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Producing lesbianism: television, niche marketing, and sexuality in the 21st century

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Producing lesbianism: television, niche marketing, and sexuality in the 21st century

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PRODUCING LESBIANISM: TELEVISION, NICHE MARKETING, AND
SEXUALITY IN THE 21
ST
CENTURY

by

Julia B. Himberg

_____________________________________________________________

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(CRITICAL STUDIES)

August 2010

Copyright 2010 Julia B. Himberg

ii
Dedication

In loving memory of my mother, Isabel Ann Kip
1950-2008

iii
Acknowledgements
I owe sincere thanks to my undergraduate professors in the University of
California, Santa Barbara’s Film Studies department. Lisa Parks, Chuck Wolfe,
Bhaskar Sarkar, Constance Penley, Janet Walker, and Alison Fraunhar introduced
me to the field of media studies and inspired me to go to graduate school. Since
then, I have been honored to work with immensely intelligent, encouraging, and
supportive professors, graduate students, and staff at USC. Many thanks are owed to
my peers, Patty Ahn, Daniel Chamberlain, Kate Fortmueller, Kristen Fuhs, Ghia
Godfree, Jorie Lagerwey, David Lerner, Taylor Nygaard, and Suzanne Scott for their
consistent reassurance, suggestions, and constructive criticism. A special thanks is
due to Taylor Nygaard for our long discussions about women, femininity, and
consumer culture as well as for her meticulous copy editing in the months leading up
to my defense. Thanks are also owed to Linda Overholt and Bill Whittington in
Critical Studies. Linda was there to answer every question I had, whether about
degree progress, administrative tasks, or TA duties. Bill was one of my biggest
advocates and offered valuable advice on teaching, publishing, and career
development.
My dissertation committee, professors Ellen Seiter, Anikó Imre, and Larry
Gross, provided constant guidance and stalwart support for this project from its
inception. Anikó provided thoughtful, encouraging, and challenging feedback
throughout the process of writing this dissertation. She pushed me to engage with
both the activist and the theorist in me, even when they presented conflicting views.

iv
Larry’s impassioned and infinite knowledge about LGBT media history and theory
prompted by interest in the subject matter. His insights into contemporary LGBT
representations were exceptional and I benefitted greatly from his sage advice and
observations. This project would not be possible without the guidance of Ellen
Seiter. I vividly remember the day she bravely suggested I pursue a dissertation on
lesbian television representation rather than on war and media. She was thoughtful
and observant enough to suggest that my interests had shifted, and, indeed, her
invitation opened the door for me to pursue an area of study that I am endlessly
fascinated by and truly passionate about. Her dedication to this dissertation and to
my professional development throughout my graduate work has been invaluable.
From her, I have learned the ways that mentorship is not simply a job or a list of
duties; it is a deeply humanistic task that takes a great deal of respect, honor, and
purpose to achieve. She is an inspiration and personifies all that I hope to be as a
scholar.
My graduate school experience would not have been the same without my
closest friends, Heather and Jeff. I’m eternally grateful for all of the laughs, tears,
home-cooked meals, and philosophical discussions we’ve shared. And their
daughter Quincy came along at just the right time. She lifts my spirits and gives me
the kind of energy only a baby can. I was also tremendously fortunate to have a
supportive family during each step of graduate school. My uncle offered me a room
in his home when I first arrived in Los Angeles. I treasure the two years I lived with
him and my cousin. My sister found the perfect balance of cheering me on and

v
mercilessly teasing me, as only a sibling can do. Since I was a child, my Dad taught
me to pursue a career I loved and has modeled that principle beautifully throughout
his life. His love and support have meant the world to me. My stepmother has always
believed in me and championed my every endeavor. My stepfather has offered his
steadfast support and encouragement for many years. It is from him that I learned the
importance of a strong work ethic and true dedication to one’s work. Most
importantly, my beloved mother, who knew me better than anyone, experienced all
the joys and challenges of life with me. She was my best friend and truly my favorite
person. She taught me to think in creative and unexpected ways and to treat work
and life with the greatest of care and respect. This dissertation is dedicated to her.
Finally, I offer my deepest thanks to my partner, April. Without her, I would
be lost. She has provided all the love, encouragement, feedback, and warm meals
possible. Her devotion has meant everything to me through this process. She is the
love of my life and I thank her from the bottom of my heart.

vi
Table of Contents
Dedication ii
Acknowledgements iii
Abstract vii
Chapter One: Introduction 1
Chapter One Endnotes 45
Chapter Two: The Politics of Lesbian TV Celebrity 48
Chapter Two Endnotes 110
Chapter Three: Multicasting: Market Research, Cable Television, and 116
Lesbian Programming
Chapter Three Endnotes 163
Chapter Four: Where the “Lavender Menace” Lives: California’s 169
Proposition 8 and the Limits of Television
Representation
Chapter Four Endnotes 217
Chapter Five: Conclusion 223
Chapter Five Endnotes 248
Bibliography 250

vii
Abstract
“Producing Lesbianism: Television, Niche Marketing, and Sexuality in the
21
st
Century,” examines the cultural, political, and economic dynamics at play in the
production of contemporary lesbian TV images. Paying particular attention to the
ways in which lesbian consumers and lesbian programming are co-constituted, I
examine how television’s lesbian images are constructed, represented, and received
in various contexts of contemporary culture. This project seeks to put the economic
and political in conversation with the cultural, social, and technological, exploring
how lesbian TV texts and celebrities circulate in the drastically altered post-network
era.
This study hinges on industrial analysis, examining media through personal
interviews with workers and studying industry documents, economic data, and
marketing materials. In this way, “Producing Lesbianism” integrates theoretical,
textual, and industrial analysis to better understand how lesbian identities are
produced on television. Rather than argue for an “authentic” lesbian identity, this
project interrogates the methods by which media producers imagine and construct
lesbian characters, celebrities, and audiences, with particular attention to the ways
these methods are marked by racial and class privilege. Unlike work that examines
the politics of representation, assessing what television says about lesbianism, this
project seeks to understand how lesbian identities are produced in relation to a
broader set of industrial contexts; the stories of how lesbian characters and
personalities are constructed are critical sites of analysis in and of themselves. This

viii
project ultimately reveals complex and contradictory notions of sexuality, identity,
audiences, and consumerism within television, posing significant questions about the
political economy of television production and the solicitation of lesbian identities
within media.

1
Chapter One
Introduction
No matter how you argue it, American TV fans are
seeing a wider slice of lesbian life than ever before.
-The Advocate, February 2005
1

Since Ellen Degeneres and her sit-com character Ellen Morgan came out on
national television in 1997, a surge in lesbian representation has occurred on TV. In
prime-time dramas like ER, The O.C., and Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, soap operas
such as Passions and All My Children, and cable shows like The L Word, Work Out,
and South of Nowhere, television now features lesbian characters across cable and
broadcast schedules. This programming also spans demographic markets, including
young children (Postcards from Buster), teens (Degrassi: The Next Generation and
South of Nowhere), and adults (Nip/Tuck, The Wire, The L Word, and Queer as
Folk). Lesbian celebrities including Suze Orman, Wanda Sykes, Ellen Degeneres,
Rachel Maddow, and Rosie O’Donnell also hold prominent positions in the
television landscape as out talk show hosts. Additionally, in the early 2000s, Logo
and here! launched as the first American cable TV channels targeted exclusively at
LGBT audiences. Since their establishment, these channels have featured original
and syndicated lesbian-themed shows including Bad Girls, Curl Girls, Gimme Sugar,
Exes and Ohs, Her Line of Fire, and Lesbian Sex and Sexuality.
With this rise in representation have come passionate celebrations and
vociferous critiques about these images and what they mean. Fans, critics, and

2
scholars alike debate the implications of increased lesbian visibility on television.
Some hail lesbian characters and personalities as “complex,” “sexual,” “strong,” and
“realistic,”
2
arguing that they validate lesbian existence and experience. In her 2003
review of Nip/Tuck, AfterEllen.com’s Sarah Warn writes,
So while you might not agree with some of its storylines or depictions of
lesbian sexuality, the fact that the show offers two different representations of
lesbianism while simultaneously exploring issues related to sexual
orientation…differentiates Nip/Tuck from almost all television shows we've
seen before.
3

With shows like Nip/Tuck, The L Word, and Work Out, television is moving away
from lesbian women as what New York Magazine’s Kera Bolonik describes as
“sexless creatures draped in flannel” toward representations that explode stereotypes,
“closing the gap between how lesbians see themselves and how the world sees us.”
4

Others focus on the ways lesbian programming speaks to lesbian audiences. Feminist
and lesbian studies scholar Jill Dolan writes of The L Word:
My own interest in the series, and the fact that it’s become the occasion for
my first ever expression of passionate fandom, stems from how it flirts with
subcultural references somehow grounded in my own history of lesbian
identifications.
5

In these arguments, lesbian programming simultaneously shatters stereotypes of
unattractive, anti-feminine, anti-cosmetic lesbian women and offers lesbian viewers
subcultural modes of identifications.
While some applaud the rise in lesbian representation on television, others
decry it as a limited and homonormative visibility, privileging lesbian women with
cultural and economic capital. In these critiques, TV programming portrays lesbian

3
women in “unrealistic” ways: as mostly, although not exclusively, white, and as “too
rich, too young, too feminine, and too pretty.”
6
On websites such as Queerty,
AfterEllen, and LesbianLife, viewers write that Work Out’s star Jackie Warner
“gives lesbians” and “lesbian life” a bad name.
7
Critics contend that images of white,
wealthy, glamorous, and stereotypically feminine lesbian women are constructed for
the pleasure of straight male viewers rather than for lesbian audiences. Queer theorist
Judith Halberstam says that, “The L Word panders to the male viewer by constantly
triangulating romantic and sexual scenes between women with a male viewer, often
explicitly a voyeuristic male viewer.”
8
In “Land of Lipstick Lesbians,” Salon.com’s
Heather Havrilesky adds, “By completely sidestepping anything that might seem
remotely stereotypical (or negative), [The L Word ends] up with stories that feel a
little dishonest and not nearly textured or involved enough to keep our interest.”
9

Denouncing shows like The L Word and Work Out for offering images of women
who do not “look like us” and who misrepresent “our lives,” critics and scholars
argue that television commodifies lesbian representations to serve the interests of the
industry’s lucrative 18 to 49 year-old male demographic. These images, they argue,
limit the range of looking practices, establishing and reifying a set of normative
portrayals.
These debates signal fundamental shifts in televised and “real-life”
definitions and meanings of lesbian women and lesbian visibility. Addressing the
construction of lesbian women on television in the early years of the 21
st
century,
this dissertation is primarily about the cultural, political, and economic dynamics at

4
play in the production of these TV representations. Unlike work that examines the
politics of lesbian representation, assessing what TV says about lesbianism, this
dissertation’s central goal is to understand how lesbian images are produced and
distributed in relation to a broader set of political and industrial contexts. I argue that
trends in lesbian programming offer a focal point for exploring the specific ways that
texts, industry workers, and regulatory changes produce lesbian TV representations.
This project, then, includes analysis of changes in cable and post-network TV, niche
marketing, celebrity culture, and LGBT political campaigns. By mapping these
discourses, I suggest that the rise in lesbian programming is not explained by the
proliferation of cable channels or by enduring notions of “lesbian chic.” Rather, the
stories of how these shows are developed, financed, produced, and distributed are
more than reflections of America’s views about lesbianism; they are important sites
of political contestation in and of themselves.
This analysis is premised on a set of presuppositions: First, lesbian
representations are the result of constant negotiation at different levels of cultural
production; second, examining lesbian TV images necessitates an understanding of
the ways in which lesbian identity is co-constituted by the television industry and the
consumer marketplace; finally, sexuality is not something innate or acquired and
then simply reflected on screen; rather, it is constantly being shaped, performed, and
reconfigured. Based on these assumptions, the primary questions that I pose are
these: What factors account for the rise in lesbian programming in the first decade of
the 21
st
century? How have these factors constructed particular meanings about

5
lesbian women and lesbian visibility? What do these meanings suggest about the
ways that television structures, limits, and opens up possibilities for lesbian
representation in the new millennium?
Studying Lesbian Representation
From press accounts, this trend in programming seems to indicate a defining
moment in lesbian visibility. Despite this rise in representation and the amount of
attention it has garnered in the popular press, however, there is surprisingly little
scholarship that addresses these images. Since the 1980s, scholarly writing about
lesbians and gays has expanded, creating academic disciplines that are now firmly
established in universities across the United States and around the globe. In the U.S.,
its earliest scholars had deep ties to Stonewall-era writers and activists such as Karla
Jay, Esther Newton, Dennis Altman, Jonathan Katz, and John D’Emilio. Publishing
books that broke new ground for LGBT citizens, their work was driven by questions
of how to form strong, proud, and visible communities. In the academy, informed by
cultural studies, psychoanalysis, and feminism, many of the first works on LGBT
media images examine topics such as stereotyping, genre conventions, and audience
identification. Written by film scholars such as Richard Dyer, Vito Russo, Thomas
Waugh, Teresa de Lauretis, and E. Ann Kaplan, such work articulates the ways in
which lesbians and gays have been represented in American film history.
Following from this work, scholars in an array of fields including English,
communications, and gender studies wrote seminal texts in LGBT media studies. In
Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture (1993), for example,

6
Alexander Doty makes a case for queer readings not as alternative or subcultural
interpretations, but as the idea that “basically heterocentrist texts can contain queer
elements, and basically heterosexual, straight-identifying people can experience
queer moments.”
10
He analyzes an assortment of media texts, including films, TV
shows, as well as queer stars and characters to distinguish between forms of
queerness in popular culture. Doty’s concepts are useful in expanding the bounds of
what constitutes a so-called “queer reading.” Unlike earlier analyses that tend to limit
queer readings to lesbian and gay appropriations of characters, Doty frames queer
readings as a range of strategies that includes LGBT people as well as self-identified
queers, or “queer-positioned nonqueers.”
11
This work’s major contribution is in
providing a way to look at media outside the binary of mainstream versus alternative;
instead of seeing a medium like television as being made by and for white, male,
heterosexual audiences, which LGBT audiences appropriate in the search for images
of themselves, queerness breaks the walls of these essentialist modes, becoming
integral to the structures of media themselves.
Other scholars including Larry Gross, Steven Capsuto, Stephen Tropiano,
and Ron Becker focus on critical histories, offering rich analyses of LGBT films and
TV shows. In Up From Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men & the Media in America
(2001), Gross provides a detailed account of the emergence of lesbian and gay
images in mainstream media. He examines both the rise of public lesbian and gay
communities in the U.S. since World War II and the ways in which the media
developed alongside these communities. The two interact, he argues, because being

7
part of media gives lesbian and gay communities a sense of common identity. Thus,
Gross’ work shows that film, television, and the internet not only bring lesbians and
gays together but also shape their communities. His work complements Doty’s,
which also argues that lesbian and gay characters have never really been “invisible”
in media, but have only recently been explicitly acknowledged. Gross contends that
minority audiences generally, and lesbian and gay audiences particularly, have
become more sophisticated in “reading” media messages. He says, “Minorities will
invariably be culturally bilingual, while members of the dominant majority will have
no such burden, or opportunity.”
12
In this way, the media present lesbian and gay
audiences with opportunities for “double readings” of images and their meanings.
Capsuto, Tropiano, and Becker’s research provides comprehensive
catalogues of LGBT characters and storylines on U.S. television specifically,
pointing out patterns of representation across different genres, critical discourses,
and time periods. Employing a journalistic approach, Capsuto’s Alternate Channels:
The Uncensored Story of Gay and Lesbian Images in Radio and Television (2000) is
a straightforward history of LGBT representations, detailing dates, plot-lines, and
characters in LGBT radio and TV shows from the 1930s to 2000. More analytical,
Tropiano’s book, The Prime-Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV
(2002), uses genre analysis to examine television’s representations of LGBT
characters since the 1950s. His work focuses on the ways that these LGBT images
advocated or challenged the tolerance sought by activists and civil rights
organizations. Examining shows like Marcus Welby, MD, The Eleventh Hour,

8
Dynasty, Police Woman, L.A. Law, Popular, Will & Grace, and Ellen, Tropiano
describes the ways that cable and broadcast TV have portrayed LGBT characters. He
also provides a useful and detailed index that lists program names, dates, titles, and
storylines for shows that have had LGBT characters or themes between 1954 and
2002.
In a similar mode, Becker’s Gay TV and Straight America (2006) accounts
for the rise in LGBT television images during the 1990s through an examination of
the social and political circumstances of the time. He argues that the increase in
LGBT-themed programming reflected and fueled what he calls “American culture’s
straight panic.” He sees America’s discomfort with the increased visibility of LGBT
citizens as part of larger social preoccupations with diversity, multiculturalism, and
societal fragmentation. Focusing on American culture, the political economy of the
TV industry, and the politics of sexual identity, he argues that what he calls “gay
TV” of the 1990s “emerged out of and revealed much about the tensions and
anxieties of this specific social climate.”
13
In looking at particular trends in
American culture, Becker’s work is especially insightful because of the way it
underscores the interplay of politics, sexual identity, and shifts in the structures of
the TV industry without placing too much emphasis on one at the expense of the
other. He sees all of these discourses as interrelated, using their connections as a way
to understand LGBT characters and storylines of the time.
Capsuto’s, Tropiano’s, and Becker’s work, however, tends to treat LGBT
representations as a monolithic group, ignoring the histories, politics, and contexts of

9
particular subgroups. While highly influential to the fields of both LGBT studies as
well as to media studies, these texts also only marginally address the specificities of
images of lesbian characters and storylines. What has been written about lesbian
media images comes primarily from feminist film studies. While it began as part of
the broader socio-political feminist movement of the 1970s, feminist film theory also
had its own specific set of goals in relation to film theory. Most feminist film
scholars at the time theorized the relationship between the spectator and the film,
arguing that the spectator’s gaze was inherently male, evicting the female spectator
from the possibility of identification. Based on this argument, women functioned
primarily as objects of desire for the male gaze. This dynamic prompted the basic
problematic of much of feminist film theory: whether women could be
conceptualized outside the dominant hegemony.
Seeking a space for the lesbian viewer, feminist film scholars such as
Michelle Citron, Teresa de Lauretis, E. Ann Kaplan, Julia Lesage, Judith Mayne, B.
Ruby Rich, and Andrea Weiss produced a vast amount of scholarship that examines
lesbianism and American film. In books and essays such as Kaplan’s Women and
Film: Both Sides of the Camera (1983), de Lauretis’ Alice Doesn't: Feminism,
Semiotics, Cinema (1984), and “Lesbians and Film” (1981) a special edition of the
media journal Jump Cut written by Julia Lesage, Michelle Citron, Edith Becker, and
B. Ruby Rich, these scholars addressed the specificities of lesbian film images in
relation to feminism, Marxism, lesbian separatism, and prevailing modes of film

10
analysis at the time. As Mayne notes in the introduction to Framed: Lesbians,
Feminists, and Media Culture,
feminist film theory has generally been understood as having to do not just
with theory in the large sense…but with a very particular kind of theory,
shaped by the intersections of psychoanalysis, Marxism, and semiotics
(especially psychoanalysis), as well as by a particular time, the mid-1970s.
14

