Tilda Swinton has honed her own signature when it comes to fashion, and at KitschMix we simply can’t get enough. Her androgynous beauty allows her to play everything from a Caravaggio muse to winter snow Queens.
Her fashion choices (like her movie roles) tend to stray from the Hollywood norm. From menswear-inspired pieces, to strong architectural details; Swinton is always guaranteed to shy away from the mainstream and wear something unexpected.
There is a reason the actress and fashion muse has been touted as one of today’s most original and visionary dressers.
Here, we pick our favourite Swinton fashion moments.
Gillian Anderson has chosen to open up further about her previous lesbian affair.
The actress – who first discussed her gay relationship in 2012 – was in high school when the two dated “for a long time”, but thought it was important not “hide” what happened, following her death in 2011.
She told the Mail on Sunday newspaper’s Even magazine:
“She had died of a brain tumour a year earlier and I had never really spoken about her. She was a beautiful person who was very meaningful in my life and I wanted to honour her instead of hiding my experience. There was a point years after we split when she phoned to tell me to say she had been offered a large amount of money to sell a photograph of us together and had chosen not to do it.”
Gillian Anderson
She added:
“It was a very big decision because she really could have used the money. I felt it was very important to take the onus off that type of relationship, to say this happened and I feel no shame about it.”
Gillian Anderson
Back in 2012, Anderson told Out Magazine:
“I was in a relationship with a girl for a long time when I was in high school. You know, I’m old enough that I can talk about that… If I had thought I was 100% gay, would it have been a difference experience for me? Would it have been a bigger deal if shame had been attached to it and all those things that become huge life-altering issues for youngsters in that situation? It’s possible that my attitude around it came, on some level, from knowing that I still liked boys.”
Raven Symone will be opening up about her sexuality as well as her infamous tweet that implied her support on same-sex marriage, in the interview Oprah’s ‘Where Are They Now’ this sunday.
Last week Symone posted a photo on Instagram where she sits in a chair across from the famous talk show host.
“#wherearetheynow #ivebeenhere you guys! It’s about to happen the #unicorn says some crazy stuff, #judgenot #listenfirst!@oprah thank you for a great talk, I enjoyed myself. Your my #### auntie for real! Lol. Coming out 5th on #OWN,”
Raven Symone
Tune in Sunday, October 5 to see the full interview. Symone will also be participating in the game show Celeb Name Game.
Queen Latifah is making changes to her daytime talk show.
“Everything at the end of the day comes down to me being myself. My whole goal this year is to be more loose, more playful, more fun, more provocative… it’s having a good old time and being La,”
Queen Latifah
Her first year with ‘The Queen Latifah Show’, which returns this week, provided a lesson in what worked and what didn’t. The show has a new executive producer, Todd Yasui, to steer it.
Celebrities, of course, remain part of the equation. Reese Witherspoon, Toni Braxton, Goldie Hawn, Kristen Bell and Snoop Dogg are among those appearing in week one. The “get” Latifah still is angling for: President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama.
During the first season, the 44-year-old singer and actress said, audiences responded to the show’s motivational, upbeat elements, and they’ll be more prominent this time around.
An initiative dubbed “One Step Further” will help empower people to pursue their dreams, she said, with a segment Wednesday focused on children in Camden, New Jersey.
“Queen Screen” will beam Latifah via big-screen to public venues such as malls, surprising people with both the host and prizes. “The High Note” is a recurring segment in which Latifah, guests and studio audience members share good news for a cheery ending to the hour.
Her unique status as a pioneering rapper is key to another goal.
“While I have a show, I can help female rappers have a voice and be heard. Hip-hop is such a big genre of music with such big influence that it can change the world. But it can’t change the world without a woman’s voice in it.”
Queen Latifah
“Queen Latifah” is competing for viewers with entrenched series including “Dr. Phil” and “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” as well as newcomer “The Meredith Vieira Show,” hosted by the former “Today” personality.
Bill Carroll, an expert on the syndication market for Katz Media, said “Queen Latifah” did “good, not great” in its debut year, trailing “Dr. Phil,” “The Steve Harvey Show” and others in the ratings. Improving its numbers represents a challenge.
“The most difficult thing for any show, even in a second season where there’s some reinvention, is that the audience has already sampled the show. And for the most part, if it’s not in a new time period they’ve already made their decision.”
Bill Carroll
Latifah said she’s ready for battle, with all due respect to her rivals.
“We all know what this (competition) is and we all go hard,” she said. “I wish everybody the best of luck, but I’m focused on making this show a hit and building our audience.”
Lesbian favourite P!nk aka Alecia Moore has been working on a new album, but this album is a twist from a usual flavour.
Working with Canadian musician Dallas Green, ‘Rose ave’, is the upcoming debut album from duo – now called You+Me. Green is best known by his stage name as City and Colour.
In this new musical adventure, the singer has a more alternative sound, inspired by the country folk music. Much softer and far less commercial than we are accustomed.
The duo unveiled a promotional introduction video “The Story of You+Me” on VEVO. The official video for the first single is planned to be premiered later this month.
Watch the Story of You & Me
The new album is scheduled to be released to digital retailers on October 14, 2014 via RCA Records. It comes preceded by the lead single and duo’s artist name “You and Me“, premiered alongside the lyric video on VEVO on Monday September 8th. The pre-order of the album will be available on iTunes on September 9th.
W Mag’s October issue features Ellen Page as its cover girl. Where she can be seen suit and booted. BUT, inside we see a different side to the newly outed actress – Abs out, wearing noting but a cap.
