The Top 11 Cinematic Lesbian “Reveals”

8. Annabelle — Loving Annabelle (2006)

Every lesbian knows that the best way to reveal your sexuality among a new group of friends is a good old-fashioned game of "I Never." When Annabelle shows up to a new Catholic boarding school, she has all of her lesbian accessories in tow (guitar, combat boots, tattoo), but just to make sure her friends don't mistake her for an average emo punkster, she busts out with, "I've never slept with a woman" during a tipsy dorm-room game of "I Never." Her new classmates are shocked, intrigued, and impressed, but not contemptuous.

Of course, that is only the first reveal in Loving Annabelle. The second one changes not only the course of Annabelle's life, but her literature teacher, Simone's, as well. When Annabelle reveals the reason she won't surrender her Buddhist beads, it catches Simone completely off guard.

Simone: Why are you making this so hard?
Annabelle: The first person I fell in love with gave them to me.
Simone: You still in love with him?
Annabelle: She moved to Europe last year with her family.

Overall, Annabelle's reveal is treated with excited deference by her peers and guarded kindness by her teacher — until Simone's guard drops completely and her kindness gives way to passion.

7. Lucy Diamond — D.E.B.S. (2004)

Say you're the top student at an elite all-girls crime-fighting school, and you're staking out a notorious criminal mastermind as she rendezvous with a known killer. You're thinking arms deal. You're thinking assassination. What you're not thinking, when you accidentally tumble into said criminal mastermind after dinner, is this:

Lucy: You know. I don't get it. I'm minding my own business on some stupid blind date, and you guys are all over me!
Amy: A blind date?
Lucy: Yeah.
Amy: With that Russian girl? But, I didn't know you were a...
Lucy: Why would you know?
Amy: I just — wow. That just so totally torpedoes my thesis.
Lucy: Your what?
Amy: I'm doing a paper on you.

When Lucy Diamond (Jordana Brewster) reveals to Amy Bradshaw (Sara Foster) that she is a lesbian, Amy is thrown off only for a second. Within moments, she's deconstructing Lucy's sexuality and trying to understand it in relation to feminism and Lucy's overcompensating criminal mentality.

The reveal is important because it forces Amy to examine her sexuality, but Lucy Diamond's attraction to women has nothing to do with the fact that she's a super-criminal. It's a refreshing change of pace from the timeworn lesbian criminals of yore, with their perverse sexuality pushing them toward mass murder.

6. Patti — Under The Tuscan Sun (2003)

During Season 4 of Grey's Anatomy, Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) announced that no one would mistake her or Christina Yang (Sandra Oh) for lesbians because they "screw boys like whores on tequila." No wonder she's been so miserable these past four seasons.

In Under The Tuscan Sun, Oh has a slightly bubblier role to play, as Patti, Frances' (Diane Lane) lesbian best friend. When Patti and her partner, Grace (Kate Walsh) discover they're expecting a child, they send Frances to Tuscany on their Gay & Away tour. Even though Patti's sexuality is revealed in a far less dramatic way than her subsequent arrival in Italy — plus one huge baby belly, minus one partner — it is a reveal that added the remarkable Sandra Oh to the lesbian canon as the fun-loving Patti. A much-needed addition that will not soon be forgotten.