From a feminist perspective, these writings consider how women are framed by male
desire, by plot, by generic and narrative conventions, as well as look at where the
potential lies for lesbian audiences to interpret images of women for their own
viewing pleasure. While these analyses provided much-needed theorizing about
images of women in Hollywood film and about the limitations and opportunities
produced by lesbian audiences, they have been heavily critiqued for their reliance on
psychoanalysis. Critics argue that psychoanalysis promotes a master theory of
knowledge, a monolithic view of how images are interpreted. Despite its theoretical
problems, this scholarship, nonetheless, established a body of work that seeks to
understand the ways in which lesbian women, or women who might be lesbian, have
been imagined in Hollywood cinema.
15

Out of these theories, emerged several books which are devoted entirely to
lesbian film history: Andrea Weiss’ Violets and Vampires (1993), Patricia White’s
Uninvited: Classical Hollywood Cinema and Lesbian Representability (1999), Amy
Villarejo’s Lesbian Rule: Cultural Criticism and the Value of Desire (2003), and
Kara Keeling’s The Witch’s Flight: The Cinematic, The Black Femme, and the
Image of Common Sense (2007). While these books are pioneering in their analyses

11
of images of lesbian love, desire, and life in mainstream movies, they examine only
film, not television.
Several essay and three recent books, however, attempt to fill the gap in
scholarship created by these earlier works. In the anthology Queer Popular Culture,
several essays including Aviva Dove-Viebahn’s “Fashionably Femme: Lesbian
Visibility, Style, and Politics in The L Word” and Jennifer Reed’s “The Three Phases
of Ellen: From Queer to Gay to Postgay,” describe the implications and
consequences of representations of feminine lesbian women on television,
considering how these images “affect lesbian aesthetics and political power.”
16
In
The New Queer Aesthetic on Television: Essays on Recent Programming, scholars
such as Kelly Kessler, Margaret McFadden, and Becca Cragin explore the politics of
representation in Ellen and The L Word, making the case for the ways in which these
shows succeed and fail at being socially and politically progressive.
Essays such as Kessler’s “The Politics of the Sitcom Formula: Friends, Mad
About You, and the Sapphic Second Banana” and Cragin’s “Lesbians and Serial TV:
Ellen Finds Her Inner Adult” contend that the conventions of the sitcom shutdown
any potential for radical or even progressive representations. In her assessment of
the lesbian characters on Friends and Mad About You, Kessler argues that,
the formula of the situation comedy, especially the role identified for the
secondary character, inhibits significant progressive representations of
marginalized groups, and inversely, in the sprit of a liberal pluralist
democracy, neutralizes the difference, rendering the representations
ineffective and destructive.
17

12
These analyses are informative and useful additions to the scarcity of
scholarship about lesbian images on television. However, they use lesbian
representations to draw conclusions about the social and political status of all sexual
minorities. I argue, by contrast, that the factors that determine the kinds of lesbian
images that end up on TV speak specifically to the history and status of lesbian
women, and are not necessarily a case study or metaphor for other sexual minorities.
The first book to address exclusively lesbian TV images, Reading the L
Word: Outing Contemporary Television (2006), is a collection of essays by both
academics and journalists. It features critical essays and interviews with the show’s
cast, writers, and producers. Examining issues such as sexual politics, reading
practices, notions of femininity and female masculinity, and racialized lesbianism in
black and Latina characters, the book suggests ways of thinking about this
“pioneering show” in hybrid and ambivalent ways.
The second book, also an anthology, Televising Queer Women: A Reader
(2008), edited by lesbian media scholar Rebecca Beirne, examines TV shows from
the late 1990s and 2000s including ER, Ellen, The O.C., Queer as Folk, The L Word,
Sex and the City, and Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, which all featured lesbian
characters. “Academic publishing,” Beirne says in the introduction, “is yet to catch
up with these new and innovative programs.”
18
Attempting to address some of these
representations, Beirne writes that she hopes the essays in the volume will “signal
areas in need of research and publication in order to create an agenda for the
future.”
19
Mapping lesbian sexuality across different genres and television markets,

13
the book provides an interdisciplinary approach to the ways in which television
represents lesbian women. Beirne’s own monograph, Lesbians in Television and Text
after the New Millennium, also published in 2008, contextualizes the thematic and
ideological factors that account for shifts in lesbian representations. Drawing on
discourses of “lesbian chic,” queer theory, and lesbian feminism, and specifically the
work of scholars such as Laura Mulvey, Biddy Martin, Danae Clark, Shane Phelan,
and Sue-Ellen Case, Beirne examines television, pornography, and comics. Covering
these different media forms, Beirne attempts to “explore what relationship a new
generation of lesbian texts bear to feminist, lesbian, and queer discourses and to see
to what extent previous generational issues have been absorbed, digested, and
recycled as new and oppositional discourses.”
20
In this way, her project focuses on
contemporary lesbian representations in the contexts of lesbian histories and theories.
Grounded in questions of visibility politics and representational forms, these
books offer valuable insight into lesbian television representation in the late 20
th
and
early 21
st
centuries. They suggest that when television does depict lesbian lives and
characters, such representations are usually met with a range of debates about
whether such images reproduce or challenge conventional notions of who lesbian
women are and what lesbian women look like. They tend to treat lesbian
representations as artefacts, however, largely removed from industrial history and
theory. This dissertation, in contrast, focuses on the intersections among
representational analyses, studies of sexuality, and industrial structures. This project
then draws on the work of LGBT media scholars, but also incorporates the work of

14
sociologists such as Eva Illouz and Joshua Gamson as well as communications
scholars like Joseph Turow and Katherine Sender. Integrating their research on
discourses of celebrity and marketing with modes of analysis established by LGBT
media scholars foregrounds an interdisciplinary approach to examining lesbian TV
images. Together, these analytic approaches provide a means of interrogating modes
of production and over-production that have changed the financial workings and
profit motives of the television industry. Attempting to underscore the importance of
industrial analysis to the study of lesbian TV representation, this project thus
integrates production studies with textual analysis, looking at television’s
programming and marketing strategies, the structures of cable and broadcast
markets, and decisions made by industry workers, seeing them as forces acting on
the construction of lesbian women in the television marketplace.
Integrating Modes of Analysis: Cultural Studies and Media Industry Studies
In addressing these forces, this dissertation draws on scholarship that
conceives of representation as part of a process in which meanings are constantly
being negotiated, interpreted, and reinterpreted. Following from Julie D’Acci’s case
of study of Cagney and Lacey, where she examines the shifting meanings of woman,
women, and femininity, this dissertation argues that “the only way to investigate
such power and such meanings is to observe them at work, to reconstruct and
analyze their actual operations.”
21
D’Acci’s analysis in Defining Women not only
upholds the major tenets of cultural studies, but she integrates them in productive
ways. Her work locates active interpretation in the historical context of Cagney and

15
Lacey, revealing influences on different sectors of TV (text, production, audience,
the press) during the show’s 1981-1988 run. Unlike other work that tends to treat
identity categories as fixed, monolithic, and ahistorical, D’Acci disarticulates agency
and subjectivity, examining access that the show’s viewers, producers, and members
of the press had to agency at different points in the show’s production and reception.
By grounding her project both in industrial analysis and poststructuralist theories,
she lays out a model of research that understands TV texts and audiences as socially
constructed entities, whose power circulates in different contexts at different
historical moments.
In addition to shaping my own approach to cultural studies from D’Acci’s, I
also turn to media industry studies to complement this mode of analysis. Applying
theories and methodologies of both modes of analysis enhances and deepens the
study of lesbian TV representation. In “Media Industries, Political Economy, and
Media/Cultural Studies: An Articulation,” Douglas Kellner calls for the integration
of cultural and media studies. Together, he says, they provide the tools to “properly
contextualize, analyze, interpret, and criticize products of the media industries.”
22

Reviewing the contributions and limitations of the work that came out of the
Frankfurt School and British cultural studies, Kellner argues that the core tenets of
these theories should be applied to industrial analyses of media. The divide between
the two, based on differences in disciplines and methodologies, has prevented
scholars from using aspects of both of them productively. Overcoming this divide, he
says, is essential for scholarship that examines the connections between culture and

16
industry, especially the ways that they constitute each other. This mode of analysis,
Kellner writes, “can help individuals become aware of the connection between media
and forces of domination and resistance, and can help make audiences more critical
and informed consumers and producers of their culture.”
23
Taking up his call, this
dissertation offers a critical perspective firmly grounded in both cultural studies and
media industry studies. As such, I see the television industry as a cultural, political,
and economic entity, and lesbian representation as the product of this complex
entity.
Within media industry studies, I make use of several different approaches.
First, because the rise in lesbian representation occurred in a time of unprecedented
industry deregulation, consolidation, and expansion, this project examines the
political economy of television, emphasizing relevant macro-level structures,
regulatory changes, and media ownership patterns. Drawing on the research of
William Kunz and Robert McChesney, my study of lesbian TV celebrities in chapter
one, for example, offers detailed textual analysis but also situates Wanda Sykes,
Suze Orman, and Ellen Degeneres in the broader context of what Kunz calls “the
unsurpassed consolidation of media properties.”
24
Studying lesbian representation in
this industrial context is especially pertinent because of the radical changes that have
occurred in the past decade. While the advent of cable TV and premium subscription
channels in the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s affected audiences’ viewing habits in
significant ways, the changes that happened in the late 1990s and early 2000s have
drastically altered the medium as a whole.

17
These shifts exist at every level of the industry including ownership,
technology, program creation, distribution platforms, advertising methods, and
systems of audience measurement. Television scholar Amanda Lotz writes that these
shifts demarcate a new era in the industry, what she calls the “post-network” era. In
this era, all aspects of the television industry are different; TV networks and film
studios are now part of one of six conglomerates, altering financing and ownership
practices. As Kunz writes, “Horizontal and vertical integration and diversification
have transformed these industries.”
25
In the past, for example, TV shows were
produced through deficit financing by independent companies and sold to networks;
now they are developed, produced, and distributed in-house. As a result,
programming is less expensive to distribute and goes into syndication more quickly.
One of the most significant changes to impact lesbian representation is
channel proliferation, particularly the establishment of hundreds of niche cable
channels. LGBT media scholars have consistently tied the increase in television
images of sexual minorities to the rise of cable TV. The government’s relaxation of
cable’s restrictive structures since the 1980s, allowed the television industry to
become a major force in providing high quality television to consumers. Legislation
like the Telecommunications Act of 1996 altered the policy and regulatory landscape
for the television industry, stimulating renewed competition and increasing the
number of channels offered to consumers. In this deregulated media environment,
large networks established numerous niche cable stations, aimed at smaller
audiences. Targeting niche audiences creates an intimate and loyal relationship

18
between specific groups of viewers and cable channels. In the 21
st
century television
landscape, cable channels, in fact, provide the biggest streams of revenue for the
major media outlets. Unlike broadcast channels, which are subject to heavy
regulation because they use public airwaves, cable is a private, commercial industry,
subject to less stringent regulations. Cable’s fewer regulations tend to mean more
sex, violence, and profanity, as well as more images of non-heteronormative
sexualities, such as lesbianism.
Cable’s success with smaller audiences and edgier programming has required
broadcast networks to rethink their own programming and branding strategies, which
offer shows that are the least objectionable to the most people. Originally, branding
strategies positioned networks as sources for the experience of television. Where
once viewers would tune in for their favorite show and then often get caught up in
the next show and end up watching a network’s entire prime-time line-up, individual
programs are now more important to the network than a day’s sequential line-up. In
response to the multiplicity of viewing habits, some networks try to sell discrete
programs instead of selling the network as a whole. In this way, Joshua Green
argues, “program specific promotion” constructs its audience differently, building
loyalty around programs rather than network identities.
26
It the constant quest for
more audiences, “program specific promotion” provides networks with a diverse
range of viewers, loyal to particular shows. Increasingly, cable and broadcast
networks also rely on appeals to viewers’ identities and lifestyles. Communications
scholar Joseph Turow explains that in trying to generate loyalty with audiences,

19
television networks “cultivate a must-see, must-read, must-share mentality that
makes the audience feel part of a family, attached to the program hosts, other
viewers, and sponsors.”
27
Chapter two goes into greater details about the specific
relationships among post-network cable channels, marketing, and lesbian
representations.
New media tie-ins also generate profit for cable channels. To keep up with
needs for advertising revenue and viewer loyalty, cable channels create websites for
shows that include cast blogs, special “webisodes,” and social networking sites for
fans, as well as online stores that sell clothing and accessory brands worn by the
shows’ characters. In this way, cable channels tap into the lucrative internet market.
To cast a wider net, Showtime, for example, promotes itself to the high-tech, wired
audience demographic. In 2000, the network launched a series of online ventures
aimed at broadening its audience base. The network created a series of original and
fan-produced content exclusively for the internet. Viewers could view, rate, and
review featured works, chat with content creators, and participate in technology
forums. Showtime’s aggressive approach to targeting wired audiences earned it a
reputation as “the premier next-generation entertainment destination featuring
original content created exclusively for the web by up-and-coming digital artists,
animators, directors and programmers from around the world.”
28
With shows like
The L Word, the network continues to appeal to a high-tech audience, designing
websites for show fans, holding fan fiction contests where the winner’s scenario is
used as an episode’s opening sequence, and creating an online spin-off of the show’s

20
fictional chart that fans can use for their own social networking. The chart connects
lesbian characters on the show who have either been in romantic relationships with
each other, or just had a one-night stand. The online version of the chart allows
audience members to interact with the chart, creating a web of lesbian women both
within and outside of the narrative of the show.
Digital platforms, as well as DVD and DVR technology, play a vital role in
the TV industry’s production and distribution of content. Digitization of content and
the convergence of television and computer technologies shift the ways and places
that viewers watch, use, and interact with TV programming. These changes
ultimately impact the ways audiences consume TV programs and the kinds of
programs the television industry makes. Viewers also watch television shows in
diverse and innumerable ways in the post-network era. DVDs and DVRs have a
profound impact on both audiences’ viewing practices and the business of television.
Often, shows that have low Nielsen ratings end up recouping production costs in
DVD sales, especially since the introduction of boxed sets. DVRs, which allow
audiences to watch programs when they want and to skip commercials, have forced
re-visionings of TV advertising methods. Drawing on old and new advertising
practices such as product placement, product integration, branded entertainment, and
single sponsorship, TV shows now rely on the co-existence of multiple models to
generate revenue and cope with rapidly shifting modes of TV consumption.
In the context of these wide-ranging industry changes, Lotz argues,
television, as a term, must be redefined. “Television,” she writes, “is more than just

21
a technology…It possesses an essence that is bound up in its context, in how the box
is most commonly used, in where it is located, in what streams through it, and in how
most use it.”
29
Lotz cogently details the changes that signify television’s post-
network era, and I employ her conceptions of the industry to explain certain elements
of lesbian representation. Widening the boundaries of the medium to include the
apparatus as well as the sets of behaviors and practices associated with television’s
use in the post-network era, this dissertation addresses lesbian images as they relate
to industrial practices, structures, and economics. I am ambivalent, however, about
her broader argument that post-network TV expands the potential for more diverse
types of TV production, programming, and audience control. I concede that post-
network practices have contributed to the rise in lesbian programming and the
variety of genres that feature lesbian characters and personalities. In the case of
LGBT audiences, though, I am not convinced that post-network TV offers new and
powerful ways for viewers to dictate the kinds of programs that the industry
produces.
Particularly troubling to the potential for lesbian representation, as well as for
other minorities, is the concentration of ownership in the television industries, and,
as Kunz says, “the degree to which a small cadre of corporations dominate…them,
utilizing their market position to extend their influence into more and more
endeavors.”
30
For example, the expansion of cable channels aimed at niche audiences
increases the range of stories told on television. As Kunz points out, however, “More
numerical abundance, however, does not guarantee a diversification of voices.”
31
In

22
other words, cable channels offer numerical diversity; because they are owned by so
few parent companies, though, there is little source diversity within the
programming.
Going Behind the Scenes: The Struggle over Meaning in Practice
In addition to looking at lesbian images in the context of macro-level
changes, I also turn to “mid-level” research in an effort to avoid the reductionist
tendencies of political-economic analyses; they often end up seeing media industries
as overly simplified commodifications of culture, serving only the interests of
capitalism. In this way, political-economic analyses can prevent meaningful
examinations of complex sites of resistance and potential. According to Timothy
Havens, Amanda Lotz, and Serra Tinic, this mode of analysis, alone, leaves “little
room to consider the moments of creativity and struggles over representational
practices.”
32
Moving to an approach anchored in “the micropolitics of everyday
meaning making,” this dissertation considers the inner-workings of the television
industry wherein cultural workers negotiate the production process in ways that
cannot be easily deduced from a macro-level analysis.
33

Examining the practices and belief systems of TV executives, producers,
marketers, and political campaign staff, this dissertation considers the role of
industry workers in generating meanings about lesbian women. Agency in this mode
of analysis lies in the experiences and interactions of industry workers, not only in
the broad structures of TV conglomerates. During 2008 and 2009, I interviewed 12
people involved at different stages of the development, marketing, and production of

23
lesbian programming: network executives and presidents, independent TV
producers, market researchers, and media consultants for political campaigns. In the
interviews, I asked questions about programming choices, the process of developing
shows, how industry workers keep their pulse on what audiences want, their
impressions of changes in lesbian programming, and how the industry has changed
for lesbian and gay TV workers since the establishment of LGBT-dedicated
channels.
Several themes emerged from the interviews: In general, industry workers are
unaware of their own interpellation into systems of racial, gender, and class
privilege. In addition, there was a strong belief that television images of lesbian
women, as well as other sexual minorities, undeniably hold the power to increase
heterosexual awareness and tolerance. Expressing a straightforward and causal
relationship between media visibility and social acceptance, they described television
as an immensely powerful cultural tool. The interviews also revealed that industry
workers’ methods of conceptualizing lesbian women are based primarily on
speculation and assumptions rather than on any sort of empirical measures. Finally,
openly lesbian and gay interviewees demonstrated a consensus that as industry
workers, they had an obligation to serve lesbian and gay audiences.
Interviewees for this chapter consistently expressed their willingness, and at
times, enthusiasm, to reveal details to me as a researcher that they would never
disclose to a member of the public press. Undoubtedly, however, interview subjects’
responses tend to be coded and managed strategically to present a particular image of