The 27-year-old actress is not the only cover star this month. This issue pays tribute to 12 groundbreakers in entertainment, fashion, film, and comedy. Model Cara Delavingne, who dated Michelle Rodriguez earlier this year, plus Kristen Wiig, Naomi Campbell, and Charlotte Casiraghi also take their own covers as the new royalty of film, fashion, comedy, and more.
Here’s what the ladies shared:
Ellen, on her first audition:
“I was 10 when I started acting. A casting director came to my school looking for kids. I auditioned for a TV movie called Pit Pony, and I got it. Acting became an immediate fixation. I was a child, but I was so ambitious. At 17, I costarred in Hard Candy, about a pedophile and his victim, whom I played. My character had to castrate the pedophile. I’ve always loved learning things for a part, and I remember researching castration and thinking, This is so interesting. I’m a nerd that way: I love the challenges of this job.”
Cara, on being naked:
“As a child, I loved being naked. My parents would have to force me to be dressed because otherwise I’d take my clothes off and run around the supermarket. Nudity was liberation to me. Freedom. My entire family is pretty nudist-y. We went to nude beaches a lot. I always wondered why the men on nude beaches had the smallest penises.”
Putting together a studio produced album is no easy feat. If you want the album to be of top notch quality – following the successive quality of your previous albums – instead of being recorded in a tin can then you’ll have to plan accordingly. If you want your songs to be less monotonous than just you on the track with a twangy guitar then that will have to be factored in too.
And, if you want more people to listen to it than your immediate family (including your parents who don’t even know what an MP3 is!) then you’ll have to fork out for marketing too. It’s not cheap either and out country singer Chely Wright recognises this which is why she’s launched a Kickstarter campaign to bring her next album to the masses.
The budget on her campaign is $175,000, which might seem pricey, but Wright explains that it’s necessary because she wants to “make a great album of great songs and to do that, we need to reach our goal”.
That relatively high figure will go towards “using the best musicians, the best engineers and recording in the best studios available” and although that $175,000 number was usually doubled by major labels (her last release on a major label was in 2010, but since coming out the same year Wright has since gone independent) some of the raised money will go to marketing too.
Fans will be able to take pride in the backer rewards, though. A digital download of the final album is available while for those interested in Wright’s coming out, her marriage to Lauren Blitzer in 2011 and the birth of their twin sons in 2013, then there’s a backer tier that also nabs you a copy of her documentary. Meanwhile, the most expensive tier is worth $10,000 and not only will that let you meet Wright in person, but she’ll even take you as her guest to the 2014 GLSEN Award in Los Angeles later this year.
The media and the LGBT community seem to be very smitten with Angel Haze and Ireland Baldwin new found relationship.
However, they aren’t the only ones. According to Ireland Baldwin’s cousin, Alaia Baldwin (daughter of actor Stephen Baldwin), the Baldwin clan are cool with the relationship and welcoming to Haze – taking time out to get to know her.
In a recent interview with independent.ie, Alaia praised Ireland – the daughter of Hollywood stars Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger – for the relationship and admitted she has ”grown a lot as a person” over the past 12 months.
She said…
‘‘I’m really proud of her. The past year through everything she’s been doing with modelling and relationships, she’s grown a lot as a person. Having supportive friends is something wonderful, but being able to rely on your family, even if it’s only some of your family, is really important. I have some very special cousins who have been the fiercest allies in my family, especially as I have no siblings.”
Alaia Baldwin
Yeah to acceptance.
Ireland and Angel first sparked romance rumours when they posted pictures on Instagram. The rapper then confirmed their relationship in June, but admitted some people were still struggling to accept them as a couple.
“There are still certain limitations for women. If we were two guys, it’d be insane, negatively insane with the attention. With us it’s all being very positive, the media are like, ‘Oh they’re so cute, they’re best friends.’
An interracial gay couple, I mean that’s just weird for America right now. We f**k and friends don’t f**k. I have never f**ked one of my friends. Once I see you in that way, it doesn’t happen. But we do f**k and it’s crazy and that’s weird to say because I think about it in terms of an audience reading it and them thinking, ‘What the hell?’ But it happens.”
Mary Lambert’s first full-length album ‘Heart On My Sleeve’ – is a month away from release.
Her debut single ‘Secrets’, was well received and got decent airplay.
In ‘Secrets’ Lambert opens-up and sings about her bipolar disorder, her highly dysfunctional family, and other ‘secrets’ which she chooses to reveal.
I like to say that I never intended to be a pop singer. I intended to be a healer. I hope to urge people to be empathetic and compassionate. People don’t relate to each other or see each other as equals, and this causes problems. I want to open up and be vulnerable, and to encourage others to be vulnerable.
Mary Lambert
Now she has released the title song from the album. ‘Heart On My Sleeve’ comes out on Oct. 14.
In an interview with The Approval Matrix, Amy Poehler was asked by host Neal Brennan about modern men and the difficulties they face.
Poehler responded beautiful:
[tweet_dis]”Well, this feeling that you’re having right now — which is like, ‘I’m sup posed to be all things’ — is a feeling that women have every day and have their whole lives. So you’re just starting to experience it now.”[/tweet_dis]
Amy Poehler
She perfectly describes the battle that ladies everywhere face: the expectation to be in charge but not so much so that it gets you fired; to be sexy yet modest; to be all for girl power, except when sexuality is involved.
[tweet_dis]“We have to deal with all those juxtapositions every day, but I’m glad you’re finally experiencing it as a white male.”[/tweet_dis]
In several interviews yesterday, Vicky talked about her background – growing up in the Pentecostal church, then the evangelical wing of the Church of England, and dealing with her feelings and attraction to women from a very early age.
