From figuring things out to confiding in friends to announcing publicly; many struggles ahead for those not fitting into the compartmentalized male-female society. On International Lesbian Day, we go through coming-out journeys of famous lesbians in Hollywood. Some are long and winding, others straightforward and yet flamboyant- but above all inspiring.
Kristen Stewart
"I'm like so gay," she said on Saturday Night Live back in 2017. The best part, she said it to Donald Trump. Who was back then vocal in his tweets about the actress, even opining that Robert Pattinson should dump her. Kirsten Stewart has opened up more than once about the pressures of coming out queer and how at the time of dating Robert Pattison, she was only trying to keep personal things, private. "The first time I dated a girl, I was immediately being asked if I was a lesbian. And it's like God, I'm 21 years old." The first girl she had a public link-up with was Alicia Cargile.
Ellen Page
The Juno star chose, probably, the perfect platform for officially coming out. In 2014, while delivering a speech at a Human Rights Campaign event benefitting LGBTQ youth. "I'm here today because I'm gay," she said, adding, "I am tired of lying by omission."
Little she must have realised at the time that it was to be the most inspiring, empowering and viewed speech ever. "I suffered for years because I was scared to be out. And I'm standing here today, with all of you, on the other side of all that pain."
She hoped to make a difference and she did. Page is currently married to Emma Portner, whom she saw on Instagram and married after a brief period of courtship.
Evan Rachel Wood
It's been almost a decade since Evan Rachel Wood came out of the closet, after much speculation. "I'm up for anything. Meet a nice guy, meet a nice girl," she said in an magazine interview, adding how things are when she is dating girls. "Yeah, I'm more kind of like the guy when it comes to girls. I'm the dominant one," she said in 2011. "I'm opening the doors, I'm buying dinner. Yeah, I'm romantic."
Her body of work appears a classic case of art imitating life, having played a lesbian in Once and Again, and The Wrestler and a bisexual in True Blood.
Ellen DeGeneres
The most powerful lesbian icon there is. Even to those who usually reserve regressive views for non-heterosexual relationships, will give it to the most-accepted pant-wearing iconic lesbian. Though most mistakenly consider Ellen DeGeneres' first coming out through the ABC' sitcom Ellen, wherein Ellen Morgan (played by Ellen DeGeneres) announces that she is gay. But it was actually a week before the episode aired that Ellen DeGeneres made a well-planned and widely-publicised coming out of her own while gracing the cover of TIME magazine in '97 with the headline, "Yep, I'm gay." Nothing less heroic would do for DeGeneres.
Ruby Rose
The Orange is the New Black girl came out to her mother at the age of 12 and in a way that'll give direction to the clueless adolescents and warm up even the homophobic. "I was just worried because I didn't know it was a thing. I knew how I felt, I knew what I kind of identified as, but the words gay or lesbian, I didn't know anyone else that was gay or lesbian, so I didn't really know how to word it. I was just like, 'I think I should let you know that when I eventually get a boyfriend, it'll be a girl," she said to her single mother, who had a chilled out response. "I knew it."
Cheers to the L in LGBTQ
A recent study, conducted by three New York University psychologists and published in the journal Social Psychology and Personality Science, explored the attitudes toward non-heterosexual men and women in 23 Western and non-Western countries. "We found that gay men are disliked more than lesbian women in every country we tested," said the study.