24
themselves and the subject matter at-hand. As such, I decoded and interpreted their
responses, reading them as texts within themselves. In addition, throughout my
analyses, I attempt to foreground an awareness of the influence my presence had on
these interviews. The work of television scholars such as Ien Ang, Jostein Grisprud,
and Ellen Seiter articulates the impact researchers themselves have on their subjects
during interviews or observations. In Television and New Media Audiences, for
example, Seiter examines television and internet consumption, with particular
attention to class and gender relations, adult-child relations, domestic divisions of
labor, and the leisure gap between women and men. Reflecting on the role of the
researcher in her own work, she says, “I…consider the impact of the researcher’s
presence to be a continuing and strongly influential factor in shaping the interaction,
and limiting what is said.”
34
In analyzing the comments made during interviews, this
project thus attempts to bear in mind both the interviewees own self-interests and
experiences, as well as my role in shaping those interchanges.
During every meeting, I used an audio recorder with the consent of the
interviewees. Most of the time, I met with interviewees at their Los Angeles offices,
although two interviews took place by phone because the interviewees worked in
other cities. When I interviewed Amy Shpall, executive producer of Work Out, the
first reality show to feature a lesbian lead, she requested that we meet at a local café.
She answered many of my questions “on the record.” On several occasions, however,
I asked very specific questions about the way the show depicted the love life of its
star, Jackie Warner. In each instance, Shpall pointed to the audio recorder and said,

25
“I’ll tell you, if you turn that off.” I obliged in the interests of learning as much about
the show’s production as possible, specifically its careful structuring of Warner’s
love life. These moments underscored the way my particular questions, the public
setting, and the presence of the audio recorder inhibited Shpall. Despite my status as
a researcher, far removed from the inner-workings of the television industry, Shpall
appeared reluctant to reveal certain aspects of the show’s production that others
involved in the production might get wind of. It seemed that there was always a risk
that I would tell someone in the industry, or that my work might expose her as the
source of information she was not supposed to share.
During my research on Work Out, I also interviewed Jackie Warner. In an
odd series of events, the interview was filmed as part of the reality show. Several
weeks before the interview took place, I arrived home to an exuberant message from
a friend. Earlier that day, she met one of Work Out’s producers. In the course of
their conversation, my friend told the producer about my research on the show. She
asked me to contact the producer about filming an interview with Warner. As a
native of the east coast, I felt that it was all very “Hollywood.” As a scholar of
television studies, however, I was already aware that reality TV is scripted and
directed, despite the genre’s claims to authenticity. More significantly, though, the
interview process demonstrated the particular ways in which the genre forms its
stars’ identities.
Shot in the early afternoon at the Abbey, a well-known queer bar in West
Hollywood, the interview was staged to look “authentic.” The producers asked me to

26
sit at the table where the interview would take place while they “lit the set.” I sat
nervously reviewing my notes while several crew members worked around me.
Shortly before we began filming, Warner arrived, and without acknowledging me,
sat at a table about ten feet away. To make the interview “real” the producers told
me, Warner and I would “meet” for the first time with the camera rolling. When the
producer cued Warner, she got up and walked to the entrance of the Abbey. When he
called “action,” Warner smiled, walked back into the bar, and introduced herself to
me. We sipped tea during the interview, while a hand-held camera moved back and
forth between our faces, catching us speaking and reacting to each other. The camera
was so close that it felt like a third person sitting at the table, constantly in motion.
As a television scholar, I am certainly aware of the effects the camera has on people.
I am also unaccustomed to having a big camera only a foot or two from my face,
especially when conducting an interview. The idea that this interview was being
filmed for the TV show undoubtedly intimidated me and affected the conversation
Warner and I had that afternoon. To my relief, in fact, the interview ended up on the
cutting room floor.
What made an even bigger impression, however, was the two-minute video
that appeared online several weeks after the interview. Titled “Jackie: College
Thesis Subject,” the video features Warner talking about my interview with her.
After getting past my initial outrage that the show referred to my dissertation as a
“college thesis,” which was supposedly only about Warner, I started thinking about
how the video represented my work while I analyzed Warner’s. She says:

27
A very lovely young lady, Julia Himberg, contacted me because she was
doing her thesis about me and wanted to interview me. I was flattered, I met
with her, interviewed with her, and we had a fantastic, fantastic conversation,
one of the best conversations I’ve had in a long time. We covered everything
from politics to feminism, you know women’s rights, children’s rights, I
mean it was just the gamut – gay rights. And I’ve kept in touch with her. It
was really fascinating. I’m interested to see how the thesis turns out...I was
very flattered to be a part of this. A college thesis is a big deal and I know
that and I was just so flattered to even be considered for this…I would love to
read the thesis. In fact, I expect her to give me a copy of that thesis when
she’s done with it. We do email with each other occasionally so I would hope
that she would let me read it…I forget that what I’ve done here, and this is
unconsciously, is that I have done something that has become very important,
especially to the homosexual community and that I am a gay icon at this
point. That’s not why I did the show, but it certainly is a by-product of the
show and I’m proud to represent my community in that way…When I was
growing up in the 80s, I had nothing like me as a role model. Nothing. And it
certainly affected me and shaped who I am and how I felt about myself being
a lesbian woman. I felt very isolated and things have changed so drastically
since then and to be a part of that is huge.
35

When I watched it, a few comments stood out. First, Warner greatly exaggerated the
scope of the interview. We did not, for example, talk about “feminism” or
“children’s rights.” By including a lost list of civil rights issues, Warner positions
the conversation as a highly political one, setting the stage for her to construct herself
as an accidental activist. Warner also pretends that she and I have a relationship
beyond the interview. We do not “keep in touch,” have never exchanged emails, and
she did not ask to see the “thesis.” While these two points reaffirm the constructed
nature of reality television, Warner’s assertion that she is a “gay icon” is the most
striking comment in the video. During our interview I asked her if she considered
herself a role model to other lesbians and gays. From this question, Warner drew the
conclusion that by being out on TV and having a “researcher” write about her as the

28
first openly lesbian reality TV star, she was a “gay icon.” The interview and the
online video demonstrated the powerful ways that this kind of research about
television also actively participates in the construction of mediated identities.
Seven of the people I interviewed identified as openly lesbian or gay and the
others identified themselves as heterosexual. I point out their sexual orientation
because they ultimately play a significant role in the ways that industry workers
position themselves in relation to lesbian programming. Sexuality in this dissertation
thus figures as something we use to make sense of ourselves and the world. While
scholars such as Judith Butler, David Halperin, Eve Sedgwick, Gayle Rubin, and
Michael Warner argue for the impossibility of any natural sexuality, calling into
question apparently unproblematic terms such as man and woman, I contend that
studying television images and industrial practices necessarily employs the language
of identity categories. Still the primary way individuals navigate mainstream
society, they render our lives knowable to ourselves and make them communicable
to others. As media scholar Ron Becker says, “Taxonomies of sexuality work to
channel the infinite diversity of human sexual desires and behaviors into a limited set
of options that people are expected to identify with and conform to.”
36
TV programs,
network executives, and LGBT civil rights groups tend to convey their messages
through the relatable, and problematic, framework of discrete identities. This
dissertation does not treat the concept of identity as a natural or intrinsic trait of an
individual’s essence. Rather, I treat identity as historically specific, understood to be
a social construct produced by and managed through discursive regimes of power.

29
In this way, identity is discursively produced but remains a marker of everyday, lived
experience.
In addition to conducting interviews with industry workers, I attended several
events sponsored by various civil rights organizations and market research firms. In
February 2009, I attended a panel in Los Angeles, co-hosted by GLAAD and the
NAACP. Titled, “Knocking Down the Door: Black LGBT Images in Media,” the
two organizations advertised the panel as a discussion about black LGBT media
images. Of the seven panel members, one was a lesbian woman, the rest identified
as gay men. In addition, the panel opened with a video that exclusively chronicled
the presence of black gay men in TV and film. In the course of the discussion,
neither the moderator nor the panelists brought up a specifically lesbian issue.
Instead, the panelists talked in very general terms about the power of film and
television to influence public opinion, praising portrayals of LGBT characters that
made sexuality “less of an issue,” and calling for more “correct” images of LGBT
characters.
Later that year, amidst increasing public attention to lesbian consumers, I
attended the 2009 Gay & Lesbian Market Symposium in Los Angeles held by
Community Marketing, an LGBT market research firm. At the Symposium, market
researchers presented a set of data from their most recent polling and focus groups
about LGBT consumers. Thomas Roth, President and founder of Community
Marketing, and David Paisley, Senior Projects Directors, detailed the ways their
company’s findings could help specific types of businesses court LGBT consumers.

30
After this event, I interviewed Roth to learn more specifics about the firm’s research
theories and methodologies, which I outline in chapter two.
As a way of gaining deeper insight into the practices of LGBT media
organizations, however, I also volunteered to be a member of GLAAD’s Television
Jury in 2006 and 2008. As a member of the jury for two years, I was privy to the
organization’s methods of evaluating LGBT media representations as well as to the
ways that different juries impact the evaluations from year to year. I chose that
organization because LGBT media advocacy work has been consolidated in
GLAAD. GLAAD and the GAA (Gay Activists Alliance), and NGTF (National Gay
Task Force) before it, believe that calling attention to “accurate” as well as to
defamatory LGBT media images significantly affects the way society views LGBT
citizens and the fight for civil rights. As Kathryn Montgomery’s 1989 study Target:
Prime Time, Advocacy Groups and the Struggle over Entertainment Television
shows, through educational efforts, boycotts, pressure campaigns, and other
techniques, advocacy groups created a mainstream dialogue about the role of LGBT
images in media. GLAAD subcribes to the basic assumption that television carries
what Montgomery calls a “special symbolic significance”
37
that makes it society’s
most powerful and pervasive mass medium. In the case of sexual minorities in
particular, she notes, “television is a cultural mirror which has failed to reflect their
image accurately.”
38
Her analysis reveals how the dynamics between advocacy
groups and television producers transformed all TV programming into political
territory.

31
Founded in 1985, in protest of The New York Post’s defamatory coverage of
AIDS, GLAAD emerged in a time of intense conservatism, where right-wing
backlash flourished in response to the gains of women’s liberation, black civil rights,
and the lesbian and gay civil rights movement. While it has gone from a chapter-
based to a nationally based organization in the years since its establishment, GLAAD
has not significantly altered how it conceives of visibility. GLAAD, like other
mainstream lesbian and gay civil rights organizations, views visibility as a necessary
strategy to gain entry into the political mainstream. This attitude is especially
relevant to LGBT people because their representation is based on a long history of
invisibility. Although often compared to ethnic, racial, and gendered groups such as
African Americans and women, lesbians and gays are not necessarily or inevitably
visible; difference is not marked on the body. Visibility for lesbians and gays
requires an active, public articulation of an LGBT self. Thus, visibility is touted as
the vehicle for cultural inclusion and political equality. Each year, GLAAD’s work
culminates in its Media Awards held in Miami, New York, Los Angeles, and San
Francisco each spring. The awards are modeled after traditional entertainment award
ceremonies such as the Oscars and the Emmys, featuring star-studded line-ups of
celebrity guests and speakers.
In order to join the jury, I had to be interviewed by GLAAD’s Media Awards
Communications Manager, who also led all of the jury meetings. He asked me
several questions about my professional background, my interests in joining the jury,
and my views on the role that LGBT images play in the construction of cultural

32
knowledge about LGBT people. The Television Jury, along with GLAAD’s Film,
Music, and Print/Journalism Juries, meets monthly to discuss and assess the previous
month’s LGBT representations. On Fridays, jurors receive an email with the list of
TV shows that are supposed to feature LGBT characters the following week. Each
juror receives a worksheet that divides the criteria for evaluating representations into
four categories, each worth 10 points. The categories include questions to help jurors
decide how “fair, accurate, and inclusive” each representation is. GLAAD uses the
assessments made by the juries as one of several sources for determining the
nominees for the annual Awards.
My primary interest in attending panels and symposiums, and participating in
the jury, was to observe the kinds of discourses that circulate within mainstream
organizations invested in LGBT representational politics. As time went by,
however, I also became interested in trying to offer alternative ways of thinking
about the merits of specific images. I often argued with other jurors who gave high
marks to characters who just “happened to be” lesbian or gay. Against this “post-
gay” rhetoric, I offered ideas posed by scholars such as John D’Emilio and Suzanna
Walters: that this particular form of visibility, for example, tends to tokenize lesbian
and gay characters, rendering them asexual and confined to heterosexual worlds. As
Walters notes, “homophobia can now take the form of network acquiescence to
right-wing pressure to ‘tone down’ gay content.”
39
I also tried to call attention to the
ways that LGBT stories are told mostly from the perspective of heterosexual friends

33
and family members. Drawing on scholars such as Larry Gross and Jeffrey Escoffier,
I encouraged jurors to consider this concept when evaluating TV images.
These experiences allowed me to address the intersections of popular culture
and the television industry, discerning the terms of social, political, and economic
struggle over contemporary meanings of lesbian women and lesbianism as they play
out on television and behind the scenes. With an emphasis on what Havens et al
describe as “the myriad ways in which specific discourses are constructed and
articulated at various institutional sites,” this project underscores television
production’s and reception’s contradictory natures.
40
As such, the goal of this
approach is to further “understandings of how these contradictions work within
actual practice; and, more importantly, what implications these practices – and the
texts they generate – hold in terms of larger social and cultural processes of
representation and power.”
41
Studying television’s lesbian programming, then,
necessitates paying particular attention to battles over the production of popular
culture itself. It is within this framework that the complexities and ambiguities of
lesbian representations become most apparent. In this way, the integration of cultural
studies and media industry studies produces an analysis, which, I contend, is highly
complex, nuanced, and interdisciplinary. As the following chapters detail, an array
of factors, both limiting and liberatory, play a role in the construction of lesbian TV
representations.

34
Why Now? The Representational Context of Lesbian Programming
Studying lesbian representations in the early 2000s is crucial given the
prominence of LGBT civil rights in the country. With great leaps forward have come
giant steps backward, fueled by the increasingly interlocking relationship between
the political right and the religious right. In a surprising set of circumstances, for
example, in 2009, the Supreme Court of the socially conservative state of Iowa
unanimously upheld a ruling that recognized the marriage rights of lesbians and
gays, while in 2008, in the notoriously left-leaning state of California, voters
narrowly approved Proposition 8, a ballot measure which changed the state
constitution to deny lesbian and gay couples the right to marry.
In a similar push-pull dynamic during the 2000s, Massachusetts, Connecticut,
Vermont, New Hampshire, and the District of Columbia recognized marriage rights,
while states such as Maine, Arizona, and Oregon passed laws to prohibit marriage
between same-sex couples. At the federal level, Congress passed the Matthew
Shepard Act, signed into law by President Obama on October 28
th
, 2009. The Act
expands the hate- crimes law of 1969 to include crimes based on one’s actual or
perceived sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or disability. ENDA, the
Employment Non-Discrimination Act, by contrast, has been introduced into
Congress every year except for one since 1994. If passed, ENDA would protect
employees from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The
bill has not yet passed the U.S. Senate largely because of its inclusion of gender
identity. While HRC (the Human Rights Campaign) initially claimed it would only

35
support the bill if transgender individuals were included, in 2007, the organization
reneged on this statement and chose to support the non-inclusive bill, infuriating
activist groups across the country.
In addition to this polarized political climate, accounts in the popular press
make the story of lesbian representation especially compelling to delineate. Since
2000, media sites such as AfterEllen.com, Lesbianation.com, and LesbianLife.com
have sprung up on the internet, providing spaces for extensive debates about
lesbianism and lesbian representation. During this time, lesbian celebrities have
become the faces of national marketing campaigns: Ellen Degeneres, for example, is
a spokesperson for Covergirl makeup and American Express credit cards and tennis
superstar Martina Navratilova is a spokesperson for Subaru. In 2005, Degeneres also
made headlines when televangelist Pat Robertson blamed the devastating events of
Hurricane Katrina on the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for selecting her
to host that year’s Emmy Awards. On the Sunday morning broadcast of his show The
700 Club he said, “By choosing an avowed lesbian for this national event, these
Hollywood elites have clearly invited God’s wrath...Is it any surprise that the
Almighty chose to strike at Miss Degeneres’ hometown?” Several months earlier,
Bianca broke new ground as the first lesbian character on a daytime soap opera.
Mainstream and lesbian journalists followed All My Children’s Bianca and her
relationship with Maggie intently, describing it as a “groundbreaking” storyline in
the history of soap operas.
42
When The L Word debuted in early 2004, the show also
received “groundbreaking” accolades. While not without criticism, lesbian women’s

36
presence in contemporary media culture has nonetheless captured the attention of the
popular press.
The rise in representation on television and in the consumer marketplace is
particularly noteworthy because of the legacy of lesbian invisibility in mainstream
media – gay, bisexual, and transgender also – but especially lesbian. While several
gay male characters began to appear in dramas and sit-coms of the 1960s, there were
only two notable images of lesbian women: ABC’s The Asphalt Jungle (1961) and
NBC’s The Eleventh Hour (1963) presented individual episodes with lesbian
characters. They depicted lesbianism as a social ill, making it material that could be
easily exploited and justified for television programming; at the time, homosexuality
was still considered a mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association (APA)
so medical portrayals were the dominant mode of representation.
Once homosexuality was no longer officially considered a mental disease,
TV shows in the 1970s began to explore lesbianism outside the world of medical
dramas in show such as Police Woman and All in the Family. As battles over lesbian
and gay rights became commonplace in news stories and TV programming, lesbian
characters appeared in several TV movies that dramatized current events. The made-
for-TV-movie A Question of Love (1977), for example, follows a lesbian woman’s
fight for custody of her children after coming out.
With the conservatism of the Reagan administration’s policies and the
increased power of fundamentalist and evangelical Christian organizations came a
strong shift in attitudes about sex and morality. LGBT images throughout the 1980s

37
were sparse. What did appear on TV largely dealt with the AIDS epidemic and as a
result, tended to focus on gay men. Lesbian characters appeared on single episodes
of House Calls (1981), Dallas (1983), Hotel (1983), St. Elsewhere (1984), and in the
CBS miniseries Ellis Island (1984). During this time, images of lesbian women of
color were even harder to come by. The only notable representation from the 1980s
was in the two-part TV movie produced by and starring Oprah Winfrey The Women
of Brewster Place (1986), which portrayed the relationship of a black lesbian couple.
The first lesbian regular on a prime-time series did appear in 1988 on the series
Heartbeat. While the protagonist was openly lesbian, the show did not last one full
season.
Although lesbian televisibility increased in the 1990s, most characters
appeared in single episodes, only occasionally appearing as recurring characters in a
show. Despite the proliferation of cable channels during this time, lesbian characters
appeared primarily on broadcast shows. A 1990 episode of the sit-com Designing
Women (CBS) featured Suzanne Sugarbaker coming to terms with her old beauty
pageant friend’s lesbianism. The same year, Northern Exposure (CBS) aired an
episode in which the town discovers that its founders were a lesbian couple. ER
(NBC), Relativity (ABC), Friends (NBC), and Mad About You (NBC) among others,
featured minor lesbian characters in the early to mid-1990s. TV shows that received
the most notoriety during this time were episodes that featured a “lesbian kiss,”
something critics used as proof of so-called “lesbian chic.” L.A. Law made headlines
in 1991 when one of its supposedly heterosexual attorneys finds herself attracted to a

