This 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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