“Realising that I was attracted to [women] was a horrible feeling. I was so embarrassed and ashamed. It became more and more of a struggle because I couldn’t tell anyone.
I increasingly began to feel like I was living behind an invisible wall. The inner secrecy of holding that inside was divorcing me from reality – I was living in my own head. Anybody I was in a friendship with, or anything I was doing in the church, was accompanied by an internal mantra: ‘What if they knew?’ It felt like all of my relationships were built on this ice that would break if I stepped out on to it.”
Vicky Beeching
At 23, her songwriting took her to Nashville, and for six years, she lived in the ‘fire-and-brimstone’ heart of conservative America, recording albums and touring the country’s vast churches. She also entered into a contract with Christian music branch of EMI, who had a “morality clause”, in which “any behaviour deemed to be immoral” would be a breach of contract.
Then life changed. Vicky was diagnosed with an auto-immune disease called linear scleroderma morphea, which led extensive chemotherapy.
“I looked at my arm with the chemotherapy needle poking out, I looked at my life, and thought, ‘I have to come to terms with who I am.”
Vicky Beeching
In recovery, Beeching went to visit Ruth Hunt, chief executive of Stonewall, who put her in touch with some out lesbians: the BBC newsreader Jane Hill, sports presenter Clare Balding and her wife, Alice Arnold, the former Radio 4 newsreader. “They said, ‘Be yourself and everything will follow.” Which led her to come out publicly.
“Publishing an interview with the Independent has been incredibly nerve-wracking for me. I’m nervous about the ways in which social media will respond. And how my conservative community and friends will respond.
But my hope is that there will be positivity as well as negativity from people of faith, and that it might encourage other Christians who feel unable to speak up about their sexuality to find the courage and freedom to do so.
We need to break the silence around the taboo of sexuality in the church and enable one another to speak about it more openly. I’m hopeful we’ll see a shift toward this direction.”
Watch out lesbian musician Mary Lambert performs a live version of ‘Born Sad’.
A year ago, Mary Lambert was an aspiring singer-songwriter earning a wage as a bartender, now she melts our hearts with her music. This year she stole the show with Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, sung at Grammy Awards as 33 couples got wed, and is now preparing the release her debut album, Heart on My Sleeve.
“As a lesbian in this industry, I’ve been instantly embraced. I came out when I was 17—coming out in middle or high school is one of the most difficult things that anyone could experience. I wouldn’t wish it on my enemies”
Mary Lambert
Lambert isn’t your typical major-label pop artist. Inspired by confessional folk singers as well as spoken-word performers, she is a brutally candid writer who deals directly in her art with such past traumas as being raised in a strict Pentecostal household, abusing drugs and alcohol before being diagnosed with bipolar disorder, surviving a gang rape at 17, and being molested repeatedly by her father as a child.
“It’s important for me to be completely and totally open”
HBO also announced yesterday it would be airing Queen Latifah’s Bessie Smith biopic in 2015. The Bessie Smith project marks the latest small-screen endeavor for Latifah, who is both producing and playing the lead role.
Bessie will be Written and directed by acclaimed filmmaker Dee Rees. Rees was critically acclaimed for her feature film “Pariah,” about a teen who struggles with her sexual identity. It won Best Independent Film from the African-American Film Critics Association and Best Cinematography Award at Sundance 2011, and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. The film and Rees also received multiple nominations from the Black Reel Awards and Black Film Critics Circle.
This new film Bessie will focuses on Bessie Smith’s transformation from a struggling young singer into “The Empress of the Blues” and one of the most successful recording artists of the 1920s.
Bessie Smith was born in 1894, in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Her career began in 1912 when she sang in a show with Ma Rainey. Her first recording, “Downhearted Blues”, established her as the most successful black vocalist of her time. More than any other performer, she was responsible for introducing the blues to mainstream of American.
She recorded regularly until 1928, touring both the North and the South, and appearing in the 1929 film St. Louis Blues. The Great Depression of the 1930’s was tough on the recording and entertainment industry, and Smith’s career went into a decline. Matters weren’t helped by her increasingly frequent episodes of binge drinking. She made her last recording in 1933. After a three year hiatus in performing, she again began to appear in clubs and shows, but died before another recording session could be arranged. In all, she made over two hundred recordings, including some famous duets with Louis Armstrong.
It was commonly asserted that Ma Rainey introduce Bessie Smith to saphic love, though there is no hard evidence for this. What is known is the Smith frequently got into trouble with her jealous second husband, Jack Gee, over her affairs with women such as Lillian Simpson, a chorus girl in Smith’s touring show, Harlem Frolics. Like Rainey, Smith sang songs with explicit lesbian content such as “It’s Dirty But Good” from 1930.
Smith was famous for her excessive appetites – for home-cooked Southern food, for moonshine, and for the tenderloin districts of the cities she performed in. Bessie Smith died in an automobile accident on September 26, 1937 in Clarksdale, Mississippi.
Comedian, actor and lesbian icon Rosie O’Donnell has made a deal with ABC to return to The View, TMZ is reporting. The celebrity news source announced O’Donnell will be a co-host on the daytime show she left in 2007.
O’Donnell previously co-hosted The View from September 2006 until May 2007 and left after an on-air feud with former co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck. Both returned, along with the nine other current and former co-hosts, to salute Barbara Walters, who retired in May.
O’Donnell will now join Whoopi Goldberg on the program, who is the last host standing after several co-hosts left the program for various reasons over the past two months. In addition to Walters’ retirement, Sherri Shepherd and Jenny McCarthy also recently announced their departures from The View.