38
bisexual co-worker. The on-screen kiss between C.J. Lamb and Abby Perkins
marked the first in a series of “lesbian kiss” episodes on television. There were also
“lesbian kisses” on episodes of Roseanne, Friends, Relativity, Picket Fences, and
Ally McBeal.
In the first years of the new millennium, with the drastic changes in TV
industry structures and regulations detailed earlier in this chapter, lesbian characters
appeared on shows across cable and broadcast markets. Since the launch of The L
Word in 2004, in particular, several other programs have featured lesbian characters
as protagonists: Bravo’s reality show Work Out (2005-2008) is the first reality series
to feature an openly lesbian lead. The cable network The N, which targets a “tween”
and young adult audience, aired South of Nowhere (2005-2009), a drama that
features a young lesbian couple as protagonists. Other shows such as Nip/Tuck, ER,
The Wire, and All My Children have recurring lesbian characters and storylines. In
addition, openly lesbian celebrities have hosted their own nationally syndicated talk
shows including The Suze Orman Show, The Wanda Sykes Show, The Ellen
Degeneres Show, The Rachel Maddow Show, and The Rosie O’Donnell Show.
Setting the Terms of This Analysis
For the time period this project addresses, The L Word is the benchmark
among lesbian-themed shows. Held up as the first TV series to address lesbian lives
and loves, as its tag-line claims, it has the kind of iconic status that few TV shows
ever have; in popular and academic writing, The L Word gets the most attention of
any lesbian programming. During each of its six seasons, GLAAD honored the show

39
and its cast and crew with an assortment of high honors. The show also revived
lesbian viewing parties, which all-but disappeared with the 1998 cancellation of
Ellen. Bars and coffee shops screened The L Word for dozens of lesbian women in
towns and cities across the country. For the show’s final season, HRC capitalized on
these regular gatherings by partnering with Showtime to offer local screenings of
each episode. Promoted as community builders, these screenings were of course
fundraisers; each screening suggested a small donation to HRC, usually 10 dollars.
Finally, the reality TV spin-off version of the show, The Real L Word: Los Angeles is
set to debut in June 2010 on Showtime.
Given the subject matter of this dissertation, however, I do not address the
show in as much detail as some might anticipate. There are several reasons for this
choice. First, other critics and scholars have analyzed the show assiduously; it is the
subject of entire books and dissertations. Second, while acknowledging my own
devotion to the show during its run, I question the range of its cultural clout. This
hesitation comes from The L Word’s status as a “quality” TV show aired on a
subscription network. Claims about the show’s ability to destabilize viewers’
conceptions of lesbian women, I contend, are limited to a relatively narrow segment
of the population with the resources to access Showtime, a network that targets a
high-tech, wired audience demographic. While many claimed the show had a “mass”
impact, from my own observations, the show ignited debate from mostly urban and
educated fans, critics, and scholars. Finally, and most significantly, within the
confines of this project, TV shows feature prominently but the industrial contexts of

40
their production are the central concern. In this way, TV shows are cultural products
that need to be examined within broader, social, political, and economic contexts.
Thus, this dissertation is less about analyzing individual TV shows and more about
explaining the broader set of economic, industrial, and cultural phenomena that
account for the general rise in lesbian representation.
The chapters that follow address lesbian representations within different
cultural and industrial contexts. Each chapter delineates a particular set of theories
and practices that construct lesbian televisibility. Interrogating the increased
visibility of lesbian women in terms of the changing economics of cable and
broadcast television markets, deregulation of the television industries, and the
expansion of inexpensive genres and celebrity branding, these chapters demonstrate
the inner-workings of modern television. Chapter one is a study of lesbian TV
celebrities who since 2000 have gained unprecedented visibility as talk show hosts;
Suze Orman, Wanda Sykes, Ellen Degeneres, Rachel Maddow, Rosie O’Donnell,
and Jane Velez Mitchell have had their own talk shows, aired on national television.
Press articles and public discourse often assume that television celebrities are afraid
to come out as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered because they fear rejection
and career failure. Discussions about this topic suggest a simple cause and effect
relationship; when TV celebrities come out, they lose popularity among a broad-
spectrum American fan-base, and as a result, lose TV show contracts and product
endorsement deals. However, the relationship between a celebrity’s sexuality and
public persona is more complex in a multi-channel, conglomerate media

41
environment. Analyzing openly lesbian TV personalities, I explore how their
celebrity images operate within the talk show genre. Looking at lesbian TV
celebrities in the context of the talk show’s institutional practices connects lesbian
sexuality to the concrete settings where it plays out.
Incorporating an analysis of the media and marketing cultures in which
celebrity production takes place, chapter one explores the complex and integral
processes that are involved in the construction and maintenance of TV’s lesbian
celebrities. In this way, this chapter looks at how discourses of lesbian TV celebrity
are articulated at different institutional levels including the show text, audiences,
production, marketing, distribution, and industrial regulations. Without disregarding
the problematic impacts of deregulation and consolidation on the creation of lesbian
celebrity, I argue that the production of Orman’s, Sykes’, and Degeneres’ celebrity
personae presents useful sites for citizens’ attention to public life; they arguably
break traditional barriers of where and in what context political discussions of
sexuality take place.
In chapter two, I study the relationship between cable TV’s lesbian images
and niche marketing. Critics praise and denigrate shows such as The L Word,
Nip/Tuck, and Work Out for featuring stereotypically feminine characters. They
argue these TV shows tend to frame lesbian femininity as a form of mainstreaming,
suggesting a desire to pass or a discomfort with visible markers of lesbian identity. In
response, this chapter starts from the premise that these images are part of the
production of social reality itself, embedded in a range of discourses including class,

42
the consumer marketplace, and shifts in cable television. Discussions of lesbian
femininity, therefore, need to incorporate a critique of class, which in addition to
race, is crucial to the ways sexuality plays out on television. Based on analysis of
cable TV shows with lesbian characters, interviews with market researchers and
television executives and producers, as well as a study of the structures of the niche
cable industry, chapter two considers the forces that construct lesbian representations
on cable TV. The stories that emerge from this research illuminate TV executives
and market researchers’ ideas about what makes representations of lesbian women
appealing to a sizeable cable television audience. Rather than argue for an
“authentic” lesbian identity, this chapter interrogates the methods by which
television producers and market researchers imagine and construct target markets,
with particular attention to the ways these methods are marked by racial and class
privilege.
Drawing on the analyses of the previous two chapters, which account for the
increased presence of lesbian TV images, chapter three examines the limits of these
representations. While lesbian characters and personalities are increasingly featured
on TV shows across cable and broadcast markets, in comedies, dramas, soap operas,
and reality shows, they are noticeably absent or contained in LGBT political
campaigns. Through a case study of the television commercials for California’s
2008 ballot initiative Proposition 8, I consider the relative invisibility of lesbian
women in political campaigns. Through analysis of the TV commercials’ content,
production, and distribution, data from polling and focus groups, as well as

43
interviews with consultants who designed the commercial campaigns, chapter three
examines the particular cultural norms revealed and reinforced by political
campaigns. I use this case study as a means of offering a theoretical framework for
understanding the deeper structures that prevent marketers, campaign workers, and
television producers from seeing lesbian women as “women.”
In the conclusion, I revisit the central arguments of each chapter to identify
the connections among them. Collectively these chapters reveal complex and
contradictory notions of sexuality, identity, audiences, and consumerism within
television. I thus attempt to articulate several themes that emerged in the course of
writing this dissertation. Considering both the pleasure and the politics of lesbian TV
representations, this chapter reveals the broad interdisciplinary perspective of the
dissertation. The conclusion elucidates the paradox of increased television
representation of lesbian women concurrent with the powerful renunciation of LGBT
rights embodied in Proposition 8.
Through these chapters, I pose a range of questions about the political
economy of television production and the solicitation of lesbian identities within
media culture. Studying the racial, ethnic, class, and gender ideologies that operate in
the production and circulation of lesbian images on U.S. television provides a
nuanced look at the ways lesbian TV texts circulate in the radically altered television
marketplace. Reflecting on the public struggle over what defines lesbian women, and
what the significance of those definitions is in the early 21
st
century, this dissertation
examines the matrix of forces that construct lesbian women and lesbian visibility on

44
television. The goal of this project is to contextualize and to better understand
lesbian TV representations as they are expressed by television texts, industry
workers, market research data and methodologies, and political campaign strategies.
In this way, this study offers a modern lineage of television and lesbian women
during a time when cultural ideas about both are in flux.

45

Chapter One Endnotes
1
Monica Trasandes, “Are We Visible Yet?” The Advocate, February 1, 2005, 44.

2
Sarah Schulman, quoted in Trasandes, “Are We Visible Yet?” 44-45.

3
Sarah Warn, “Nip/Tuck Increases Lesbian Visibility by Leaps/Bounds,” AfterEllen.com, September
2003, http://www.afterellen.com/archive/ellen/TV/nip-tuck.html.

4
Kera Bolonik, “Not Your Mother’s Lesbians,” New York Magazine, January 12, 2004,
http://www.nymag.com/nymetro/news/features/n_9708.

5
Jill Dolan, “Fans of Lesbians on TV: The L Word’s Generations,” Flow, April 25,

2005.

6
Trasandes, “Are We Visible Yet?” 44

7
“Jackie Warner Under Fan Fire,” Queerty, May 8,

2008, http://www.queerty.com/jackie-warner-
under-fan-fire-20080508/.

8
Judith Halberstam, “Sex, Love, Television (Pt. 2),” Flow, March 9, 2007,
http://flowtv.org/2007/03/sex-love-television-pt-2/.

9
Heather Havrilesky, “Land of Lipstick Lesbians,” Salon, February 11, 2004,
http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/review/2004/02/11/l_word.

10
Alexander Doty, Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 3.

11
Doty, Making Things Perfectly Queer, xviii.

12
Larry Gross, Up from Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men & the Media in America (New York:
Columbia, 2001), 151.

13
Ron Becker, Gay TV and Straight America (Piscataway: Rutgers University Press, 2006), 8.

14
Judith Mayne, Framed: Lesbians, Feminists, and Media Culture (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2000), xi.

15
The 1980s also marked the emergence of a large body of feminist scholarship about pornography.
The VCR made renting and viewing pornography easy, private, and inexpensive. As a result, porn
sales and rentals increased, provoking ferocious debates among feminist scholars. This period of
intense debate and acrimony between sex-positive and anti-pornography feminists during the early
1980s is referred to as the “Feminist Sex Wars.” In the years since then, debates about pornography
have raged among feminist media scholars. Scholars such as Michelle Citron, B. Ruby Rich, Chris
Straayer, and Linda Williams, to name just a few, have debated the relationships between media,
women, and pornography, including lesbian porn. The body of work about lesbian pornography
illustrates an array of political stances and theoretical analyses. Texts like these have produced
interdisciplinary studies that merge concepts from media studies, feminist studies, lesbian and gay
studies, and critical race theory. They trace shifts in analytic and representational modes, providing

46

critical insights into the histories and significance of lesbian women and film. These arguments,
however, tend to focus on textual analysis, considering the political implications of the content. Few
of them take into account the production histories and industrial contexts of these images, especially
the ways that business and economics are intrinsically tied to the making of pornography. Even in my
interviews with openly lesbian TV producers who make shows with lesbian sex scenes, there is little
acknowledgement of old business adage that “same-sex sells” especially when it is between two
women. TV shows that feature physical intimacy between two women capitalize on the old and
lucrative business of male voyeurism. Even the entertainment media director of GLAAD told the
New York Daily News that the lesbian porn connection in TV shows is a smart cross-over move,
attracting advertisers and a wide range of viewers.

16
Aviva Dove-Viebahn, “Fashionably Femme: Lesbian Visibility, Style, and Politics in The L Word,”
in Queer Popular Culture, ed. Thomas Peele (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007), 72.

17
Kelly Kessler, “Politics of the Sitcom Formula: Friends, Mad About You, and the Sapphic Second
Banana,” in The New Queer Aesthetic on TV: Essays on Recent Programming, ed. James R. Keller
and Leslie Stratyner (North Carolina: McFarland and Company, 2007), 131.

18
Rebecca Beirne, ed., Televising Queer Women: A Reader (New York: Palgrave-McMillan, 2008),
13.

19
Ibid., 14.

20
Rebecca Beirne, Lesbians in Television and Text after the New Millennium (New York: Palgrave-
McMillan, 2008), 6-7.

21
Julie D’Acci, Defining Women: Television and the Case of Cagney & Lacey (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 3.

22
Douglas Kellner, “Media Industries, Political Economy, and Media/Cultural Studies: An
Articulation,” in Media Industries: History, Theory, and Method, ed. Jennifer Holt and Alisa Perren
(Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 95.

23
Kellner, “Media Industries, Political Economy, and Media/Cultural Studies,” 105.

24
William M. Kunz, Culture Conglomerates: Consolidation in the Motion Picture and Television
Industries (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 8.

25
Kunz, Culture Conglomerates, 11.

26
Joshua Green, “What Does An American Television Network Look Like?” Flow, November 16,
2007, http://flowtv.org/2007/11/what-does-an-american-television-network-look-like/.

27
Joseph Turow, Breaking Up America: Advertisers and the New Media World (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1997), 5.

28
“Showtime Networks Launches Phase 2 of alt.SHO.com Targeting Viewers/Consumers,” Business
Wire, September 28, 2000, http://www.allbusiness.com/media-telecommunications/internet-
www/6505990-1.html.

47

29
Amanda Lotz, The Television Will Be Revolutionized (New York: NYU Press, 2007), 29.

30
Kunz, Culture Conglomerates, 9.

31
Ibid., 9.

32
Timothy Havens, Amanda Lotz, and Serra Tinic, “Critical Media Industry Studies: A Research
Approach,” Communication, Culture, & Critique 2 (2009): 236.

33
Havens et al., “Critical Media Industry Studies: A Research Approach,” 238.

34
Ellen Seiter, Television and New Media Audiences (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 30.

35
“Jackie: College Thesis Subject,” BravoTV.com, http://www.bravotv.com/work-out/videos/jackie-
college-thesis-subject.

36
Becker, Gay TV and Straight America, 7.

37
Kathryn C. Montgomery, Target: Prime Time Advocacy Groups and the Struggle Over
Entertainment Television (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 7.

38
Ibid., 8.

39
Suzanna Danuta Walters, All the Rage: The Story of Gay Visibility in America (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2001), 113.

40
Havens et al., “Critical Media Industry Studies: A Research Approach,” 248-250.

41
Ibid., 250.

42
Greg Hernandez, “Susan Lucci and Agnes Nixon discuss groundbreaking lesbian storyline on ‘All
My Children,’” Greg In Hollywood, January 12, 2010, http://greginhollywood.com/susan-lucci-and-
agnes-nixon-discuss-groundbreaking-lesbian-storyline-on-all-my-children-19639.

48
Chapter Two
The Politics of Lesbian TV Celebrity
The truth is that influential gays are becoming
increasingly more visible and more powerful.
-Out Magazine, 2007
1

Nothing has helped more to bring the issue of gay and
lesbian rights forward than famous celebrities having
come out of the closet.
-Helium.com, 2009
2

In the first decade of the new millennium, lesbian and gay celebrities have
garnered an astounding amount of power, respect, and loyalty from fans, cultural
critics, and the popular press. National civil rights organizations like the Human
Rights Campaign (HRC) and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation
(GLAAD) feature famous lesbians and gays during fundraisers and in promotional
materials. Publications like the lesbian lifestyle magazine Curve and the gay men’s
entertainment magazine Out, annually rank public figures, assessing their cultural
significance based on wealth, political clout, and pop-culture resonance. Of Out’s
annual “Power 50” list of the “most powerful gay men and women in America,” its
editors write, “Whether they’re raking in millions, advancing the gay rights
movement, entertaining us with snarky celebrity gossip, or selling us $2,000
cashmere sweaters, we’re confident that these VIPs have exerted considerable sway
over how we think, look, and act.”
3
Conflating the work of activists, politicians,
comedians, and advertisers, publications like this one reveal that regardless of

49
whether celebrities are politically engaged or not, being out and famous authorizes
them to be held up as icons and role models.
In the contemporary era of celebrity culture, wherein celebrities are
“branded,” becoming a commodity for fans, publicists, and producers to sell as an
investment, examining how celebrities function within specific industrial contexts is
essential. Updating sociologist Joshua Gamson’s research on celebrity and sexuality
to account for the structures of post-network TV, this chapter examines lesbian
television celebrities within the context of industry deregulation and consolidation.
Gamson’s Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America (1994) and Freaks
Talk Back: Tabloid Talk Shows and Sexual Nonconformity (1998) are two of the
most thorough and persuasive analyses of celebrity and sexuality in the context of
the television industry. As Gamson says in the introduction to Freaks Talk Back,
“Studies of the construction of sexuality only rarely look in detail at the opportunities
and constraints associated with particular institutional settings, proceeding instead
as if sexual categories and meanings exist in free-floating ‘discourse.’”
4

In response to the lack of attention to institutional contexts, Gamson’s first
book, Claims to Fame, examines the nature of American celebrity, with a focus on
its production and consumption. Interviewing agents, attending live TV show
tapings, and observing celebrities’ fans, he reveals connections between celebrity
culture and “commercial culture more generally.”
5
In Freaks Talk Back, Gamson
again engages with production studies, this time to present a nuanced look at the role
of tabloid talk shows like Donahue, Ricki Lake, and The Jerry Springer Show.

50
Unlike work that looks at the construction of gender and sexuality only at the level of
discourse, Gamson’s project examines LGBT “freaks” as they are produced in the
specific institutional setting of the talk show. What Gamson’s sociological approach
thus brings to the table is an emphasis on analyzing both the cultural content and
institutional contexts of TV talk show production.
Drawing on this framework, I analyze the ways celebrity culture is deeply
entrenched in the post-network TV industry, meeting demands for synergistic
relationships between the two. The massive deregulation, expansion, and
consolidation of the television industry that have occurred since the 1980s, have led
to changes including channel proliferation, the establishment of niche channels, and
the increased production of a variety of unscripted programming. In this context, the
genre of the talk show plays a significant role in the construction of lesbian TV
celebrity; it is where lesbian TV celebrities are the most visible. Since 2000, six
openly lesbian women have hosted their own talk shows on national television: Suze
Orman, Wanda Sykes, Ellen Degeneres, Rachel Maddow, Rosie O’Donnell, and Jane
Velez Mitchell. While TV show hosts like Anderson Cooper have long been rumored
to be gay, openly gay male TV celebrities are absent in non-fiction programming.
Openly gay men certainly appear as contestants on reality shows such as Survivor,
American Idol, and Project Runway and as hosts of reality shows like The Swan,
Extreme Makeover, and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. However, they are
“unknowns” before their appearances on these shows, some becoming celebrities
through the shows but not before.

