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Ellen is still Relatable

Even if you’re not a Mardi Gras-loving, New Orleans Saints football fan from Southern Louisiana, like Ellen and me, you’ll still relate to Ellen’s life journey and sense of humor. In her Netflix stand-up special Ellen DeGeneres: Relatable (2018), the comedian touches on some trials and tribulations from different eras of her life.

After a fifteen-year break from stand-up, Ellen returned to the stage to shoot her Seattle special in 2018. It was like riding a bike. Joke topics varied from driving in traffic to how social media has changed our lives. I don’t want to give too much of the show away in case you still haven’t seen it, so I’ll stick to some of the lesbian content for our AfterEllen readers.

First thing’s first. “I am still gay by the way,” Ellen jokes to a cheering crowd. Yep, Ellen’s still a lesbian. She gushes about her wife Portia de Rossi throughout the show, and the audience can’t get enough of it. I don’t blame them. Who doesn’t appreciate a good love story?

Though not all of us will date and marry a celebrity, we can all relate to the struggles of dating. It took Ellen decades to find the right lady, but she never gave up. We already know how Anne Heche famously went back to men after dating Ellen. As a girl, I remember reading the headlines and feeling embarrassed for Ellen. As a woman, I had an ex pull a Heche on me. But Ellen doesn’t mention her in this special. Instead, she pays tribute to a girlfriend who died in a car wreck, which Ellen actually drove past, not knowing it was her until later.

“I didn’t know it was her ’cause she was in a different car,” Ellen recounts. “I almost stopped but then sirens were right behind me and showing up, so I kept going and I found out later it was her.” I can’t imagine what that kind of loss felt like, but some women can relate to tragically losing wives and girlfriends.

Many of us can also relate to being poor and having to work odd jobs to get by. Sometimes we’ve had to rent places we didn’t want because we couldn’t afford anything else. After her girlfriend died, Ellen couldn’t afford to keep renting their place, so she moved into a small basement apartment infested with fleas. “It was the first person I ever lost that I loved,” Ellen says. “I was just… how is this possible? This beautiful young girl is gone and fleas are here.”

Instead of giving up, Ellen followed her inner light and turned her pain into art. The experience with the fleas led to her writing comedy, which opened up a successful path for Ellen. Not only did she overcome diversity, she thrived. There are many great lessons in this comedy special for lesbians, particularly young lesbians and lesbians dealing with loss or various setbacks, but the major takeaway is to keep going, especially when life is hard.

“I’m not just a spokesperson, I’m a gay,” Ellen jokes. “Side effects may include: Loss of family, loss of friends, unemployment.” Ellen has often put herself on the frontlines, blazing the trail for all of us. Her stand-up special gives real talk about what can happen when lesbians come out of the closet.

“Whether you’re gay, or have dry eye, we are all the same… and we are all… relatable.”

Thank you for being a bright light for our community, Ellen. This Cajun appreciates you.

Ellen DeGeneres: Relatable is streaming now on Netflix. Check it out and let us know in the comments what’s relatable to you.

“The same people who loved me, overnight, just hated me. Just because they knew I was gay. Everything changed. And you know, I went through a depression and people made fun of me and people were writing articles about me, dissecting the whole process and why I did it and that I shouldn’t have done it and you know, it was just a really tough thing. It took three years for me to get back on television.”

Even straight people who worked with her found it hard to get work. In the post-special bonus Ep. 2: “Ask Ellen,” Ellen says actress Laura Dern didn’t get work for two years after playing Ellen’s love interest on her TV show. But things have improved. Ellen’s talk show is going sixteen seasons strong! She had to take the risk and come out to get to that point, though.

“I just think it would help if more people came out,” Ellen says. “There are a lot of children that it would impact, a lot of kids would be helped by that.”

I concur. Young lesbians need to know it’s OK to be gay. It’s harder to be an out lesbian than it was when I came out in the 2000s, even though American lesbians now have the right to marry and openly serve in the military. The reason it’s harder to be a lesbian today is because so-called LGBTQ+ media and organizations are attempting to erase lesbians. They persecute us for being female homosexuals, and that’s modern-day homophobia and conversion therapy disguised as progress. How is calling a lesbian a vagina fetishist any different from Westboro Baptist Church or other anti-lesbian groups telling us being gay is wrong?

Like Ellen, many lesbians have survived fundamentalist religious upbringings. Her family’s Christian Science faith was extreme because it denied medical care, even when she split open her knee and needed treatment. “So my entire childhood, I never had a vaccination, never had any medicine,” Ellen relates. However, as she always does, Ellen turns lemons into lemonade. She learned from her experiences and used them to write jokes.

Most of the comedy special is light-hearted, even the lesbian material. Still, there’s social criticism under the surface. For example, Ellen jokes about the stereotype that lesbians have cats, and people think you’re more of a lesbian if you have several cats. After winning some enthusiastic laughs, she steps back to dissect the joke, which actually comes back around for a payoff later in the show.

Merriam-Webster defines “relatable” as “able to be related to: possible to understand, like, or have sympathy for because of similarities to oneself or one’s own experiences.” I’m sure everyone can relate to something about Ellen DeGeneres.

“Whether you’re gay, or have dry eye, we are all the same… and we are all… relatable.”

Thank you for being a bright light for our community, Ellen. This Cajun appreciates you.

Ellen DeGeneres: Relatable is streaming now on Netflix. Check it out and let us know in the comments what’s relatable to you.

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