According to TMZ, the show is also looking to add a Latina and a conservative co-host. Sarah Palin has thrown her name in the hat as a potential co-host and Mario Cantone has reportedly been offered a position on the panel, which would make him the show’s first male co-host.
Edith Piaf was a French singer with a fantastically unconventional life. Her parents had left her in the care of her grandmother, who worked as a cook in a brothel. At the age of seven, her father returned and she lived her life out on the streets, passing a hat to collect money as her father performed acrobatics. They often slept out in the streets or in parks. At the age of ten, her father fell ill and Edith began singing on street corners to make money. Passers-by took note of her strong voice, and she made more money by singing than her father had with his acrobatics.
The teenaged Edith would explore the streets with her friends, singing for meals. She fell in love and had torrid affairs, one with a delivery boy who bore her a child that died at the age of two from meningitis, another with a leader of a prostitution group.
It was not until the age of twenty that Louis Leplee, a club owner, discovered this intense new talent. He named her Piaf, “sparrow”, and mentored her in stage confidence, manners, and singing for an audience. The audience received her well, and Piaf began to record albums.
Alas, this breakthrough that would take her out of poverty and into the company of renowned entertainment personalities, did not necessarily mean the end of her suffering. Leplee, her beloved mentor who had discovered and named her, was brutally murdered by an organized crime syndicate—and Piaf was the prime suspect in the investigation until she was acquitted.
Piaf developed several substance addictions, particularly to alcohol and morphine. She continued to engage in torrid affairs, it is rumored with lovers both male and female.
She died of liver cancer at the age of forty-seven. While the archbishop of Paris denied her a funeral mass due to her immoral lifestyle, thousands of fans attended her burial. Edit Piaf has since become a national treasure, and a global icon.
Sandra Bullock is a German-American actress. She took acting classes with Sanford Meisner in New York and performed in a few off-Broadway plays. Early in her career, Bullock was the indie film darling. Her star-making role was that of Annie Porter from the 1994 action film Speed. Since then, she has starred in a number of box office hit romantic comedies and dramas, growing to hold the 2012 Guinness World Record for highest-paid actress.
She has won multiple Golden Globe awards, won an Oscar award for “Best Actress” and a Razzie award for “Worst Actress” in the same year. She is only the second actress to accept a Razzie award in the thirty-year history of this particular awards ceremony.
In accepting her Academy award for The Blind Side, she thanked…
What this film was about for me, which are the moms that take care of the babies and the children, no matter where they come from. Those moms and parents never get thanked. I, in particular, fail to thank one.”
She went on to thank her deceased mother for…
Reminding her daughters that there’s no race, to religion, no class system, no colour—nothing, no sexual orientation that makes us better than anyone else. We are all deserving of love.”
On a more light-hearted note, Bullock also mentioned Meryl Streep in her speech as “the best kisser”, alluding to a skit that she and the famous Streep had played for the 2010 Golden Globes Critics Choice Awards. The two acted out a vocal feud over the Best Actress nomination and award, which ended with Bullock striding towards Streep and pulling her face in for a quick but decisive mouth-to-mouth snog. The two embraced… “Meryl is a good kisser,” Bullock stated.
In addition to acting, Sandra Bullock is an activist for environmentalism and relief efforts for natural disasters.
Jennifer Tilly is a cult actress known for her several sexually charged characters. Many movie goers also recognize her squeaky voice from animation films. (Her high-pitched voice also helps her get rid of telemarketers – they think she’s a little girl.)
Tilly is another straight girl enjoying huge campy LGBTQ following. Lesbian women tend to randomly propose to her. Gay guys tag along as she goes out to party. Once Tilly made a heartwarming comment on her popularity among sexual minorities:
”A gay fanbase is the best kind to have, because on a whole they are very strong, intelligent and educated. And they are usually loyal and adoring. They are not afraid to run up and throw their arms around me, and tell me how much they love me. After all, everybody needs love.”
Sassy on the screen
In the ’80s and early ’90s Tilly played various small Hollywood and TV roles. Most notable was her performance in Woody Allen’s Bullets Over Broadway (1994) which earned her nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
In 1996 Tilly launched herself to permanent gay fame by playing an on-screen lesbian relationship with her co-actress Gina Gershon in The Wachowskis’ violent heist movie Bound. Afterwards, there was no turning back.
Tilly added another character in her personal parade of sexually charged deviants as she played Jo, a pregnant stripteaser and part-time dominatrix, in the erotic drama Dancing at the Blue Iguana (2001).
Could you love a murderous monster doll?
Jennifer Tilly’s reputation as a veritable camp star was cemented by one of the campiest horror franchises of the past 25 years, Chucky. I’m sure you all know the supernatural animated doll on a murder spree. Since 1999 Tilly has played Chucky’s bride in three separate movies. It might not be the most brilliant concept in the history of cinema, but the films have eager cult following.
Real-life poker queen
Perhaps you didn’t know that these days Tilly is as much a professional poker player as an actress. In 2005 she won World Poker Tour Ladies Invitation Tournament in Los Angeles. By July 2012 her live tournament winnings were said to exceed $590 000.
Today Tilly focuses more on her poker career than acting and gets smaller roles than what we think she should. But rest assured: we will keep seeing more of her awesomeness on the big screen as well.
This Barbados-born beauty began her musical career at only fifteen years of age. She jumped right into professional recording without almost no training or music theory background. It is certainly admirable that, since then, she has risen to the challenge of proving one of the most versatile and prolific talents in the pop music industry today.
This talented singer’s personal life has been mired in controversy. In February of 2009, her boyfriend Chris Brown assaulted Rihanna over the latter’s allegations of romantic text messages that Brown had sent somebody else. Photographic evidence of Rihanna’s injuries as well as her identity had been made public, which was neither usual nor recommended in media reports of domestic violence.
