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Best. Lesbian. Week. Ever. (April 25, 2008)

CYNDI LAUPER WANTS YOU TO HAVE SOME FUN As Sarah reported last month, Cyndi Lauper‘s True Colors tour will once again be bringing some good gay fun (and music) to your neck of the woods this summer. But just in case you weren’t aware of how much Cyndi loves us, she made this special video greeting for AfterEllen.com readers:

… JUST DON’T DO IT IN SINGAPORE AE reader Alicia tipped us off to the sad news that homophobia is still enforced in some parts of the world – in this case, Singapore. Starhub Cable Vision, a cable channel in Singapore, was fined $10,000 (US$7,200) for airing a commercial that promoted the song “Silly Child” by pop singer Olivia Yan. In the song, two girls kiss while a boy (presumably the boyfriend of one of them) sees them; he later confronts one of the girls but seems to accept her and embraces her. The song doesn’t seem to end on a terribly happy note, but nor does it make the girls’ relationship seem wrong. According to Singapore’s Media Development Authority, that’s exactly the problem:
Within the commercial, romanticised scenes of two girls kissing were shown and it portrayed the relationship as acceptable. This is in breach of the TV advertising guidelines, which disallows advertisements that condone homosexuality. MDA also consulted the Advisory Committee for Chinese Programmes and the Committee concurred that the commercial had promoted lesbianism as acceptable and romantic, especially when shown together with the lyrics featured.
Fridae, an Asian LGBT website, reports that Starhub was “disappointed with the watchdog’s decision but says it understands the concern and will work closely with partners to ensure broadcasting guidelines are adhered to.” In Singapore, gay sex is still legally “an act of gross indecency” and is punishable by up to two years in jail, although recently the government has said it will not enforce these laws in the case of consensual relationships between adults.

Obviously, this is disappointing for LGBT people everywhere, but particularly for lesbians who live in Singapore. Watch the video for yourself here; at least in the U.S. it’s not illegal! It seems that Singapore needs their own True Colors tour – hey, Cyndi, how about taking it overseas?

MANLY LESBIANS COMING TO THE BBC AE reader BigRed tipped us off that this Monday, April 28, BBC One is premiering a new daytime drama, Out of the Blue, which includes two lesbian characters (the show will debut in Australia later this year). According to its official site:

Set in the beautiful Australian beach resort of Manly, Out of the Blue is a weekday drama about blue sky, sun and surf and the storms that sometimes rip through when you least expect. The series opens when a group of thirty-something friends return to their home town for a high school reunion. Celebrations run high until things are brought to an abrupt end when one of the gang is found dead.

As the remainder of the group and their friends and families become embroiled in a murder investigation, friendships are challenged and loyalties are torn as they set out to discover who amongst them is a killer. When the answer is revealed, life in Manly will never be the same again.

Quick, see if you can spot the lesbians in this cast photo! (Actually, see if you can see anything in this photograph besides the blinding whiteness of the cast.)

Here, I’ll make it easier for you: The happy (?) lesbian couple is Poppy (Katherine Hicks, left) and Peta (Daisy Betts).

First we have Poppy, who “has three unfinished university degrees and has dabbled in floristry, midwifery, anthropology and abseiling instruction, among other things.” (I have no idea what “abseiling instruction” is, but it doesn’t sound good.) Poppy’s official bio reads:
Poppy’s the most left of centre out of all her friends and skips through life with a deep love for spontaneity and adventure. She has some truly mature insights into the workings of the human heart and a keen ability for exploring previously unchartered territory.
Good thing she likes unchartered territory, since her girlfriend Peta is a lawyer who has been working in a remote aboriginal community for the last two years. Peta’s official bio describes her as:
… smart, educated and sharp as a whip. She’s a proud supporter of the underdog and fights dearly against conformity and social wrongdoings, especially now she’s a lawyer. Exciting and elegant, Peta’s never shied away from expressing herself fully and verbally, even from a young age.
A lesbian who’s never shied away from expressing herself? What kind of far-fetched fairy tale are they peddling here?

BBC has ordered 130 episodes to start with, which means hours of lesbian drama (or lack thereof, if they follow the American daytime television model). By the time we find out who the killer is, we probably won’t care, but just in case, I’m going to make my guess now: It’s the blond lesbian with the abseiling instruction manual in the lounge. Someone email me in a year and tell me if I’m right.