51
Using comediennes Wanda Sykes and Ellen Degeneres as well as financial
advice guru Suze Orman as case studies, this chapter looks at each celebrity’s talk
show and TV network, interviews, press coverage, and the modes of performance
she enacts in order to understand how lesbian celebrity is co-determined by the talk
show genre and the post-network industrial climate. While all three women host talk
shows, each of them falls into different subgenres, air on different channels, emerged
with varying industrial practices, and in different political climates: The Wanda
Sykes Show, which premiered in 2009, is a late-night comedy talk show airing on
Saturdays on Fox;
6
The Ellen Degeneres Show is an afternoon entertainment talk
show on NBC, which debuted in 2003; and The Suze Orman Show, which began
airing on CNBC in 2002, is a weekend financial advice program.
Talk shows, with their attention to discourses of empowerment,
contemporary politics, and revealing aspects of private life in public, are cultural
objects that allow us to look at the links between genre production and lesbian
sexuality. This approach calls attention to the linkages among agents, publicists,
audiences, TV producers, and television texts, considering the various ways each
impacts the others. Looking at the construction of lesbian talk show hosts offers a
way to interpret why these women are more efficacious than other openly lesbian
celebrities in capturing the social imagination of their audiences, the popular press,
and LGBT civil rights organizations. As Gamson says, “talk shows are a fabulous
chance to see what happens when lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people are
highly visible subjects in a commercial cultural arena.”
7
That is, examining the

52
relationship among institutional levels provides a way to reflect on popular lesbian
and gay culture and to offer strategies for interpreting and understanding that culture.
“If talk shows,” as sociologist Eva Illouz writes, “systematically blur boundaries
constitutive of middle-class taste,” lesbian talk show hosts offer a means of
analyzing the boundaries, limits, and potentials of televised lesbian sexuality.
8

Comparing these celebrities uncovers the ways that the bond between celebrity and
television creates an economic and regulatory system wherein gendered discourses
of race and sexuality can productively occur.
Performing Authenticity: Lesbian Celebrity in the Post-Network Era
Once someone reaches celebrity status, an economic apparatus is built up
around her with agents and publicists carefully managing the public presentation of
her career and sustaining her carefully crafted public persona. This maintenance
includes deciding how much of a celebrity’s personal life to reveal to the public. As
scholars such as Richard Dyer and Christine Gledhill have written, the allure of
celebrity is both to have a person elevated above the everyday as well as to see the
rich and famous as “normal,” rendering their celebrity status achievable. Like the
duality between the banal and the glamorous, almost every celebrity narrative traces
troughs and peaks in a continuous cycle of failure and redemption that fulfills their
cultural role of both fantasy figure and attainable reality. As the production of
celebrity has become more visible to the public, evolving into an aspect of that
culture itself, the notion of a clear divide between public and private gets
complicated. Because the artifice of celebrity is revealed, the private self no longer

53
represents pure truth. “Instead,” as Gamson says, “what is most true, most real, most
trustworthy, is precisely the relentlessly performing public self.”
9
The modern
making of celebrity no longer only relies on demands for personal revelation; rather
celebrity culture is dominated by artifice, requiring that celebrities perform as
products themselves. In this way, Gamson says, “Celebrity personas are in a practical
sense constructed such that distinctions between fact and fiction break down, the
blend of truths and fictions settling dilemmas in the production setting.”
10
Celebrities
are understood as neither fully simulations of people nor are they completely
authentic ones. In their modern incarnation, celebrities exist in a “middle-range
reality” where they appear both genuine and manufactured, offering audiences bits
and pieces of their constructed “private” selves.
11

This hybrid does not mean that fans and TV audiences believe celebrities are
inherently unknowable or fictitious. Most audiences, according to Gamson “leave
open the question of authenticity and along with it the question of merit. For them,
celebrity is not a prestige system, nor a postmodern hall of mirrors, but…a game.”
12

Understanding the gap between image and reality, audiences derive pleasure from
bridging that very gap. Trying to appear affable and able to take a joke, Suze Orman,
for example, makes light of Saturday Night Live’s parodies of her. A cultural
institution in the U.S., Saturday Night Live’s imitations of famous figures are often
so influential that celebrities start trying to embrace the show, becoming part of the
joke rather than the object of it. As media studies scholar Jonathan Gray writes in
his analysis of public figures and satirical TV, “Ultimately, satirical play with public

54
figures stands to construct new relationships between these figures, politics, and the
viewing public.”
13
Orman is known for her bleach-blond short hair, high-collared,
brightly colored jackets, her over-the-top gestures, and strong mid-western accent.
Mimicking Orman’s exaggerated gestures and speech, Saturday Night Live’s Kristen
Wiig has garnered the attention of critics who consider her imitations among the top
comedic parodies of 2008 and 2009. On a February 5
th
, 2009 interview on Larry
King Live, Orman responded to a clip of Wiig’s imitation by joking that she gets
confused on her own show:
I’m sitting there, and I’m talking to people as they’re calling in. All of
sudden, here’s what’s going on; I’m playing me, playing Kristen Wiig,
playing me. ‘Cause all of a sudden I’m sitting there just like that going “oh
my god, that’s what she does,” and I’m realizing but it’s not what she does,
it’s what I do.

This self-mocking acts as a way of updating celebrity culture to account for the
production of a “true self,” revealing Orman’s awareness of her own performance of
authenticity.
Television industry changes have also produced an increased emphasis on the
production of celebrity culture, which has become increasingly mechanized in the
deregulated, consolidated media environment. Television industry changes have
included unprecedented deregulation from legislation like the Telecommunications
Act of 1996 and relaxation of ownership rules with the 1995 expiration of the
Financial Interest and Syndication Rules (Fyn/Syn). Since the expiration of the
Fyn/Syn rules, television scholar Amanda Lotz argues, “The emergence of so many
new networks and channels changed the competitive dynamics of the industry and

55
the type of programming likely to be produced.”
14
For example, splintered
audiences, segmented by channel proliferation and niche cable outlets, require
television networks to develop more lower-cost programming, such as talk and
reality shows.
The Suze Orman Show, for instance, airs on CNBC, a division of NBC
Universal. CNBC is offered to TV customers as part of a cable “bundle,” a group of
channels offered for one set fee. Media relations consultant Anthony Freitas
explains that cable channels that are part of a bundle ensure wider circulation. As
such, bundled channels tend to increase the chance that viewers will come across
material that may run counter to their values. Originally launched in 1989 as the
Consumer News and Business Channel, CNBC was part of a series of narrowly
targeted cable channels such as ESPN, CNN, MTV, and Lifetime. Advertising itself
as “First in Business Worldwide,” CNBC offers live coverage of the global financial
markets as well as a variety of programs throughout the day including reports on
businesses, interviews with CEOs and business leaders, and commentary from
financial experts.
CNBC relies on cross-promotions, also a staple of modern celebrity branding.
During the economic recession that began in 2008, Orman appeared on numerous
television programs, helping citizens find ways to save money. She was featured, for
example, on a 2009 episode of NBC’s The Biggest Loser, a reality show in which
obese participants compete for $250,000 by losing the highest percentage of weight.
In the episode, Orman offers contestants advice on maintaining good financial

56
health. She talks to them about the connection between health and wealth and gives
them tips on how to be financially fit when they get home. Making parts of The Suze
Orman Show, like the “Can I Afford It?” segment, a regular part of her guest
appearances on other TV shows, Orman gives the network, herself, and her celebrity
persona maximum exposure.
While the “Big Three” networks no longer reign supreme in the television
industry, post-network era structures and practices mean that broadcast channels’
power runs vertically and horizontally; it expands beyond the realm of the network
era TV audience to include syndication rights and profits from niche cable channels,
cross-promotion of studio-financed movies, TV shows, music albums, and internet
purchases. Their expansive reach, which has problematically consolidated power
and ownership in the hands of a few elite individuals and corporations, produces a
landscape in which, in this case, talk shows are available to a range of viewers, who
watch and engage with television in post-network ways.
While journalists, bloggers, and scholars contend that “Network TV is Dead,”
broadcast talk shows like The Ellen Degeneres Show remain a crucial part of the
post-network era.
15
“These outlets,” media scholar William Kunz says of broadcast
networks,
remain critical in the dissemination of news and information on the national
and local levels, command a significant share of the television audience on a
day-to-day basis, and are home to common social and cultural experiences
such as the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards.
16

57
While broadcast audiences are smaller than they were in the network era, TV
networks arguably have more control and wider ownership as a result of industry
deregulation and consolidation.
In particular, common ownership, defined by Lotz as vertical integration of
the television industry, was the result of the expiration of the Fyn/Syn rules.
Common ownership, according to Lotz, “radically redefined relationships between
studios and networks and adjusted financing norms.”
17
One of the ways these
relationships were “radically redefined,” was that networks like NBC began
prioritizing television show contracts with commonly owned studios, which
guaranteed the network syndication profits. Talk shows are especially lucrative in
syndication, where since 1999, repurposing has allowed networks to earn additional
revenue during a show’s original run. Revenue from repurposing comes either from
airing episodes multiple times on the show’s own network or from airing a show
concurrently on a cable channel. NBC thus increases its revenue of the The Ellen
Degeneres Show by airing new episodes one week later on Oxygen, a niche cable
channel similar to Lifetime, dedicated to “women’s programming.” Full episodes of
the show are also available on Hulu, a website that offers commercially supported
streaming video of TV shows. The show thus reaches viewers who use television and
internet technologies differently, expanding its presence in the mediascape.
In this industrial context, hype, branding, manipulation, and self-promotion
are central elements of modern celebrity culture. “Television,” Gamson says, “with
its constant flow, enormous reach, and vast space-filling needs, has from its initial

58
boom provided the most significant new outlet for image creation.”
18
The success
and popularity of entertainment magazines such as People and US Weekly, and
“infotainment” TV shows like Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood, have
created more space for more famous personalities. The proliferation of satire TV
programs like The Daily Show, Politically Incorrect, and The Wanda Sykes Show,
has produced particularly fertile ground for the ironic portrayal of celebrity culture as
well as for a diversity of socio-political critiques. With its play of humor, social
norms, and contemporary politics, the mode of satire TV offers audiences the chance
to analyze, question, and reflect on prevailing systems of power.
In the introduction to their anthology, Satire TV: Politics and Comedy in the
Post-Network Era, media scholars Jonathan Gray, Jeffrey Jones, and Ethan
Thompson write that
Television satire is flourishing in the post-network era…With many satirical
shows involving politicians as guests or in caricature, with several airing on
the same day and with all addressing current political issues, today’s class of
satire TV forms a key part of televised political culture.
19

They trace the rise of the genre in its current form to the early 1990s, and to a
confluence of factors including shifting audience tastes, changes in the form of
satirical comedy, and TV industry deregulation that promoted the rapid expansion of
cable television. For them, “the shift from network broadcasting to cable
narrowcasting – is the fundamentally enabling mechanism for these popular critiques
of politics.”
20
Out of the need to establish unique identities in the multi-channel
television environment, niche cable channels like Bravo and Comedy Central carved

59
out brand identities built on satirical shows like The Daily Show, The Awful Truth,
and Politically Incorrect.
Deprecating Niceness versus Satirical Critique
By defining their brands with satirical programming, niche cable channels
also facilitated many comedians’ move to television from live stand-up comedy
circuits. As media scholar Kathleen Rowe writes in her analysis of genre, gender,
and comedy, “Because standup comedy is cheap to produce, it helps feed cable’s
enormous appetite for programming, and an explosion of standup comedy has
become a staple on cable television.”
21
Standup comedians including Wanda Sykes,
Ellen Degeneres, Roseanne Barr, Dave Chappelle, and Jon Stewart to name just a
few have had successful television careers after beginning in standup comedy.
A comedienne by trade, Wanda Sykes was an under-the-radar success on the
comedy scene for years. According to her publicity materials, she got her big break
in 1997 opening for comedian Chris Rock in New York, where she then was hired as
a writer for The Chris Rock Show¸ a late-night HBO comedy talk show that aired
from 1997 to 2000. On November 7
th
2009, Sykes premiered her own late night talk
show, airing Saturdays at 11pm on Fox. Influenced by the style and format of
Politically Incorrect, The Wanda Sykes Show features a comedian as the host of the
show, an opening monologue of political jokes, and a mix of celebrity guests who
are not political “experts” but who are brought on the show to discuss political
topics. Filmed in front of a live studio audience at CBS Television City in
Hollywood, California, the show covers current events including celebrity news, the

60
presidency of Barack Obama, and the debate over health care reform in the United
States.
Satire TV shows that are hosted by established comedians typically assume
the political stance of that comedian. Sykes’ show, like her politics, is decidedly
liberal; the show’s political humor thus takes a progressive stand on issues like gays
in the military, racist comments made about President Barack Obama and other
prominent black figures, and debates between Democrats and Republicans more
generally. While comediennes such as Roseanne Barr, Ellen Degeneres, and Rosie
O’Donnell have been able to establish spaces for themselves within the male-
dominated TV comedy landscape, Sykes is the first woman, of any race or sexual
orientation, to be the host of a late-night satire TV show.
That Sykes, as well as Degeneres, are comediennes, underscores the gendered
dynamics of television genre. As the work of scholars such as Bonnie Dow, Kathleen
Rowe, and Ella Taylor shows, the genre of situation comedy is where television’s
most resounding female representations originated. As Taylor says, “Comedy is a
more flexible form than drama because it can create multiple, conflicting and
oppositional realities within the safe confines of the joke.”
22
Efforts at social change
have been long tied to comedy, where Dow says, “comedy becomes a vehicle for
social discussion. The portrayal of social conflicts and their resolution through
comedy can lend guidance to a culture that faces adjustment to social change.”
23
As
openly lesbian comediennes who incorporate their own sexuality into their routines,

61
Degeneres and Sykes use comedy to participate in debates about lesbian and gay
civil rights in American politics.
Sykes and Degeneres use different forms of humor to navigate this terrain.
Degeneres, known as the “queen of nice,” promotes a light and cheerful agenda.
When the press announced that she would join the 2010 season of American Idol,
Entertainment Weekly published a cover-story featuring an interview with Degeneres
and infamous Idol judge Simon Cowell titled “Nice vs. Nasty!” referring to
Degeneres and Cowell, respectively. Inspired by Bob Newhart, her comedy
comments on mundane, funny, and irritating everyday realities. In an interview with
W Magazine, she says that her experience of rejection after coming out make her
particularly “sensitive about negative comedy” and is why she thinks “people need to
start shifting into joy and happiness.”
24
Sykes’ comedy, on the other hand, is in
service of satire; acting as an outsider looking in, she comments on social norms of
American society, particularly those of race and sexuality, comedically mocking
them. In this way, she points out the absurdity, discrimination, and often
baselessness of these norms. As a satirist, Sykes “not only offers meaningful
political critiques but also encourages viewers to play with politics, to examine it,
test it, and question rather than simply consume it as information or ‘truth’ from
authoritative sources.”
25
Satire TV’s immense popularity, evident by its sheer
volume on television and by its attention in political discourse, often over-shadowing
traditional news reports, speaks to its ability to powerfully and effectively critique
politics.

62
Yet, because it is ultimately a negative form of critique, satire risks alienating
its audience. As literary critic George Test says of satire, “In such attacks, we have
on display some of the least socially acceptable emotions: anger, indignation,
frustration, righteousness, hatred, and malice.”
26
Moreover, expressions of female
anger within comedy are especially taboo. The conventions of popular television
tend to represent women as the objects of laughter, rather than as the creators of it.
As Rowe notes, “It is important to remember that expressions of women’s anger are
disturbing to women and men alike because they challenge an ideology of
heterosexuality that identifies sadism with men and masochism with women.”
27

Sykes’ presence on the show as a black, lesbian woman arguably further challenges
televisual dynamics between heterosexuality and homosexuality, whiteness and
blackness, and male and female. Thus, Sykes, like Roseanne Barr in Rowe’s
analysis, unsettles TV’s social hierarchies.
Sykes’ most compelling discussions about race and sexuality arguably take
place during the show’s opening monologue and during the “WandaBar” segment of
the show, where she and three guests discuss current events over drinks. In her
January 16
th
, 2010 monologue, for example, she brought up Senator Harry Reid’s
comments that Barack Obama was elected President partly because he is “light-
skinned,” and has “no Negro dialect.” Reid’s comments created a media frenzy,
provoking harsh accusations from many that Reid was out of line and his remarks
undeniably racist. News commentary from major outlets including CNN, MSNBC,
and Fox News interviewed cultural critics and political consultants, asking them to

63
debate the racial implications of Reid’s comments. Reid’s defenders conceded that
the remark was a “mistake,” but based on his record, it was not representative of his
racial politics. Opponents argued that Reid’s assessment was outright racism; they
further countered that Obama’s easy acceptance of Reid’s apology amounted to a
double standard in the Democratic party; had a Republican made those comments,
they argued, the Democrats would have demanded his resignation from politics.
Sykes, on the other hand, says what no news pundit said: “I’m going to tell
you. Harry Reid’s right. Come on, we all know that if Obama looked like Wesley
Snipes and spoke like Soulja Boy, the only thing he’d be president of is BET.”
Refusing to engage with the “post-racial” arguments that have emerged as a result of
Obama’s election, she adds:
Let’s be real. Black people, we have two voices right? We got our home
voice and then we’ve got our telephone, court date, and bill collector voice,
right?...We got a lot of voices. Shoot, I bet when Oprah’s just sittin’ at home
kickin’ it, she probably sounds like Sophia from The Color Purple…She’s
got her home voice and then she’s got her Oprah voice.

These remarks touch on the racialized realities of American culture, even if they are
over-generalized. A critique such as this, Gray et al. contend, “says what the press is
too timid to say, proving itself a more critical interrogator of politicians at times and
a more effective mouthpiece of the people’s displeasure with those in power,
including the press itself.”
28
Sykes directly addresses this concept, concluding the
segment saying,

64
This whole Harry Reid thing, I’m looking at all the news reports and the
media. They kept saying that we [the public] don’t want to talk about race,
we’re too afraid to talk about race. No, the media doesn’t talk about it…But
regular people, we talk about race, we talk about race all the time.

