and burning torches if I kill this character?” (By the way, has anyone noticed that on the LGBT Fans Deserve Better page there’s a counter showing 383 cumulative lesbian or bi female characters on TV, of which 156 were killed? Do we really have a 40% death toll? Where’s my pitchfork?)
“My lesbian character should have a fling with a guy because sexuality is fluid, right?”
“A lesbian-identified male is a thing, right? Everyone’s heard of that?”
The consultant can also provide suggestions on common fashion trends in the lesbian community for the wardrobe department, inside references to sprinkle in the script, and tips for actresses on how to seem like an actual lesbian when kissing.
I believe that some people currently act in these capacities informally (for example Leisha Hailey and Kate Moennig on The L Word), and possibly even a few informal roles today, but there need to be more. I fear many shows approach lesbian characters with the mentality that they’re “just like straight characters” and no consultation with an actual lesbian is necessary. While that is to some degree true, straight people don’t have to come out and worry about being kicked out of their home or rejected by friends. They generally don’t have to endure the same type of discrimination and don’t have the same U-Haul jokes. The Hollywood Lesbian Consultant is the sanity check shows didn’t know they need.
Lesbian Bachelorette
“And the rose goes to…Carly, the lifestyle coach from Tallahassee who stole my heart during our L Word binge watching sleepover party date.”
In 2014, AfterEllen writers envisioned what a lesbian season of The Bachelorette would look like. The exercise proved the wittiness of our writers, but had no effect on Hollywood, which has yet to have a lesbian on The Bachelorette. Now that Logo has featured the Lance Bass-hosted Finding Prince Charming, billed as “the gay The Bachelor,” the time seems right for the lesbian version.
After all, what is The Bachelorette but smut TV at its finest: the intersection of many women’s desire for a happy ending, eye candy, and delicious drama. Why should straight people and gay men have all the fun? What better way to desensitize the public to lesbian romance than by showing that cattiness and sappiness aren’t limited by sexual orientation?
What we do not need, however, is another Shot at Love with Tia Tequila or, possibly worse, Boy Meets Boy (surprise twist: half the “gay” suitors are actually straight and if a straight guy is chosen at the end, he gets $25,000. How did anyone think this was a good idea?). For the lesbian The Bachelorette not to be a parody of queer female culture or an affront to the community, it must be done honestly, although with the same light-hearted approach that The Bachelor and its spin-offs all take.
Lesbian Entrepreneur Philanthropist Businesswoman With a Bag of Money
The best ideas die on the vine with no one to make sure they blossom. We need lesbians with spare capital and the desire to see lesbian-run businesses take off. Or if not take off, then someone with the sense of humor to invest in something that’s unlikely to succeed but that will be hilarious while it lasts. After all, if no one will ever invest in projects like Celesbian Sherpa or Rent a Lesbian, those businesses will never get off the ground.