LESBIAN ALLY QUOTE OF THE WEEK “Whether you’re a straight woman or a gay woman, you want to be in control of who and what you are, and who you are as a sexual entity is a big chunk of who you are as a whole, so when you say I am this, you are owning that, you are controlling it. When straight women had the sexual revolution and they said, ‘Hey, I’m in charge of my own sexuality. I can have sex and enjoy sex,’ they all did. Men couldn’t take it away from them. And the gay community, when you say, I am gay, you own it. No one can take it away from you.” – Amber Benson to OutSmart magazine on why people come out

AND YOU THOUGHT REALITY COULDN’T GET ANY WORSE A tragedy struck my TV this week when Jennifer Biesty became the second chefbian of Top Chef Season 4 to be told to pack her knives and go. For a few years now, Bravo’s culinary drama has been one of the only reality shows on TV in which a contestant’s skills actually matter – and in which contestants are quite often lesbians. Now there’s only Lisa “I’m not negative” Fernandes and Jackie “I’m not a player” Warner to hold back the tide of increasingly tawdry and just plain embarrassing lesbians and bi women on reality TV. If you think I’m exaggerating, let me fill you in on what cable TV has been doing to us lately.

Over on Oxygen’s Bad Girls Club, which is a sort of Real World for women who call each other “bitch” as a form of endearment (and they’re not saying it in a campy, fabulous gay way, either), resident bad girls Andrea and Cordelia have been developing something of an intimate relationship, hampered by jealousy, alcoholism and the fact that Andrea, at least, is probably straight. From the various video clips I forced myself to watch, it seems as though Cordelia might actually be dealing with some real coming-out issues. Doing this on a reality show called Bad Girls Club, though, is seriously one of the worst places in the world to deal with them. I’m not sure whether I should blame Cordelia for putting herself on this show, or the producers who make these kinds of shows.

Over on VH1’s Viva Hollywood, a reality show that is looking for “America’s Numero Uno Telenovela Star,” the aspiring actors are coached by an assortment of camp icons (Charo, anyone?) and put through a series of challenges called the “Seven Deadly Sins” of telenovelas. This week they had to deal with “Lust,” and of course that involved same-sex kissing.

The two women involved in the lesbian kiss didn’t seem to be as reluctant as the two men who had to do a gay scene, but the dialogue certainly drew on some pretty pathetic stereotypes. After one woman expressed some reluctance to hook up, the other woman said in a totally sober voice: “Don’t think about it. We’re drunk. Tomorrow we’ll pretend it never happened.” Watch it for yourself (the lesbian scene is toward the end of the clip): But wait, it gets worse! This week, Season 2 of A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila premiered on MTV, and I made myself watch it so you don’t have to. Back before the first season premiered, I was actually excited about the potential for this show, but it eventually devolved into a big ugly mess. During Tuesday night’s episode, that mess just got uglier.

The episode began with Tila Tequila putting the men and women into two separate cages – a blue cage for the men, a pink one for the women, of course – and then asking them to turn her on by dancing seductively. Nudity occurred within the first few minutes of the episode, and no, it wasn’t tasteful, in case you were wondering.

It just went downhill from there. The boys acted like animals, while two of the women (Lili and Serena) started making out with each other right before the elimination. Tila promptly dismissed them (and four other women) from the show. Here are the women who had the luck to get kicked out on the first night: Amid all the mayhem, Tila did manage to get out one sentence that spoke to a myth about bisexuality: “Even though I picked a guy last time, I’m still bisexual.”

There’s just one problem with her statement. Tila, I’m pretty sure the bisexuals called and demanded that you give them back your membership card.

THERE’S NOTHING SEXIER THAN A LESBIAN RHODES SCHOLAR If you’ve been surfing the cable news channels lately seeking out election coverage, you may have noticed out lesbian Rachel Maddow of Air America Radio on MSNBC’s Race for the White House, which airs at 6 p.m. ET weekdays. Maddow, who possesses quite a sharp wit (and a Ph.D. from Oxford where she was a Rhodes Scholar), has become a regular on MSNBC during this extended election season, and she more than holds her own against conservative commentators such as Pat Buchanan and Joe Scarborough. In fact, just the other day Buchanan attempted to one-up Maddow by telling her to “hold the Marxist dialectic,” thereby revealing that he had no idea what the hell he was talking about.

And last week, Maddow so infuriated Scarborough by being smarter than he is that he decided to leave the show early like a petulant little kid. Check out the footage here: This election season has become so long and drawn-out that even I, an avowed political junkie, am tired of it. I think that Rachel Maddow’s ascendance as a political pundit is possibly the only positive outcome, and I’m not just saying that because of all the alliteration I got to use in one sentence.

After the dark horror of that reality TV, we need someone like Rachel Maddow to drag us back into the daylight, where people are sober and don’t expose themselves in public. Oh, wait.

(Y’all know I’m not talking about Rachel, right?)