Rihanna’s subsequent professional collaborations with her ex-boyfriend and ex-abuser over the past few years have sparked heated debates and discussions about the dynamics of abusive relationships. While criticized for prioritizing her personal life over becoming a role model for her fans, especially encouraging young girl to leave abusive relationships with her example, Rihanna might also serve as a reminder that real human beings, even those who are pop stars, aren’t ideas. Her weaknesses or failings in continuing to work with her abuser could be seen as reminders that human relationships are complex, especially when it comes to the nature of forgiveness or enabling harmful behavior.
Through the problematic aspects that Rihanna shows of her relationships under public scrutiny, it becomes more difficult to deny that there is more than one way for a woman to be empowered and make her own decisions. While examination of such personal details might be a controversy in and of itself, the discussions surrounding these actions have sometimes brought to light an additional layer to this controversial issue. That is: the morality of entertainment media that can reward an unrepentant abuser of women.
Recently, Rihanna has featured in Shakira’s new single, “Can’t Remember To Forget You”, the video of which is quite suggestive of lesbianism between the featured stars. Opinions about whether this is a boon or a bane to LGBT representation remain mixed.
Born Amanda Rogers, this model and actress picked an Italian stage surname from the credit roll of a film to match the name she chose from William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. In the Shakespearean stageplay, the character of Portia was the leading lady who disguised as a man in order to argue in court as a lawyer—saving her love from execution. Appropriately, Portia de Rossi’s star-making role was that of a lawyer in the courtroom drama-comedy television series, Ally McBeal. As the story of her life behind the scenes would unfold, her love would save her from death.
Unlike her Shakespearean namesake, the young Portia de Rossi’s disguise was not a one-time trick but a way of life. On The Oprah Winfrey Show, de Rossi spoke about realizing her sexuality. “I had always really loved men, and still do, and just kind of assumed that I would be straight. I think everybody assumes that you’re going to be heterosexual,” de Rossi said with a brittle smile. “And the thing that made me think that I wasn’t, was that I developed very strong feelings for my best friends—for my girl friends—that were stronger than friendship. And I had a series of mini-heartbreaks throughout my teens, because my fantasy of what life could be like with my best friend, uh, wasn’t shared.” At the age of eighteen, she realized that the fulfillment of her love life would have to be with a lesbian.
De Rossi recounted how she would later pretend to drink to inebriation to seduce her straight female friends.
“Here’s the thing. I thought that if I was just kind of experimenting with another straight girl, that I wasn’t gay. We were just two straight girls, experimenting. But I was afraid of being around lesbians, because I thought, ‘Well, if I’m going to be experimenting with a lesbian…must mean I’m gay’ and I didn’t want to be gay.”
Portia de Rossi
Lesbianism would be disastrous for an actress in the 1990’s, even one participating on a show such as Ally McBeal where transsexual characters and experimental kisses between high-powered professional women would make the occasional feature. When Ellen DeGeneres came out, De Rossi (who had not yet met DeGeneres in person) watched DeGeneres’ career with baited breath.
“If someone as charming and wonderful as Ellen DeGeneres can’t pull this off, and keep her career? It’s not going to work for me.”
Portia de Rossi
Portia de Rossi went on to star as Lindsay Fünke in the award-winning sit-com Arrested Development, and eventually met and married Ellen DeGeneres. She authored a memoir entitled Unbearable Lightness.
Mary O’Brien earned the nickname “Dusty” because she liked to roughhouse and play football when she was a young girl. Music had always been a part of her life, although she never learned to read or write music. She, her brother Dionysius, and their mutual friend Reshad had chosen the stage surname Springfield while rehearsing in a field in Somerset. The three were great fans of American music, folk and pop. Dusty Springfield’s singing voice could be breathy or powerful—over this she had a phenomenal amount of control. As well as being a chameleon of vocal styles, she was a perfectionist when it came to the quality of her records. She would refuse to record in studios with “dead air”, sometimes recording in the corridors or ladies’ washrooms for the acoustic qualities of those spaces.
[tweet_dis]I’m the most misunderstood, misquoted person I know, honestly.[/tweet_dis]
At what would have been the height of her career, Springfield began to produce supporting or background vocal work, usually credited under yet another, purposely obscure, stage name. This was an effort to escape tabloid journalists at the time, who had a voracious appetite for the scandalous personal lives of famous figures. Speculations of homosexuality would be the most entertaining such scandal to the public, and the most devastating to a professional career at the time.
In her early fifties, Springfield had come out and participated in tempestuous affairs with women. Her marriage to actress Teda Bracci is notable for having lasted more than a year, compared to Springfield’s on-and-off relationships—and of having culminated in the hospitalization of both women by one another through domestic violence.
For her life’s work and memorable contribution to music, Dusty Springfield was inducted as an Officer to the Order of the British Empire, and to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the United States. She died at the age of fifty-nine, of breast cancer.
Sharon Stone shot to the stars with Paul Verhoeven’s erotic thriller Basic Instinct (1992), in which she played a bisexual serial killer Catherine Tramell. The movie made Stone show up in every straight guy’s and gay girl’s daydreams, not the least because of the famous on-screen upskirt peek that even upset Stone at the opening night.
Why is she our idol?
Sharon Stone has been voted top of various gay idol lists. Why is that? What makes Sharon Stone such an idol? It can’t be just her honey-laced trailblazing erotic role in Basic Instinct, can it?
There’s more. Both before and after her role as the bisexual serial killer, Stone has proven herself to be a true model of a modern sex-positive woman. Both through her movies and through interviews she has dusted off our society’s shame filled notion of sexuality.