Positioning herself, and the show, as “the voice of the people,” Sykes attempts to
embody progressive public sentiment about major cultural issues like race and
racism.
Sykes’ remark about blacks having “two voices” invokes W.E.B. Dubois’
“double consciousness,” wherein she reveals a clear recognition of the racist systems
of belief that construct whiteness and blackness.
29
By describing these “voices” and
using Winfrey as an example of them, Sykes acknowledges and offers a critique of
the performative nature of race. She enhances this critique by changing her tone,
grammar, and facial expressions when she mocks Winfrey’s “home voice” and her
“Oprah voice.” Like black comedian Dave Chappelle, Sykes does not simply co-opt
race to make fun of both whites and blacks. Rather, as English scholar K.A.
Wisniewski says of Chappelle, “not only does [he] show how people of color are
homogenized and misrepresented in the eyes of some whites…but [he shows] the
way these beliefs continue to reinforce racial hierarchies.”
30
Following Chappelle,
Sykes operates outside of the norms of “political correctness” to make incisive
comments about the functions of race and racism in contemporary American culture.
For Sykes, these critiques also speak to the ways in which she negotiates her
own multiple voices, being black, lesbian, and female. In her 2009 HBO comedy
special I'ma Be Me, Sykes articulates a keen awareness of the multiple identities she

65
inhabits as a television celebrity. Integrating these identities into humor that is
rhetorically powerful, she talks about the 2008 marriage rally in Las Vegas where
she publicly came out; she says, “I am proud to be a woman. I’m proud to be a black
woman, and I’m proud to be gay.” After the passage of Proposition 8 in California, a
ballot initiative that limited marriage in the state to the union of a man and a woman,
Sykes says she “had to come out...I had to say something ‘cause I was so hurt and so
fuckin’ pissed, I had to say something.” She goes on to describe the landmark
election night that was, for many citizens, a triumph and a failure; Obama had been
elected the first black President and, as Sykes says, lesbians and gays were back to
being “second class citizens.” Being both black and lesbian, Sykes says “I was up
here and now back I’m down here.” Dropping to her knees, she says, “Actually I’m
lower, I dropped lower, you know ‘cause as a black woman at least I could do
whatever, marry whoever, but as a gay, black woman, uhuh, even lower.”
Talking more directly about being black and lesbian, she says, “you know
what? It is harder. It’s harder being gay than it is being black.” As the audience
applauds, she adds, “There are things that I had to do as gay that I didn’t have to do
as black.” By “things,” Sykes means coming out to her family and to the public. “I
didn’t have to come out black…I didn’t have to sit my parents down and tell them
about my blackness.” Using language common to narratives of coming out, Sykes
says, “Mom, Dad, I gotta tell you something. I hope you still love me, I’m just
gonna say it. Mom, Dad, I’m black.” Imitating her mother’s response, Sykes
explodes into a hysterical rant, familiar to lesbians and gays who have received less

66
than supportive responses from family members. She imagines her mother
screaming frantically,
Oh lord, did she say that? Anything but black, Jesus. Give her cancer Lord,
give her cancer. Anything but black Lord…What did I do? What did I do? I
knew I shouldn’t have let you watch Soul Train. Was it Soul Train?

The symbolic power of this comedy routine is that it reverses the usual gay/black
comparison. While the notion of having to “come out” as gay but not as black is a
rhetorical strategy that has been long used to distinguish the experiences of sexual
minorities from those of racial minorities, Sykes uses it unconventionally; instead of
focusing on how difficult it is to come out to family, friends, and co-workers as
lesbian, Sykes plays out the scenario as if she was telling her parents that she is
black.
Sykes incorporates compelling critiques about sexuality into her talk show as
well. In February 2010, when the U.S. Congress began debating whether to abolish
the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, Sykes brought up the issue during the
show’s “WandaBar” segment. Talking to her panel, which included American Idol
judge Kara DioGuardi, comedian and magician Penn Gillette, and Scrubs star
Donald Faison, Sykes says, “Big military news this week – ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”
may be on its ways out, right?...So, why shouldn’t gays be allowed to serve openly in
the military?” With politically and socially progressive guests, Sykes creates an
atmosphere primed for left-leaning discussions, which overwhelmingly favor the
rights of lesbians and gays. All three guests respond to Sykes, saying there is no
reason lesbians and gays should not be allowed to serve openly in the U.S. military.

67
Penn Gillette adds, “It’s not a pragmatic issue, it’s a moral one…It’s the right thing
to do to let people be free, it’s the idea of this country.” During these “WandaBar”
segments, Sykes plays the role of the moderator, offering her guests the opportunity
to voice opinions that serve to reinforce Sykes’ politics and the political bent of the
show. Guest comments also give voice to each of Sykes’ identities. Having guests
who tend to be gay, black, or gay-friendly allows the “WandaBar” segment to
embody discourses of racism, sexism, and homophobia within the space of one
episode.
Applauding throughout these segments, the studio audience plays a vital role
in these conversations. Because as Test says, “differences of opinion concerning the
judgments [of satire] are potential sources of contention,” studio audiences
communicate particular opinions and emotions to viewers at home.
31
They
participate in the production of partisan satire TV, drawing citizens into public
discourse in fun and entertaining ways. In Claims to Fame, Gamson draws on his
own experiences going to talk show tapings to underscore the studio audience’s role
in constructing the host’s image and popularity. He says, “Producers mold the
audience as a ‘production element’ not only to create a ‘party atmosphere for the
hosts,’ but also to elicit behaviors that will serve as suggestive signals to those
viewing at home.”
32
At tapings, the studio audience is very much a part of the show’s
production, coached by a producer or warm-up comedian before the host ever
appears on the set.

68
My own experiences attending a live taping of The Wanda Sykes Show on
December 18
th
, 2009, further illuminated the ways studio audiences are trained to
promote the host as funny and engaging. Before the actual taping began, we were
coached by a staff member hired to get us in a good mood and to teach us when and
how to clap during the show. Tall, lean, white, and balding, he was full of energy
and self-deprecating humor. To make us laugh, he had a running joke about himself
as the star of a small, independent film, reminding us over and over again that he was
in fact “famous.” He also asked several audience members where they were from,
offering witty and biting connections between their responses. We were instructed to
clap, laugh, and cheer at each of Sykes’ jokes. When we clapped, we were to hold
our hands upright, just below our faces for maximum volume and visual effect. By
the time Sykes entered the stage, the audience was a ready-made production piece
whose job it was to cue the audiences watching at home.
Being at the taping also afforded me the chance to compare what is taped to
what actually airs on television. Based on the show taping I attended, the time
constraints of commercial broadcast television appear to have an undeniably limiting
effect on discussions of complex social and political issues. In this case, what was
most notable was a discussion about race, sexuality, and marriage rights. During the
“WandaBar,” Sykes discussed these topics with guests Michelle Rodriguez, star of
the film Avatar, Tim Meadows, a comic on Saturday Night Live, and Paula
Poundstone, a notoriously political comedienne. Sykes began the segment quoting a
press release from the U.S. Census, which stated that the Census had moved the date

69
when whites will be a minority race in the United States to eight years later than
previously thought. At the taping, the conversation led to a debate about Prop 8.
Poundstone articulated her frustration with “being a Californian” during the
campaign. What followed was an impassioned, albeit brief, statement in which
Poundstone said she felt it was wrong to have so many rights and benefits tied to
marriage in the first place. Articulating the point-of-view of queer theorists like
Michael Warner, Cindy Patton, and Lauren Berlant, I was thrilled to see this position
so clearly explained on a network talk show aimed at adults aged 18-49. When I
watched the edited version of the show that aired the next night, however, any
mention of Prop 8 had been removed, Poundstone’s comments were cut, and what
remained was a funny, but less politically incisive discussion.
Media scholars such as Christine Acham and Beretta Smith-Shomade argue
that while premium cable channels such as HBO and Showtime provide a space for
strong racial critiques and interventions, broadcast television, by contrast, curtails
socio-political critiques in the service of not offending its wide audience base. As
Acham explains in her discussion of Dave Chappelle, “broadcast television,
available to all television owners, continues to produce primarily white homogenous
programming aimed at the rarely changing in-demand demographic of 18-39-year-
old consumers.”
33
In backing up this claim, she discusses the comedy of Chapelle as
well as Chris Rock and Margaret Cho, whose humor “do not fit the integrationist
mold and offer differing views on race in U.S. society.”
34
Where these comics have
been able to express their perspectives, she says, is on cable TV.

70
Cable TV, though, also commodifies black representations. Smith-Shomade,
for example, demonstrates the ways in which BET, Black Entertainment Television,
simultaneously reinscribes “the making of a singular black market and a system that
disregards those whom it attempts to address.”
35
Moving away from a
representational analysis that deconstructs TV images and programs as discrete
events, Smith-Shomade looks at BET’s brand and programming from an economic
perspective. She points out the contradictions between BET’s marketing strategies
and its financial support, which comes primarily from white individuals and
companies. This “duplicitous relationship” as Smith-Shomade calls it, speaks to
television’s capitalist bottom line, wherein networks cannot afford to alienate white
audiences, even for a channel dedicated to providing programming to black viewers.
Fox, which produces and distributes The Wanda Sykes Show, has a long
relationship with satire TV shows and with black programming. It is the fourth of
the major broadcast networks, established decades after ABC, CBS, and NBC. The
Fox Entertainment Group was formed in the 1990s after the purchase of the
Metromedia-owned stations by the 20
th
Century Fox film studio. Later, these
stations became the foundation of the Fox Television Network. Soon after the
Metromedia deal, Rupert Murdoch purchased all shares of the company and News
Corp took complete control of 20
th
Century Fox. As Gray et al show, Fox initially
solidified its brand identity with satirical shows such as The Simpsons, In Living
Color, and Married with Children. In this way, they write, “Fox went after a specific
demo, stylizing itself as young, irreverent, and brash.”
36
The press describes Sykes’

71
humor, as having a “pointed tone” and a “no-bullshit attitude.”
37
Thus, her comedic
sensibilities fit the network’s niche identity. Through her satirical commentaries on
race and sexuality, Sykes provides a platform for what Gray et al. describe as
“asserting unsettling truths that audiences may need or want to hear.”
38

Since the late 1980s, the Fox channel has aired far more shows with black
casts, producers, and writers than any other broadcast network. In Color by Fox: The
Fox Network and the Revolution in Black Television Kristal Brent Zook attributes
this programming trend to VCR technology and to the proliferation of cable
channels. She says, “Since working-class African American and Latino audiences in
general did not yet have access to these new technologies, they continued to rely on
the ‘free’ networks.”
39
Featuring black entertainers like Sinbad, Martin Lawrence,
and Keenan Ivory Wayans, Fox tapped into the urban black market. “By 1993,”
writes Zook, “the fourth network was airing the largest single crop of black-produced
shows in television history.”
40
With the subsequent establishment of channels
dedicated to black programming and the rapid expansion and affordability of cable
TV, Fox’s audience has shifted. The Wanda Sykes Show’s audience is
predominantly white, 88% according to Quantcast’s profile of the show, affirming
claims that while broadcast television contains more diverse representations of race,
gender, and sexuality than in the past, its business motives demand that it cater to
white audiences.
41
The paradoxical relationship between black TV images and white
audiences thus is typical of both network and cable representations of minorities.

72
Catering to white audiences in Sykes’ case, however, provides a platform
from which she can articulate the positions of disenfranchised Americans. It is the
very contrast between her satire and her audience that produces a space for civic
engagement. In her interviews and comedy routines, Sykes thus brings discourses of
race and sexuality together, targeting social norms about each, offering them up as a
source of public admonishment and judgment. In this way, her satire and her
celebrity persona are what Gray et al. call “provocative, not dismissive – a crucial
point that critics typically ignore when assessing [satire’s] role in public
discourse.”
42
Sykes’ role as TV satirist is poignant because she dares to talk about
race and sexuality in unwavering terms and also because she does so at a time when
they are two of the biggest hot-button issues dividing American society.
Talk Shows: The Intimacy of Biography
As TV personalities, and specifically as talk show hosts, Orman’s, Sykes’,
and Degeneres’ status’ rely on the ways that the medium of television presents them
as immediate presences, enmeshed in the social, economic, and political climate of
the contemporary moment. This “illusion of intimacy,” as Gamson describes it, “is
built through reality programming [and] talks shows most significantly.”
43
As
television hosts, these women are what John Ellis calls “personalities or celebrities
rather than stars in the cinematic sense.”
44
In Visible Fictions, one of the earliest
works of TV studies, Ellis distinguishes between film and TV actors. The crux of
this difference is in TV’s repetitive and ritualized nature; Orman, Sykes, and
Degeneres are famous precisely because “their notoriety results from their fairly

73
constant presence on the medium rather than their rarity; they are familiar rather than
remote.”
45

Talk shows, especially daytime talk shows like Donahue, Dr. Phil, Sally
Jesse Raphael, and The Oprah Winfrey Show, are rooted in feminist movements of
the 1960s and 1970s. According to Gamson, “TV talk is built on a radical departure
from what has traditionally been seen to belong to the public sphere…talk shows
move personal lives to the forefront of public discussion.”
46
Drawing on the feminist
mantra, “the personal is political,” talk shows established a format influenced by
women’s consciousness-raising efforts. Reflecting the belief that women’s problems
typically thought of as personal were in fact broader social issues, consciousness-
raising sought to explain the political position of women as members of an oppressed
group.
Daytime entertainment talk shows like The Oprah Winfrey Show and The
Ellen Degeneres Show are traditionally aimed at women ages 18 to 49, considered
“frequent users” of daytime television. Throughout television’s history, this female
demographic has been envisioned as white, suburban, middle-class, and
heterosexual. As feminist media scholar E. Ann Kaplan notes in “Feminist Criticism
and Television,” “television’s reliance on constructing numbers of viewers as
commodities involves reproducing female images that accommodate prevailing (and
dominant) conceptions of ‘woman,’ particularly as these satisfy certain economic
needs.”
47
On television, these motives translate into images of women that feature
expensive clothing, make-up, and accessories, projecting an image of attractiveness

74
that tends to be directed at heterosexual men. In addition, as Dow notes in Prime-
Time Feminism: Television, Media Culture, and the Women’s Movement Since 1970,
“family values are reinforced on television because a great deal of consumption is
done on the basis of family needs. To undermine the dominance of heterosexuality,
for instance, is seen as subverting such interests.”
48
Dow adds that placing all the
blame for television’s sexism and heterosexism on economic forces, however,
“distorts a thoroughly overdetermined phenomenon.”
49
Compounding TV’s
economic motives is its historic ambivalence about representing overtly “feminist”
material, as well as the established conventions and narrative expectations of the
medium.
In making their lives public to viewers, female talk show hosts often use their
own biographies as a means of creating relationships with audiences based on trust
and authenticity. Hosts such as Tyra Banks, Oprah Winfrey, and Ricki Lake feature
their own struggles and experiences to structure the topics and styles of their shows.
As Jones says,
several scholars have noted how syndicated afternoon talk shows…offered
important opportunities for audiences to question what constituted
“authority” and “expertise” in televised talk about issues of public concern,
including who has the right to speak and be heard about such issues.
50

As a talk show host, Oprah Winfrey undoubtedly holds an unparalleled position in
the American cultural landscape. In Oprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery,
Illouz reveals the ways in which Winfrey uses her show as a means of connecting
fundamental aspects of everyday culture. Operating as a form of therapy, The Oprah

75
Winfrey Show simultaneously brings the domestic sphere into the public space of
television, emphasizing the ways in which TV becomes an extension of individual
identity. According to Illouz, “Oprah has transformed her biography into an ongoing
spectacle,” recycling that biography through the show’s topics, themes, and guests.
51

In Winfrey’s case, her show functions as a way of working through her own troubled
past including rape and poverty and discussing forms of suffering in socially
meaningful ways. For Ellen Degeneres, the themes of suffering and failure form the
basis of a story of redemption and success.
On April 30
th
, 1997, Degeneres came out as lesbian on national television.
Her TV show character Ellen Morgan and Degeneres herself were hailed as breaking
new ground: She was the first openly lesbian or gay actor to play the lead role in a
prime-time TV show and her character was the first openly lesbian or gay lead in
U.S. television history. However, within a year, her ABC sit-com was cancelled, her
highly public and disastrous relationship with actress Anne Heche was the subject of
tabloid headlines, and she was criticized by both homophobic, ring-wing Christians
and by leaders of the LGBT civil rights movement for being “too gay.”
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Less than
two years after she was celebrated for her honesty and bravery, Degeneres retreated
from the public spotlight.
She re-emerged in 2000 with a national stand-up comedy tour titled The
Beginning, which also aired on HBO. In it, she opens the show with an interpretative
dance that recounts the rollercoaster of emotions that occurred since she came out.
As the applause dies down, Degeneres thanks the audience. Hand on her heart, she

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says, “Oh my god, this is a very emotional night for me, you have no idea, or maybe
you do.” The Beginning earned rave reviews from critics and audiences. In press
articles, however, critics and producers credit her so-called “comeback” to her
hosting of the Emmy Awards held after the terrorist attacks on the U.S. on
September 11
th
, 2001. While Degeneres received accolades for her careful balance of
humor and earnest solemnity immediately after the awards ceremony, not until her
talk show debuted in the fall of 2003 did journalists and television producers began
to publicly credit the awards as the driving force behind her comeback. In the
September 3
rd
2003 edition of the USA Today, Bill Keveney writes, “Degeneres
returned to TV in 2001 with The Ellen Show on CBS, but she likely won back more
fans with her masterfully balanced performance at the twice-delayed Emmys, the
first Hollywood awards ceremony after September 11
th
.”
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Two months later, The
Boston Globe reported, “Ironically, Degeneres’ shift in fortune began at one of
history’s most unfortunate moments. As host of the 2001 Emmy Awards
ceremony…she managed to strike a difficult balance of comedy, anger, hope, and
mystification.”
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The press constructs a story of pure and simple redemption;
echoing the rhetoric of national unity that permeated the U.S. after the terrorist
attacks, Degeneres’ perceived patriotism in a time when U.S. security was threatened
seemed to neutralize her lesbianism and the Anne Heche relationship fiasco.
Beyond this singular “redemptive” media event, Degeneres’ success also
needs to be understood in terms of the ways that she ritualistically performs her own
redemption on The Ellen Degeneres Show. Playing the role of the cheerful, fun-

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loving, and good-natured TV talk show host, Degeneres commodifies her life to
reveal its repackaging after her coming out. Creating a commodified persona of
‘niceness,’ Degeneres draws attention to the social conditions that affected the way
she constructed herself as a cultural enterprise. Examining the strategies she used in
the first four years of her talk show to artfully repackage herself for public
consumption reveals how Degeneres originally distanced herself from a lesbian
identity in order to later embody a non-threatening lesbian celebrity persona, one that
contrasts with Sykes’ overtly critical satirical persona. In this way, her initial public
persona provided the foundation for the celebrity she has become: vocal and
outspoken about lesbian and gay marriage rights, critical of homophobic rhetoric and
violence, and open and celebratory about her engagement and marriage to actress
Portia de Rossi.
Jones notes that entertainment talks shows like The Ellen Degeneres Show
are built around celebrities whose shows are “composed of the seemingly unscripted
banter that is directed towards selling various kinds of commodities (such as cultural
products, government policies, or the star system itself).”
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Dependent on the host’s
personality for success, they mix comedy, musical performances, and guest
appearances with good deeds and heartwarming stories to produce shows that make
the hosts relatable and make the viewers feel good about themselves. The Ellen
DeGeneres Show is a hybrid version of the entertainment talk show; it is livelier and
faster paced, giving it the feel of a variety show. Following from conventional
entertainment talks shows, it includes Degeneres’ introductory comedy monologue,

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product plugs and giveaways, audience games, musical segments, and the occasional
exercise or cooking segment. Unique to the show are Degeneres’ signature dance at
the start of the show, a hip but cheerful musical sidekick, on-camera bits for
personable employees, audience-submitted videos, and surprise phone calls to show
viewers.
In performing her redemption, Degeneres uses a particularly innocuous brand
of humor to reveal personal events and emotions. Frequently talking about her own
pets and her general love of animals, she ritualistically reveals something that seems
highly personal to her. It is also an innocent and inoffensive personality trait,
something that American culture considers endearing, empathetic, and a valuable
part of the human condition. In a highly publicized episode of The Ellen Degeneres
Show in October 2007, Degeneres broke down in tears recounting the story of Iggy,
an abandoned dog she had taken in, provided veterinary care for, and tried to blend
with her family of cats, but ultimately, had to give up. With a heavy heart and tears
in her eyes, Degeneres explains to her studio audience that she gave Iggy to a family
who had been caring for the dog lovingly over the past two weeks. Degeneres says,
however, she did not realize that the contract she signed when she rescued the dog
from a shelter mandated that if she could not keep the dog, he had to be returned to
the rescue organization. As a result of her error, she tearfully explains that the
shelter took Iggy from the family she gave him to, where two young girls had grown
attached the dog. Covering her face with her hands, tears streaming down her face,

