One Big Lezzie

You can always spot the Lesbian by her collared shirt.

NBC’s new show takes queer lady visibility right back to 1994.

Did you guys catch One Big Happy last night on NBC? If you didn’t, you can always head over to AfterEllen (cough *sponsored by NBC* cough) to catch up on the hype. And it’s no wonder people had high hopes for the show, with Liz Feldman and Ellen at the helm. But…sigh.

Remember in Friends (especially in the first season), when all we knew about Ross’s babymama Carol was that she was a lesbian — and wasn’t it funny? Sentences like “she’s a lesbian” and “Susan and I are getting married” were met with raucous laughter. Of course, that was a long time ago. High waisted jeans have gone out of style, come back into style, and (possibly) gone out of style AGAIN. In the meantime, the country has made great strides towards marriage equality. And especially in recent years, lots of gorgeous, funny, nuanced queer lady characters have graced our screens, playing whole people who had entire lives, and were also gay or bi or pan or curious or just plain slutty.

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Killing It: Cameron Esposito

Screen Shot 2014-11-30 at 10.08.00 PMThis is what an out comic looks like in the 21st century. She looks like a Thunder Cat. And she’s damn proud of it.

I remember trying to watch a stand-up routine Ellen did on HBO a few years after The Puppy Episode. She was funny, sure (she was still Ellen, after all), but she’d had a hard few years. She was wearing an awkward outfit. She didn’t look quite sure of herself. She opened the act with some jokes about the audience questioning whether they were gay because they had attended, and the rest of her jokes were fairly neutered. I was a little sad for her, in retrospect. I wanted to scoop her up and hug her and say “I promise: it gets better! You’ll go snorkeling with Portia every Christmas soon!”

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