Also, Stone occasionally talks about her personal brand of gender fluidity. A fine example can be found in her 2008 interview:
“Everybody is bisexual to an extent. Now men act like women and it’s difficult to have a relationship because I like men in that old-fashioned way. I like masculinity and, in truth, only women do that now.”
She goes on to describe how much easier it is to date a lady:
“If you go on a date with a woman, they call and say, ‘I’m going to pick you up at seven’. They take you somewhere great and you can dress like a chick.”
Stone transcends gender and age
Stone’s statements show how even rather conservative gender roles can be a liberating force, and how you don’t need to strictly define your own sexual identity. Therefore, the everlasting question about whether Stone is gay or bisexual or straight or whatever are beside any deeper point she’s trying to make.
Stone’s powerful sex positive attitude was lately highlighted in Huffington Post, where Stone claimed that as women age their sexual potential and wisdom increase. Usually in popular media only the young and comely tend to be portrayed as sexual beings, and mature sexuality is often a bit of a taboo. 56-year-old Stone keeps breaking this taboo and perhaps helps a few aging women accept their basic instincts.
Sharon Stone’s best movies in the 2000s
In Jim Jarmusch’s movie Broken Flowers (2005) Stone plays a beautiful clothes consultant and single mother, who used to date the main character played by Bill Murray.
John Turturro’s recent comedy Fading Gigolo (2013) brings Sharon Stone and Sofía Vergara together to play two lovers in search of ménage à trois on Italian soil.
Alpha Dog (2006) showed us a different kind of Stone – namely, one in fat suit.
For a woman in the world, there are certain things that you know are practically certain: your views will not always be considered as equal as a man’s (because of the patriarchy), there’s a strong chance that you won’t be paid in line with a man who’s doing the same job (because of the patriarchy) and no matter whether you’re big, small, short, tall or a combination of the above, people will find it valid to criticise your appearance and try and say judgemental things about your body (also because of the patriarchy). But dismantling the patriarchy isn’t something that can be done over night (God knows many have tried) and no matter how hard you fight those self-deprecating thoughts, it can be a little difficult to boost your self-esteem all by your lonesome. Bring on Mary Lambert’s #BodyLove campaign then, teaching you to love and appreciate yourself, one body part at a time.
Initially used as a way to promote her new single, effectively called Body Love, Mary Lambert’s new campaign is more than just a hopeful bit of marketing and is actually being used as a way to uplift women and girls into a place where the things that they think and feel about their own bodies far outweigh whatever negativity is coming their way from other people. Mary Lambert is a great person to pioneer this too, using the fame she garnered after singing the hook from her song She Keeps Me Warm on Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ popular tune, Same Love, to boost #BodyLove even further.
How the campaign works is that every day for a week on her Instagram (marylambertsing), Lambert would pick a body part, photograph it, explain why she loves it and then post it with the tag #BodyLove showing the world that frankly, they can say what they want about her body but she does not give a damn. Lambert even took to her website to explain the campaign,
“I decided to launch The Body Love campaign in conjunction with the anticipation of the video starting today. Every day on my Instagram, I will focus on a part of my body that I embrace, and offer you to do the same- posting a picture with it, hashtags, and a description that will automatically post to the Body Love Campaign website. Your empowerment and strength can be a tool for others. I believe we can build each other up. I think self love is one of the most important and potentially culture-shifting movements that is happening and can be propelled. I was inspired by Denise Jolly’s“Be Beautiful” project, and Sonya Renee’s “The Body is Not an Apology” movement.
The #BodyLove movement is absolutely one that we can all get behind and you can watch Mary Lambert’s Body Love music video below!
Swedish-born actress Greta Garbo was a shy, imaginative girl who had dreams of being an actress from the age of ten onwards. It remains a mystery as to when, during the course of her dreams being realized, she became disillusion by the industry. She retired at the age of thirty-five and spent the rest of her life as a recluse.
Despite her short career, Garbo has risen to fame as one of the most iconic movie stars of the era, whether by the subtlety of her expressions in silent films or her easy transition to the talkies when sound technology advanced. (The 1930 film Anna Christie gained publicity under the tagline “Garbo talks!”) She was intensely private, not even attending awards ceremonies when she had been nominated. She never met up with crowds of fans to sign autographs. She had a publicized romance with actor John Gilbert after they starred together in the 1926 film Flesh and the Devil. Garbo herself demonstrated a loyalty to Gilbert beyond the call of professionalism, but despite this, and although they lived together, she would perpetually reject Gilbert’s marriage proposals.
I never said, ‘I want to be alone.’ I only said, ‘I want to be left alone.’ There is all the difference.
Greta Garbo
Many modern biographers have found evidence of Garbo’s numerous romantic relationships with women, perhaps beginning as early as fourteen with a childhood friend by the name of Eva Blomgren, and more famously with fellow Swedish actress Mimi Pollak (they had attended the Royal Dramatic Theater school in Stockholm together in the 1920’s). Their correspondences are preserved in the Swedish compilation Djävla älskade unge! by Tin Andersen Axell. Garbo’s other confirmed conquests included actress Lilyan Tashman, actress and 1920’s fashion icon Louise Brooks, and novelist Mercedes de Acosta.
Garbo died in 1990, yet her name remains evocative of the mystery and magic that the early years of theater brought to audiences all over the Western world.
Also see – http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/sep/11/film.filmnews
Sex and the City, and currently you can spot the actress in the NBC hit series Hannibal.
In 2012 the radiant mother-of-two came out publicly, married her long-term companion Christine Marinoni and fully embraced her new real life role as an LGBTQ rights activist.