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Degeneres pleads for the shelter to return the dog to the family, understanding that it
was her mistake and that the family should not be punished for her wrong-doing.
Sitting in her chair on the set, she immediately picks up a tissue, covers her
face and says, “Oh, we’re gonna have to edit some of this out.” As a way of
introducing the story of Iggy, she says that people ask her how she does her talk
show, day after day, seemingly happy in every episode. Sniffling, she says, “I have
bad days, I have sad days, but when I come out here…it changes my mood.” On this
day, though, Degeneres says, “today is bad and I am not capable of coming out and
pretending to be funny and on when things are going so terribly wrong right now.”
Acknowledging that part of her job is to perform, “to be funny and on,” she
encourages the audience to see her tears and emotions as those of a genuine person,
not of a carefully composed celebrity. This public acknowledgement of
“performing” the self though, is also a reminder of the increasingly transparent
divide between celebrity performance and notions of authenticity.
The consistent use of animals as a narrative trope on the show aims to reveal
Degeneres’ deep and personal emotions to millions of TV viewers. Following from
the work of theorist Michel Foucault, these types of confessional rituals are a means
of consolidating power. In Tele-Advising: Therapeutic Discourse in American
Television, television scholar Mimi White adapts Foucault’s theories of confession to
the medium of TV. She argues that TV is not only a form of therapy, but also a
narrational form, which gives the audience the ability to speak. White contends that
therapeutic discourse permeates all of television, not only advice programs. She

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examines the relationship between discourse and subjectivity, wherein, she says,
“language and speaking positions are seen as contributing to the production of
subject identity.”
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She articulates the ways that television systematically deploys
therapeutic discourses and the relationship among those discourses, consumer
culture, and notions of the family. White’s exploration of television genres,
demographics, and industry structures, reveals the ways in which the ritual act of
confession participates in a subject’s identity formation.
The Suze Orman Show enacts the ritual of confession in even more profound
ways than The Ellen Degeneres Show. Since she began appearing as a guest on
financial programs on CNN and CNBC in 1998, Suze Orman has commanded the
TV landscape as the premier, no-nonsense financial advisor for the “everyperson.”
The press frames Orman as a do-gooder, serving the public by protecting citizens
from money mismanagement: she is “one of the country’s most powerful brokers,”
“the people’s financial planner,” and a woman who “puts the personal before
finance.”
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The Suze Orman brand promotes self-empowerment based on self-
esteem and financial independence. For her, protecting citizens financially
necessitates exposing private information like debt, income, interest rates, and
mortgage payments on national television. She tends to promote a “one-size-fits-all”
philosophy; it doesn’t matter how little or how much money you have, her advice is
applicable to all.
On her TV show and in guest TV appearnces, Orman’s advice offers
individual solutions to big social problems such as gender inequity in pay.

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Reinforcing a strong belief in individualism, the show’s online promotional
information says that The Suze Orman Show sets out to help “people make the
connection between self worth and net worth.” The goal, according to the show’s
website, is to provide viewers with “Orman's insight on how to protect themselves
financially, resulting in personal empowerment that's exemplified in their bank
accounts.”
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Orman promotes a form of anti-consumerism based on denying citizens
the kind of excess that has come to define American consumer culture. A product of
that very culture, however, she produces a contradictory persona: a naturally skilled
saleswoman who sells herself along with freedom from consumerism and
materialism. That is, Orman has made herself rich by telling people to resist the
temptations of America’s money culture.
While Orman and the popular press present her as a well-meaning
entrepreneur, her image extends beyond the advice she dispenses and the products
she sells, itself becoming a brand. As Naomi Klein says in her cultural manifesto No
Logo, “what was once a process of selling culture to a sponsor for a price has been
supplanted by the logic of ‘co-branding’ – a fluid partnership between celebrity
people and celebrity brands.”
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Orman creates a “fluid partnership” between herself
and what she sells, producing a corporate-sponsored financial culture. Establishing
herself as the ubiquitous financial advisor to the public, she has merged her brand
with national organizations like the F.D.I.C. (Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation), major financial programs like FICO (the program that calculates credit
scores), as well as with global financial institutions such as TD Ameritrade. Orman’s

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photo and name feature prominently on all her partnership ads, books, websites, and
financial documents, transforming a variety of resources and institutions into a
collection of Suze Orman brand extensions. These partnerships, Klein says, “are
emblematic of a new paradigm that eliminates all barriers between branding and
culture, leaving no room whatsoever for unmarketed space.”
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The companies and
products associated with Orman’s name make her a “superbrand,” part of what Klein
calls “a self-enclosed universe of brand-name people, brand-name products and
brand-name media.”
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Orman is a financial lifestyle brand, fusing corporate
sponsorships, financial culture, and capitalist entrepreneurship.
Airing Saturdays at 9pm, The Suze Orman Show is aimed at empowering
each American citizen to protect her or his money and to spend it wisely. Filmed at
CNBC’s Englewood, New Jersey studios, the show uses a standard TV news setup:
Orman sits at a desk looking among three stationary cameras. A large television
screen behind the desk displays The Suze Orman Show logo and a green-screen
image of New York City features as the studio’s backdrop. Each show opens with a
monologue that focuses on a theme of Orman’s financial advice or on the week’s
financial happenings. In the second segment, called “Can I Afford It?,” Orman takes
calls from viewers wanting to know if they can make specific purchases. In order to
be part of the segment, viewers must first write into the show via its website,
detailing their finances and the cost of the items they want to buy. The show’s
producers select which requests to take “on-air,” ensuring a variety of callers,
financial situations, and consumer products. Their strategic selections also ensure a

83
diversity of reactions from Orman, who is known for her emphatic and theatrical
responses to callers’ requests. Orman follows this segment with her “One-on-one
with Suze,” where she counsels an especially troubled guest, usually a woman.
Through the use of split screen, Orman, in the CNBC studio and the guest at her or
his local NBC affiliate station, offers advice on a course of action to get out of
financial straights. Each episode of The Suze Orman Show concludes with her
reminder to viewers: “People First. Then Money. Then Things,” promoting the
image of an authentic, ordinary, and practical advisor who genuinely cares about the
financial stability and success of Americans.
The “Can I Afford It?” segment is the most well-known and popular part of
her show. Amy Feller, the show’s executive producer, says that since the end of
2008, the number of viewers calling into the show’s “Can I Afford It?” segment has
gone up “exponentially.”
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According to The New York Times,
With the change in the economic climate, Orman’s role in the culture has
shifted from pop finance guru to something more like a trusted national
adviser. Along with Winfrey, television personalities like Matt Lauer,
Anderson Cooper and Larry King regularly turn to her to make sense of the
economy for their viewers.
63

Callers on the “Can I Afford It?” segment range in age from their early 20s to their
60s and their requests include an assortment of products: cars, houses, home
renovations, luxury handbags, plastic surgery, concert tickets, and flat-screen
televisions. In order to be “approved” or “denied” by Orman, the caller has to “Show
Me the Money,” detailing for Orman her or his complete finances, including monthly
income, rent or current mortgage payments, credit card debt, school loans, money in

84
savings, and amount saved for retirement. Based on this information, she either
approves or denies their purchase. Requiring callers to disclose personal financial
information enables a ritual of confession, where Orman acts as the authoritative
interlocutor.
While it is not technically a “daytime” talk show like those that air every
weekday afternoon, The Suze Orman Show arguably uses the same generic
conventions. Like The Oprah Winfrey Show, self-help and confessions are integral to
Orman’s show’s style and format. The confession, in particular, reinforces the
mutually trusting relationship between Orman and her viewers. According to White,
“Confession and therapy are engaged toward finding one’s ‘proper place’ as an
individual and a social subject, even as they are mediated through the apparatus of
television.”
64
Changing (read: improving) financial habits is the defining
characteristic of The Suze Orman Show. She regularly shares details about her own
finances, complete with asides about poor decisions she made in the past. By
exposing hers’ and viewers’ finances to the audience, Orman drives home the show’s
main purpose: to provide definitive and straightforward advice, bringing about
closure in the form of financial change.
In the vein of “therapy for free,” Orman offers therapeutic techniques as a
way of encouraging and provoking change in viewers. She uses Americans’
financial suffering to promote change and even transformation. In this way, as
White says, “The therapeutic strategy invites viewers to participate in any number of
ways; that is its efficacy and its appeal.”
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Orman engages this strategy through

85
appeals to her audience’s psychology, particularly to women’s self-esteem. Like
Winfrey, Orman challenges women to see that family and relationships are “transient
and precarious,” encouraging women to realize that the only person “they can count
on is that of their own self…a self that is healthy and self-reliant.”
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In Orman’s
view, the concept of “woman” is defined by a specific set of experiences and by a
woman’s own reactions to that set of experiences.
Using the language of psychology, she argues that women have a different,
and more problematic relationship to money than men. On a January 12
th
, 2010
episode of Fox’s daytime talk show The Wendy Williams Show, Orman articulated
what she sees as the difference between men’s and women’s relationships to money:
Seated on a couch with Williams, a New York-based, DJ-turned radio and TV host
who is known for her flamboyant persona and off-the-cuff remarks about celebrity
gossip, Orman tells Williams that:
men understand very clearly that money is for them, money is to take care of
things, money is money. A woman: “Oh, I’m fine, I don’t need it, I’ll lend it
to you, I’ll co-sign a loan for you.” A woman thinks money is for her
husband, her life partner, her children, her pets, her plants, everybody before
herself.

Explaining what she sees as the psychology of women’s thinking about money,
Orman draws on feminist calls for women to take responsibility for their actions with
money and to value themselves in ways that will allow them to raise their own
expectations, protect their money, and negotiate wages and compensation that reflect
a high self-worth. Using both essential and constructivist rhetoric, Orman refers to
the innate nurturing qualities of women, and to the ways in which society has

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interpellated women into thinking that taking care of themselves financially is not a
priority. Steering clear of talking about women as an oppressed group, she invokes a
version of post-feminism, wherein not just femininity, but self-management of
money can empower women.
During Orman’s January 23
rd
, 2010 “One-on-one with Suze” segment,
Orman talks to Donna, a 43-year-old mother of three, whose 24-year-old son has
credit card debt. Doing “what a mother is supposed to do,” Donna has allowed her
son to move back home and has paid off his debt with one of her own credit cards.
After repaying a small portion of his debt to his mother, he stopped repaying her;
when Donna asked for the money, he told her he does not “like her attitude and will
pay her later.” Donna makes $1,600 a month, has no savings or retirement, while her
son, living rent-free at home, makes $3,500 and has recently purchased a $5,000
engagement ring for his girlfriend, which he paid for with a credit card. While
Orman talks to Donna, a split-screen shows both women, allowing viewers to see
Orman’s reactions to every word Donna says. And Orman reacts. She asks,
“Donna, here’s my question to you: why is he still living in your home? Why?”
Donna answers, “It’s my son and that’s what a mother does, she takes care of her
children.” Taking on the role of the therapist, Orman says:
Yes, there’s a time when a mother’s responsibility is to take care of her child
but then there comes a time when a child gets old enough where they have to
take care of themselves…You are at that point girlfriend. You have an adult
living with you in your home. It is not your child, it is an adult who has done
financial harm to you and you disrespect yourself so that you care about him
more than you and he doesn’t care about you at all. Donna, if he cared about
you he would not tell you he doesn’t like your attitude…If you just fantasize

87
with me right now and I were your son and you were the powerful woman
you were meant to be, tell me, Donna, what would you say to me, if you
could…Say it to me Donna!

Set up by the show’s producers for maximum effect, these conversations invite the
subject as well as the show’s viewers to participate in a process of self-examination
demonstrated by Orman. Interactions like these between Orman and a specific
person provide a road map for investigating one’s relationship to the self, others, and
money.
On Orman’s show, these personal transformations do not necessarily take
place within the space of a single episode. Unlike afternoon talk shows like Dr. Phil
or The Oprah Winfrey Show that offer guests the chance to articulate their
transformations to the hosts and audiences, The Suze Orman Show ends each “One-
on-one with Suze” segment with Orman’s advice; the caller does not have the
opportunity to respond to Orman. Instead, narrative closure comes from viewers’
comments written on Orman’s website, where they thank her profusely, and explain
the ways in which Orman’s advice transformed their lives. Websites have become a
staple of post-network television; whether soliciting feedback from fans about
characters and storylines on fictional programs or asking viewers to tell their own
stories on talk and reality websites, they encourage interactivity and exchange.
Orman structures her website to simulate a two-way exchange; she offers her own
life stories and asks viewers to share theirs.
Her personal website invites users to get to know her, featuring a
downloadable PDF document called “Suze’s Story.” Written in first person, “Suze’s

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Story” tells of Orman’s childhood, replete with family photos and key moments in
her life. Orman presents herself as an open book, as an Americana “rags-to-riches”
tale. She opens her story with a personal truth:
When I was a little girl, I had a speech impediment…To this day, if you listen
closely when I speak, you can still hear it. Words like “fear” and “fair” and
“bear” and “beer” sound the same …Talk about feeling ashamed.
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The rest of her narrative reveals a series of difficult circumstances, including not
finishing college and losing the first $30,000 she invested in a bad deal. Through
these difficult times, though, Orman reminds readers, dreams do come true and with
smart planning and wise investments, one can be financially solvent and successful.
Orman’s website also features “Suze’s Scrapbooks,” one for each month
since 2005. They open in a separate webpage and are designed to look like a
traditional scrapbook, filled with photos and descriptions. Mimicking a real book,
clicking the mouse on the bottom right corner of the page will turn to the next one.
The scrapbooks are filled with pictures from both professional speaking
engagements, behind-the-scenes moments on The Suze Orman Show, and personal
photos of her family including her partner, Kathy Travis, known as K.T. Producing
chronicles of her life as publicity devices, Orman encourages the public to see her as
an authentic person and as a classic tale of hard work and good fortune.
The website functions as a portal into both Orman’s and her viewers’ lives,
and is a means of generating topics for the show: callers featured on the “Can I
Afford It?” segment are selected from submissions posted on the website. On the
show, moreover, Orman asks viewers to use her website to submit questions as well

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as to post stories of financial success. At SuzeOrman.com there is a section called
“Tell Us How Suze Influenced Your Life!” where fans describe how Orman’s advice
improved their financial stability and livelihood. Writing from Washington State in
June of 2008, Sandy posted:
Thank you so much for saving me, you are my conscious [sic] and best
friend. Today I am 40++ and debt free…My life has totally changed
emotionally and spiritually thanks to you. You can be a single woman and
still succeed and be fulfilled.
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Taking at face value Orman’s claim to “empower” and help viewers, others write to
explain that she entered their lives at vulnerable times and that her advice inspires
them to be financially solvent, helps them think before they buy a product, and even
teaches them to be grateful for what they have. Individual stories of gratitude from
viewers act as both promotional materials for Orman and as a highly personal
exchange of emotion. As Illouz says of Winfrey’s website, it “enables the exchange
of autobiographical discourse and constitutes a highly individualized platform for
asking for and receiving advice.”
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These comments show the extent to which
viewers incorporate Orman’s advice into their lives beyond the moment of the The
Suze Orman Show.
Seen through this lens, Orman’s and Degeneres’ ritualistic actions and
language about their private selves consolidate their power as trusted TV hosts. The
genuine, yet constructed, exposure of their private lives and experiences enables
Orman and Degeneres to address their audiences in direct, conversational ways,
creating what Illouz describes of Oprah as “a relationship based on trust and care.”
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These revealing moments grant them power and legitimacy as hosts and celebrities.
This form of attaining truth and power allows lesbian celebrities in particular to
avoid having to directly ask for acceptance of “who they are” (lesbian) from
television viewers. As Nick Couldry argues in Media Rituals: A Critical Approach,
if made explicit, many of the ideas apparently expressed by these rituals
might be rejected or at least called into question; it is their ritualised form
that enables them to be successfully reproduced without being exposed to
questions about their “content.”
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While the “content” Couldry refers to is not specifically talk show hosts’ sexual
identities, his claim nonetheless allows for extrapolation to larger ideas about lesbian
sexuality on television. Couldry sees “media rituals” not just as repetitive or habitual
actions. Rather, they are “distinguished by a particular type of relation to the media
process.”
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In this way, celebrities who enact rituals on their daily TV shows, use
these repetitive actions and language to craft and cement a particular image of
themselves that bypasses overt pleas for acceptance or discussions that might be
controversial like lesbianism. Arguably, this approach allows Orman and Degeneres
to legitimate their television status, paving the way to directly addressing issues of
their own and others’ sexuality.
Appealing to the Popular: Lesbian Domesticity
Orman, Sykes, and Degeneres have established positions of power and
authority for themselves as openly lesbian celebrities. As journalist Bridget Foley
writes about Degeneres:

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These days it seems that everybody loves Degeneres. Her distinctive hip
populism cuts across divergent demographics while alienating no one. She
has attained first-name-only status of the coziest sort, her most dedicated fans
viewing her not with the awestruck devotion of Oprah Winfrey's faithful but
with the familiarity of pals, as if they might go grab a drink with her after
work. She just seems so nice and so normal.
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Having established firm relationships with viewers and solidified coherent personas,
Orman, Sykes, and Degeneres integrate their own sexuality into their shows’
narratives. The common thread among their discussions of sexuality is the topic of
marriage rights. Sykes and Degeneres, who both live and work in California, married
in 2008 during the brief five-month window when the right was legally recognized in
the state. They offer their viewers anecdotes and political information from the
perspective of both being part of the institution of marriage and being acutely aware
that the passage of Prop 8 in California took away that right from lesbian and gay
citizens.
Orman, who divides her time among homes in Florida, New York, and San
Francisco is not legally married to her partner, K.T. For Orman, marriage on the
federal level is the primary concern. Because of the passage of the 1996 federal
Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), lesbian and gay couples are denied over one
thousand rights, responsibilities, and privileges that automatically come with
marriage. As a devoted capitalist concerned with personal finance, Orman takes
issue with the fact that only heterosexual, married couples are exempt from
inheritance taxes. Marriage or domestic partnership on the state level does not
override the restrictions put into place by DOMA. From this perspective, Orman

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identifies herself as a lesbian woman who cannot marry the partner she loves and
shares her life with, and who will lose half of Orman’s estate to taxes upon her death,
simply because they cannot have a marriage recognized on the federal level. As
wealthy, educated celebrities, Orman, Sykes, and Degeneres each occupy a
privileged status, where they have access to expensive attorneys who can attempt to
ensure that they and their spouses or partners are protected and cared for when it
comes to matters generally tied to marriage such as wills, finances, healthcare, and
medical decision-making. Despite how rich, famous, and powerful they are,
however, DOMA prevents them from automatically being granted the protections
guaranteed by a federally recognized marriage. In this way, Orman, Sykes, and
Degeneres arguably make honest claims to having the same experiences as their
lesbian and gay viewers.
While the notion of “celebrity politicians” has been criticized by scholars
who argue that the increased power of celebrities ultimately disengages the public
from formal politics, creating a “democratic deficit,” Orman’s, Sykes’, and
Degeneres’ discussions of marriage are not a matter of whether they perform a public
service or whether they hinder the political process. Rather, in the context of the
modern television talk show, they enable a particular political issue to be aired to a
wider audience. As lesbian women and as talk show hosts, they are in unique
positions, embodying an “authentic” political voice in the realm of entertainment.
They produce a TV talk show environment in which lesbian celebrities become
sources of advice, information, and political advocacy to largely white, heterosexual,

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and working and middle class audiences. The connective power of Orman’s, Sykes’,
and Degeneres’ discussions of marriage, therefore, should be understood in terms of
their overall celebrity, their talk show personas, and their talk show audiences, which
are all brought to bear on their particular political performance. In the context of the
talk show genre, they articulate discourses of sexuality that are often left out of
mainstream political discussions. As Gamson says, the “…ongoing cultural war over
public space and public participation is what makes talk shows…socially relevant,
and turns them into such zany, vibrant, coarse scenes.”
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These talk shows present
citizens who are not necessarily engaged with LGBT civil rights campaigns with
crucial advocacy information that itself is not usually part of mainstream political
discussions of marriage.
California’s Prop 8 prompted Orman, Sykes, and Degeneres to make the
topic of marriage a recurring theme of their celebrity identities and their shows.
Their discussions of marriage provide a counterpoint to the images that dominated
the “No on Prop 8” campaign’s television ads. As chapter three details, the sharpest
and most common critique of the “No on Prop 8” campaign was that none of its TV
commercials featured lesbians or gays. In contrast to the “No on Prop 8”
commercials, Orman’s, Sykes’, and Degeneres’ personas and talk shows visualize
articulations of marriage for lesbians and gays. They arguably remove the image of
lesbian and gay marriage rights from the abstract realm created by the “No on Prop
8” commercials.