I’M SHOCKED, I TELL YOU, SHOCKED! Attention everyone who ever thought that singer-songwriter Michelle Shocked was a lesbian: According to this new interview with the Dallas Voice, Michelle was never a lesbian, and now she’s a Christian who believes that being gay is a sin, except she likes being called an “honorary lesbian.” Huh? Back in the ’90s, Shocked supposedly came out to Chicago’s OutLines magazine, and she was often identified in the press as a lesbian, but Shocked insists that she was never gay, though it’s a little unclear about whether or not she allowed folks to believe that she was gay at the time. Regardless, about 15 years ago she began to research gospel music, and eventually she became a born-again Christian. Here’s what she thinks nowadays:

There are some inconvenient truths that I’m now a born again, sanctified, saved-in-the-blood Christian. So much of what’s said and done in the name of that Christianity is appalling. According to my Bible, which I didn’t write, homosexuality is immoral. But homosexuality is no more less a sin than fornication. And I’m a fornicator with a capital F.
Well, I’m confused with a capital C. You have to read the interview to believe it, though you may not understand it any more than I do.

HERE! PUTS A BLACK WOMAN IN THE WHITE HOUSE We’ve just learned the here! has wrapped production on an action film called Fall of Hyperion that features an African-American woman as the president of the United States, played by openly lesbian actor J. Karen Thomas. If you’re not familiar with Thomas, she’s had a slew of roles in a several lesbian-themed films including Itty Bitty Titty Committee, Promtroversy and Sarang Song, and had guest roles on TV shows from Melrose Place to Crossing Jordan. She was also featured in a documentary called Who Killed the Electric Car? which screened at Sundance in 2006, where she posed for the photo below: I’ve just realized that here! has hit upon the best possible solution for the mess that the Democrats have gotten themselves into this year. They need to somehow combine Obama and Clinton and nominate an African-American woman as the Democratic candidate!

Oh, did Oprah already turn them down? Darn.

THIS WEEK IN K.D. Lesbian icon k.d. lang has been in Australia and New Zealand lately, touring and promoting her most recent album, Watershed, that is now sitting at No. 1 on the Australian charts – her first No. 1 album anywhere in the world. She recently spoke with the Sunday Star Times in New Zealand about her album and about how her approach to songwriting has changed since ending her relationship with Leisha Hailey in 2000:

I was once renowned for having turbulent relationships, and if I’m honest, part of the reason was that I thought the break-ups were good for my song writing. But then I realised that it was a really cheap way out. Breaking free of those habitual patterns was actually more interesting, more productive, more civil and less self-destructive. My current relationship’s almost seven years old, and that relationship is a big part of the record, but the record is also about my relationship to myself and to the world.
In a lighter interview, lang also appeared on Australian talk show Rove this week, where host Rove McManus asked his standard question, who his guest would turn gay or straight for; lang said it would be Rove himself. Watch the entire nine-minute interview here (thanks Aj!).

In other k.d. lang news, the University of Alberta will be recognizing lang with an honorary doctorate of laws degree on June 11 (thanks Lisa!). Congratulations on your No. 1, doctor lang!

I CAN HAS SUBTXT PLZ? I don’t know about you guys, but this has been a long, hard work week for me, so I was more than happy when AE reader AP tipped us off to another hilarious LOLcats spinoff, LOLXena. Check these out: I had forgotten how much fun Xena Warrior Princess was! LOLXena is great, but I don’t think there are nearly enough subtexty (or texty) pics, so I’m asking you to help us out: Go forth and create more LOLXenas! And then come back and share them with us. It’s Friday, after all – time to goof off at work!

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! The New York Times has a review of a new play, Crooked, that features a teenage lesbian.

Out British actress Sophie Ward has her own blog in which she writes about her career as an actor.

Jamie Babbit and Andrea Sperling recently attended the 23rd Turin International GLBT Film Festival (which wraps up today in Italy), where Andrea received a special award, and Jamie was interviewed by Lista Lesbia Italiana (the interview is in Italian).

Season 2 of The Big Gay Sketch Show will be available on DVD on April 29.

Are Callie and Dr. Hahn headed for romance on Grey’s Anatomy? ABC’s promo for next week’s episode sure wants us to think so! We’ll let you know if/when we find out more, but in the meantime, you can discuss it in this forum thread.

We’ve created a mobile-friendly version of AfterEllen.com! Now you can easily keep yourself amused and informed when you’re falling asleep on the bus, trying not to fall asleep in class, or looking for an easy way to let the flirtatious checkout boy at the grocery store know you’re just not that into him. Type m.afterellen.com into your phone, blackberry or microwave oven browser (OK, that last one’s not true – but I bet it will be soon!) and you’ll get all of our latest articles and blog posts formatted nicely for your phone. Video and comments aren’t included, though, so be sure to come back to the site on the web for the full experience!

That’s it for this week! Got the inside scoop on a hot new lesbian/bi actor/musician/TV show/film? Tell us at [email protected]. Check back next Friday for another edition of Best. Lesbian. Week. Ever.

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