Nixon’s portrayal of lawyer Miranda has empowered a generation of young career-oriented women, and that alone would be a reason for us to admire her, but now with her activist persona unfolding the KitschMix crew simply cannot help but fall in love with her. Unfortunately, many gay rights activists do not share our enthusiasm for Nixon’s work.
And why is that? Let me explain.
This is why we love Cynthia Nixon
After getting married, Nixon has been publicly outspoken about her sexual orientation (= lesbian or bisexual) and her views on marriage (= gender equal). She has campaigned for equality time after time and shown her support for various liberal political candidates.
Also, did you know that Nixon is a breast cancer survivor and a cancer activist, raising public consciousness on the sickness? Well, she is.
All of this considered, the following shortcoming might not seem like a big deal…
Still, this is why we (kind of) hate her
Our biggest problem with Nixon is that in 2012 she told New York Times interviewer that being gay is a choice. Or at least that for her it is. Ouch.
Nixon’s statement is the exact opposite of what gay activists around the world have been desperately trying to say for the past century or two. So, it’s understandable that a lot of activists freaked out after the interview.
We at KitschMix understand Nixon. She is bisexual and she does admit that being bi is not a choice for her. What she meant was that she’s chosen to limit herself to women – or rather, one woman – so she is de facto homosexual.
But we still kind of hate her. She could have become the patron saint of bisexual women everywhere, but instead she opted not to identify as one simply because ”nobody likes bisexuals”. Very smooth, Cynthia.
Here at KitschMix we think that no matter your sexuality – pansexual, bisexual, homosexual, born this way or making a lifestyle choice – in the end the world is a mix which we should all aim to appreciate.
Let us end with a recollection of Nixon’s most beloved roles
Miranda Hobbes in Sex and the City (1998–2004) is Nixon’s best known character. For this performance she also received the Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series.
In 2005, to film critics’ great delight, Nixon played president’s wife Eleanor Roosevelt in the TV bio-drama Warm Springs.
Nixon’s role as Becca in the theatrical play Rabbit Hole earned her the 2006 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play.
‘I’m so proud of you, so happy for you. I know what a scary thing that is’
Ellen DeGeneres
This week, Ellen DeGeneres welcomed a newly out Ellen Page onto her daytime talk show and offered her public congratulations for coming out.
‘I think my biggest fear in doing it was having a panic attack, quite frankly. I was just so ready to do it, and so excited to do it. So it was a combination of such thrill to be at a place in my life where I was able to do that, and grateful to have that moment, and grateful to you (Ellen), because you did it at a time when it was much harder and much scarier.’
Ellen Page
Ellen DeGenere came out in a Time Magazine cover story in 1997 at the same time that her character on her self-titled ABC sitcom came out. The show was canceled soon after.
Page grew a bit emotional when DeGeneres played a portion of her HRC speech and talked about the damaging effect of keeping your sexuality a secret.
‘It’s toxic. You think you’re at a place where you’re like, “Oh, I’m happy to be gay, I’m so comfortable being gay, I love being gay.” Honestly, it wasn’t until making that choice and doing that (speech) when I realized that, no, I was carrying a tremendous amount of shame and guilt for not being out, and felt isolated from the LGBT community.’
Alicia Christian Foster aka Jodie Foster is a twice Academy-awarded actress and director. She can be safely called one of the most significant Hollywood actresses of the past few decades.
She gives the appearance of a confident and capable woman. She is an avid reader and book collector and she speaks several languages. Seriously, how cool can you get?
Foster came out – gay activists cringed
After years of guesswork by journalists and after several breaches of Foster’s privacy, in 2013 she finally came out. She did it in her speech at Golden Globe ceremony, as she received a well-earned Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement. You can read her acceptance speech here.
…be a big coming-out speech tonight because I already did my coming out about a thousand years ago back in the Stone Age, in those very quaint days when a fragile young girl would open up to trusted friends and family and co-workers and then gradually, proudly to everyone who knew her, to everyone she actually met. But now I’m told, apparently, that every celebrity is expected to honor the details of their private life with a press conference, a fragrance and a prime-time reality show. ”
Jodie Foster
Of course she did it wrong. She talked too much. She was too defensive and passive-aggressive. She didn’t use the L-word. She came out too late, full five years after she had broken up with the love of her life Cydney Bernard. So said many self-proclaimed LGBTQ activists online – alongside many others who normally had no interest in gay rights at all.
All this is of course silly and outright offensive.
Foster’s speech was beautiful and heartfelt. She told us about her real coming out years ago when she told the truth to her friends. Tears welling in her eyes she praised her family. She let us know how hard it is not to have any privacy at all. Did you know Jodie has been targeted by some seriously scary criminal stalkers over the years?
One crucial message in Foster’s speech was that celebrities shouldn’t be forced to spill out every detail of their private life to greedy journalists and fans. She is right. Please consider this before you criticise her, and if you may, instead enjoy the fact that such Hollywood icon as Jodie Foster has joined the growing ranks of openly queer celebrities.
Filling up Foster’s trophy shelf
Foster, a former child actress, has been receiving accolades for nearly forty years. She got her first big awards already at BAFTA ceremony in 1976 where she was given two awards – including Best Actress in Supporting Role for the film Taxi Driver (1976).
Screen Actors Guild acknowledged her for her role in Nell (1994). She has also received two Golden Globe Best Actress awards and one more BAFTA, not to mention the recent Cecil B. DeMille Award.
Her two greatest achievements are the Academy Awards she got for The Accused (1988) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Indeed, The Silence of the Lambs remains Foster’s best known performance. We can never forget the terrifying dynamic between agent Sterling and the super intelligent serial killer Hannibal Lecter – played by Foster and Anthony Hopkins, respectively.
In the past 30 years Gina Gershon has earned her place as one of the best-loved camp movie stars, although you might know her better from mainstream productions such as P.S. I Love You. She is known as a huge gay icon, having played several feisty queer characters.
We at KitschMix decided to take a look at the movies that made Gershon such an undisputed part of American gay imagery.
Showgirls camp fame
KitschMix crew can always appreciate a true kitsch classic! Showgirls (1995) is Paul Verhoeven’s steamy cult film that dives inside the world of Las Vegas showdancers and prostitutes. Here, Gershon plays a predatory bisexual diva Cristal Connors. This might not be her most affable role, but it is the one that first defined her as a revered camp actress.
Bound
In the year 1996 we got to witness Gershon collaborating with another enticing actress Jennifer Tilly in The Wachowskis’ debut feature film Bound. The two queer icons joined their strength to play a pair of criminally minded women, who become lovers and devise a plot to steal $2 million of mafia money.
Bound could be fairly called Thelma & Louise on speed: The movie was harshly criticized for its gratuitous violence. But later it has been also lauded as the first mainstream feature film to present lesbian relationship without homosexuality actually being the focus of the plot.
Prey for Rock & Roll
Prey for Rock & Roll (2003) was a drama film about the fictional female punk band Clam Dandy who decide to take one last shot at the big time. The band’s charismatic leader is of course played by Gina Gershon. Again, she chose to play a sexually deviant outcast – a role she seems to enjoy.
Well then, is Gina Gershon gay?
No, she is not.
Everyone was wondering if Gershon might be into girls after portraying such an array of lesbian and bisexual characters. However, she came out as straight lately in Austin America-Statesman.
For KitschMix crew Gershon is still a full-on idol. Not only for all the entertaining movies she has made. Not even for the whimsical fact that she likes to play jew’s harp. But because she has been an important part in making gay movie characters an accepted part of the mainstream.
By the way, did you know that lately Gershon played Donatella Versace in the TV biopic House of Versace? She gave a fine performance that definitely didn’t diminish her gay appeal.
“I gotta feel like what I’m giving the fans is one hundred percent and that it’s game-changing. I don’t just throw out microwave records,”
said Missy Elliott to Nicole James from Fuse TV, explaining Elliott’s hiatus this year.
That might be the best description of the depth and creative integrity of this rapper, singer, songwriter, and producer. She has won multiple Grammy awards for her work, and has collaborated with such superstars as Mariah Carey, Janet Jackson, and producer Timbaland (who is also a childhood friend of hers.)
Elliott has been open about her troubled beginnings. She had realized from an early age that she wanted to work in the music industry—and also knew that this was not a career path that she could pursue and be taken seriously or supported. Speaking of serious matters, she was also balancing a troubled home life. Her father abused her mother to the extent that the young Missy Elliott would refuse to attend slumber parties at her friends’ houses in case she returned home to find her mother dead. One day, her mother took initiative and moved out. Elliott says that it was leaving such a grave situation of domestic violence that allowed her mother to accept her own strength and independence, and this change influenced Missy Elliott more positively as she was growing up.
While Elliott herself was voiced pessimism about the representation of gay talents in rap music, she is living evidence of the ability to overcome personal adversity as well as that of society. She had also undergone treatments for an autoimmune disorder known as Graves’ disease.
While lesbian rapper Syd the Kid speculated on Missy Elliott’s orientation in an interview with IKONS, Missy Elliott herself remains private on both her own orientation and her stance on identity politics. Fans await Elliott’s new album with baited breath.
In the early 2000s Natasha Lyonne was a former movie celebrity and actress prodigy, deeply addicted to alcohol and heroin. She didn’t seem to have any future. But she did.
Read her story – it’s one with a happy ending.
Lyonne’s initial success
Lyonne’s first big role was in Woody Allen’s musical comedy Everyone Says I Love You (1996). Still, from the ’90s we best remember her comedy film performances such as American Pie (1999) and But I’m A Cheerleader (1999). She starred in the latter, playing a high school cheerleader, who is suspected of homosexuality and forced to a conversion therapy camp. You have to love the absurd scene where she bursts in tears and wails ”I’m a homosexual, I’m a homosexual!”
Then everything went awry
Unfortunately, Lyonne’s promising career came quickly crashing down. In the 2000s she was reportedly wandering the streets of New York unwashed, milking her fans to get money for the next dose. She got caught for drunk driving and was kicked out of her rental apartment after trashing it.
For years Lyonne’s physical and mental health deteriorated, until by 2008 she had suffered a heart infection, collapsed lung and long periods of homelessness on the streets of New York. She went into treatment to get rid of her addictions and indeed got back on her two feet.
In 2012 Lyonne even gave up cigarettes after going through a successful open-heart surgery.
Her health, sanity and career now revived, Lyonne is working again in both films and television, and continuing her work for greater acceptance of sexual minorities.
New career: Orange is the New Black and G.B.F.
In the 2013 movie G.B.F. (= Gay Best Friends) Lyonne was cast as a teacher who tries to make her students understand that it’s OK to be gay.
Still, you might know Natasha Lyonne better as the witty lesbian inmate Nicky Nichols of the Netflix series Orange is the New Black. It is not a coincidence that the character is a former junkie who has gone through an open-heart surgery…
With all these lesbian and deviant characters under her belt, it is almost a surprise that Lyonne is not into girls. She does humorously invite her gay friends to hit on her, though. Keep that in mind if you ever get to befriend her.
Photo by Annabel Mehran
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