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Until January 2007, Degeneres had avoided any political discussions,
particularly ones about LGBT civil rights. She had also limited discussions about
her personal life to stories of her pets. While her publicist denied it, industry
insiders, including Rosie O’Donnell, claimed that Degeneres’ contract forbid any
mention of her sexuality. With her funny, cheerful persona solidified, in January
2007 her talk show took a rapid turn when she began to discuss a series of
homophobic events that occurred. Sitting in a chair on her talk show set, she
somberly spoke to her studio audience about the homophobic tirade of Oklahoma
State Senator Sally Kern, about the brutal murder in Oxnard, California of 15-year-
old Lawrence King, and about the homophobic comments made about Grey’s
Anatomy actor T.R. Knight, who was not out when fellow cast member Isaiah
Washington called him a “faggot.” These discussions represent a sharp turn in her
willingness to speak about LGBT issues specifically to her talk show audience.
Degeneres and de Rossi announced their decision to legally marry in
California on May 16
th
, 2008, the day after the state’s Supreme Court ruled that
marriage was a fundamental right of all citizens, which lesbians and gays could not
be denied. On her show, Degeneres excitedly declares, “I would like to say, for the
first time, I am getting married.” The studio audience applauds, cheers, and gives
her a standing ovation. Degeneres goes on, “If I’m this emotional now, I can’t
imagine how that’s going to be. But, it’s something that of course we’ve wanted to
do and we want it to be legal, so we’re just very, very excited.” Shots of a smiling

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de Rossi are interspersed between an elated Degeneres and her well-coached studio
audience.
During the talk show’s summer hiatus, Degeneres and de Rossi married on
August 16
th
, 2008. Their joy and delight, as well as that of thousands of other same-
sex couples who had married, however was tempered by the passage of Prop 8 on
November 4
th
, 2008. Between June 2
nd
, 2008, the day Prop 8 qualified as a ballot
initiative, and the day it passed, Degeneres used her NBC talk show to make the case
for marriage rights for lesbians and gays. The most prominent and noteworthy
segments include her debate with Republican presidential candidate John McCain on
the issue of marriage, her critique of McCain’s running-mate, Alaska Governor
Sarah Palin for saying she would support a federal ban on marriage rights for
lesbians and gays, and celebrating movie star George Clooney after he voiced his
support for “No on Prop 8.” Degeneres also paid for her own Public Service
Announcement (PSA) that aired on TV stations across the state. In the PSA, she
says that her wedding was “the happiest day of my life.” Half of the one minute and
three-second commercial shows still photos of her and de Rossi’s wedding, some of
the only images of lesbian women in the TV campaign against Prop 8.
Talking to John McCain, Degeneres says, “Let's talk about the big elephant in
the room,” explaining that she had already been planning to have a commitment
ceremony but because of the California Supreme Court’s May 2008 decision, “it just
so happens that I legally now can get married, like everyone should.” Her audience
applauds as she asks McCain for his thoughts on the topic: “I think that people

96
should be able to enter into legal agreements and I think that is something we should
encourage, particularly in the case of insurance,” says McCain. “I just believe in the
unique status of marriage between man and woman. And I know we have a
respectful disagreement on that issue.” DeGeneres persists:
We are all the same people. You're no different than I am. Our love is the
same ... When someone says, “You'll have a contract, and you'll still have
insurance” ... it feels like someone saying, “You can sit here, you just can't sit
there.”

McCain simply says, “I've heard you articulate that position in a very eloquent
fashion. We just have a disagreement and I, along with many many others, wish you
every happiness.” The interview offers a look at what the daytime talk show makes
possible: a casual, personal exchange that speaks to a larger social conversation. The
interaction is particularly significant because it appears unplanned; instead of
watching a political pundit conduct an obligatory discussion with a candidate, the
audience watches Degeneres, someone they feel they know and trust, ask a deeply
personal question.
Twelve years after coming out on national television, Degeneres gleefully
revealed photos and video footage of her wedding to de Rossi on the 2008 season
premiere of her talk show. To an exuberant studio audience at The Ellen Degeneres
Show on September 10
th
, she describes the ceremony with a delicate mix of warm
emotion and her signature brand of carefree and deceptively innocent humor. As she
narrates a slideshow of photos from the day, Degeneres provides humorous contexts
for each photo; as a black and white still photo of de Rossi beaming in her white

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gown appears on the screen, Degeneres comments, “I love this picture. And I know
it looks candid but right before she took it, the photographer said, ‘look stunning and
radiant and like it’s the happiest day of your life. And so Portia just pretended.”
Since announcing their engagement, de Rossi has been a frequent guest on
the show. She sat in the audience when Degeneres announced their engagement and
when she showed their wedding video and photo album. Several months later, on
March 16
th
, 2009, de Rossi appeared on the show as a featured guest to promote her
own TV show. Degeneres introduces her: “Our first guest is the star of the new ABC
show Better Off Ted, she also happens to be my wife. Please welcome the lovely
Portia de Rossi.” In this unusual setup, where a talk show host interviews her spouse,
Degeneres asks de Rossi, “how’s married life for you?” In a purposefully awkward
way, Degeneres asks, “Are you enjoying being married to me?” Playing to the mix
of humor and seriousness in the show, de Rossi says the wedding was “the happiest
day of my life, it really was.” She follows her comment saying to the audience,
“People always ask me if there’s anything that [Degeneres] does that’s annoying,
like around the house…and I gotta’ tell you, she is considerate and kind and
wonderful and neat.” De Rossi throws the question back at Degeneres, who replies,
“I would say the same thing, except not the neat part.”
Over the course of the episode, Degeneres and de Rossi play “The Newlywed
Game,” and sing Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe” together as part of Degeneres’
“Bathroom Concert Series,” where she and her show guests perform songs together.
Consistent with television’s privileging of dominant ideology, Degeneres’ show

98
participates in the production of a lesbian and gay public that defines equality as
access to the institutions of domestic life. This mainstream view, however, is
articulated to Degeneres’ audience of mostly women (73%), who skew older in
television demographic terms, with Quantcast reporting that 65% of her audience is
over the age of 35.
75
Her audience also averages three million viewers per episode,
often earning a higher market share than The Oprah Winfrey Show, its competitor in
most urban markets. Although steeped in heteronormative rhetoric and pop culture
practices, Degeneres and de Rossi’s physical presence on the show offers broadcast
viewers the chance to see an openly lesbian couple. Their interactions on the show
present them as an ordinary couple, competing for example, on “The Newlywed
Game” against a heterosexual couple chosen from the audience. Framing Degeneres
and de Rossi as “just like any other couple,” they appear relatable and knowable.
Additionally, their wedding video and photo album are key elements of their private
lives, revealed to the show’s audience before the press. With this strategy,
Degeneres gives her audience the honor of being privy to this private and iconic
event. While the “No on Prop 8” TV commercials proffered a message of equality,
suggesting that lesbian and gay couples have the same wants, needs, and desires for
marriage as straight couples, Degeneres’ show provides a space to visualize that
message for an average of three million viewers in its first airing, and for hundreds
of thousands more in weekly syndication.
Five years after The Suze Orman Show debuted, Orman came out as lesbian.
She revealed her sexuality in an interview in The New York Times Magazine on

99
February 25
th
, 2007, acknowledging K.T., her partner of seven years. In the
interview, writer Deborah Solomon asks Orman whether she is married. Orman
responds with a vague answer: “I’m in a relationship with life.” Solomon probes,
“Meaning what?” Orman replied, “K.T. is my life partner. K.T. stands for Kathy
Travis. We're going on seven years. I have never been with a man in my whole life.
I'm still a 55-year-old virgin.” Her quip that she’s a “55-year old virgin” garnered
some attention in the press, however, her coming out was not treated as a momentous
occasion; few newspapers, magazines, or trade papers discuss her lesbianism.
Since coming out, Orman regularly discusses the relationship between money
and marriage on her own talk show, in guest TV appearances, in her books, and in
press interviews. In fact, it is the only way that she addresses her lesbian identity. On
The Suze Orman Show, she regularly incorporates financial advice that addresses the
discrepancies between the rights and benefits granted to those who can legally marry
on the federal level in the United States and those who cannot. Discussed in varying
terms and in different contexts, Orman ritualistically says that she regrets that she
cannot marry her partner and gain the corresponding tax advantages to which she
feels all citizens of the U.S. are entitled.
On February 14
th
, 2009, Orman aired a show segment called “Money and
Marriage” where she makes what she calls her “Valentine’s wish” for her audience.
During the segment, she talks about marriage as a privilege because of its
relationship to money. She says, “You will save thousands and ten of thousands of
dollars, all kinds of money, if you’re allowed to be married.” Using her customary

100
tone filled with passion and hyperbole, she says, it is “a travesty that a few months
ago in California Proposition 8 passed, Proposition 2 in Florida passed.” Indignantly,
she asks, “What is that about everybody? We are taking away a birthright, if you ask
me, for people to get the most out of the money that they have spent their lives
working for.” She closes by saying:
Every single one of us deserves to have the same financial benefits whether
we are gay or whether we are straight…Every single one of us deserves to be
loved, every single one of us deserves to love, and every single one of us
deserves to make the most out of the money that we have.

On the one hand, Orman’s regular discussions of marriage, death, and
inheritance taxes reinscribe marriage as the central issue for lesbian and gay
Americans. In this way, she affirms that TV is usually limited to neoliberal
ideologies that tend toward assimilationist narratives, showcasing tropes of the
“American Dream.” TV is, after all, a business, as media studies scholar Michael
Curtin says, “offering up its audiences for exchange in the marketplace.”
76
On the
other hand, based on Orman’s audience, 41% of whom earn between $30,000 and
$60,000 per year and 29% of whom make less than $30,000 a year, her routine yet
always impassioned discussion of this issue arguably exposes a broad base of mostly
white, working class citizens to a topic often left out of mainstream discussions of
marriage rights.
77
As Gamson says, “The class structure of talk shows makes for a
double-edged visibility, with greater class diversity and thus with more stereotype
shattering and more stigma gathering.”
78
While Orman only cracks open this door,

101
she calls attention to the ways in which particular taxes, specifically inheritance
taxes, are tied to the institution of marriage.
Most mainstream TV depictions about marriage rights fall into one of two
categories. The first focuses on how denying marriage rights to lesbians and gays is
discriminatory, treating lesbians and gays as “second class citizens.” Other TV
coverage tends to be a referendum on lesbian and gay “normality,” couching the
discussion in “family-values” rhetoric that makes claims about the goodness and love
of same-sex couples and families. These depictions do not make clear, however, the
collection of legal rights, benefits, and privileges that come with marriage on the
federal level. Such a connection is largely omitted from public discourse about
marriage. Through her discussions of the ties between marriage and financial laws,
Orman inserts politics into the narrow “finances only” framework of the niche cable
channel CNBC.
Unlike Orman and Degeneres, Sykes does not feature her sexuality or her
marriage as political issues on her talk show. Instead, she treats the subjects as non-
issues, mentioning them in humorous asides during The Wanda Sykes Show. When
the show returned from a three-week winter holiday hiatus in January 2009, Sykes
walks on stage with the help of crutches. Joking with the audience, she claims she
broke her foot while “playing footsie with my wife, and she won.” In another
episode, she introduces one of her side-kicks, a drag queen named Porsche. Sykes
tells the audience that they met while Porsche was performing at “a club my wife and

102
I go to every summer on Fire Island,” a popular LGBT vacation destination in New
York.
While Sykes officially came out as lesbian on November 15
th
, 2008 at a Las
Vegas marriage rally, she was not entirely in the closet before then. On a guest
appearance on The Ellen Degeneres Show on March 12
th
, 2008, six months before
coming out publicly, she described her recent birthday to Degeneres: Sykes tells her,
“We had a good day. Went snowboarding with my girlfriend.” Sykes goes on to say
that she fell when snowboarding: “I fell so hard I couldn’t blink for an hour.” As she
lay on the ground, eyes peeled open from shock, she imitates her girlfriend’s
response: “baby, you okay?” While the audience laughs over this last comment and
Degeneres does not ask any probing questions, Sykes clearly does not hide her
lesbianism. In addition, a month before coming out, in October 2008, Sykes
appeared in a television ad for the “Think Before You Speak Campaign,” an
advertising campaign by GLSEN (The Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network),
aimed at curbing homophobic slang in youth communities. In the 30-second spot,
Sykes uses humor to scold a teenager for saying “that’s so gay” when he really
means “that is so bad.”
According to AfterEllen.com:
for years networks have been courting Wanda Sykes, offering her a variety of
talk show opportunities, but it wasn’t until Barack Obama won the
presidency, Prop 8 passed in California, and Madtv vacated its Saturday slot
that the timing felt right to her.
79

103
Since coming out, fans, critics, and celebrities have claimed that Sykes has changed
for the better: on an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show, Oprah told Sykes that
since coming out she is “prettier and funnier…I think that’s what freedom does.”
Sykes agrees: in an interview with TV Guide Magazine, writer Lisa Bernhard asks
her, “How has your career changed since you announced you married a woman?”
Sykes responds:
If anything, it has helped my career, because creatively I don't have anything
to dance around or be not so forthcoming with. Now it's just out there. I'm
pretty much free to say whatever I want to say, and act the way I want to act.
It's totally been liberating.
80

While on the surface, her quick comments might seem innocuous and even
politically unproductive, Sykes arguably uses humor when mentioning lesbianism
and marriage to constructive ends. Sykes’ form of being out tends to involve quick,
nonchalant mentions of her wife and her identity as both black and lesbian. She uses
humor as a protective shield by both not answering questions seriously and by
making fun of herself, answering the critical questions with jokes before anyone
actually asks the question. In appearances to promote the November 2009 premiere
of her talk show on The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien and Late Night with
Jimmy Fallon Sykes discusses her wife, Alex, and their twins, who are six months
old. Talking to Jimmy Fallon, Sykes says she is a fan of the Phillies because “my
wife likes the Phillies and I like to sleep at night, I like my house to be peaceful.”
Directing the conversation, Sykes makes the discussion about the sports team, rather
than saying more about her wife. In an interview later that week, journalist Greg

104
Hernandez asks Sykes if she worries about criticism since publicly coming out.
Using her quick wit and willingness to be self-deprecating she says, “Of course!
That’s why we have alcohol!”
81
Several months later, Sykes appeared on the CBS
morning talk show The View. When the conversation turns to her upcoming
wedding anniversary, Sykes says that married life “is great, all I had to do was admit
that she’s the smartest one of us.”
While some comedians take on a more serious tone in interviews, Sykes
tends to maintain her comedic persona, whether performing on her talk show or
being interviewed. These comedic responses are a means of deterring deeper
conversation about the issues-at-hand. Sykes even used this strategy in an
appearance on The Ellen Degeneres Show in early 2010. Degeneres says, “You had
an eventful last year didn’t you?” Sykes nods her head, “I was a little busy last year,
a lot of stuff happened.” Degeneres decides Sykes should “name them all.” She
starts by saying, “Well, I got married.” After Degeneres and the studio audience clap
for Sykes, the conversation turns to Sykes’ and her wife’s twins, who “tire me out.”
Quickly moving to a discussion of parenting and children, the comfortable domain of
daytime talk, Sykes and Degeneres steer clear of making the discussion political.
To a mainstream audience, Sykes positions both her lesbianism and her
marriage as facts of life— not up for debate or discussion. The utility in this position
on television is that it asserts a positive mode of address; instead of automatically
defending herself and her identity to viewers, Sykes represents herself to the larger
society in terms that she defines. In the space of television, Sykes shuts down the

105
possibility of letting others determine how she constructs an image of her lesbian
identity. Sykes’ comedy and celebrity persona reveal the ways that particular
performances of identity and sexuality can be integrally connected to social and
political discourses.
Contradictory Space and the Political Potential of Lesbian Visibility
The LGBT civil rights movement, as well as much of the popular press,
celebrates making sexuality public because of its associations with the closet; the
impetus for lesbian celebrities to come out stems from associations with the closet as
a place of shame, and with individualism’s stress on being “honest” with oneself and
others about “who you are,” as well as with identity politics’ belief that civil rights
for LGBT people will only come from being out and proud about one’s identity. For
lesbian and gay celebrities, the prevailing logic is that coming out does the powerful
work of changing public opinions of homosexuality.
Visibility politics also tend to rely on media representation to redress power
imbalances. As the primary organization exclusively devoted to LGBT media
representation, GLAAD, for example, judges and assesses media depictions and
makes decisions to protest or praise them. In its mission statement, GLAAD says:
We know that what people watch on TV or read in their newspaper shapes
how they view and treat the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people
around them. And we have a responsibility to make sure that those images
foster awareness, understanding and respect.
82

Since its establishment in 1985, GLAAD has increasingly promoted and centered its
annual awards ceremony on a select few celebrities whom the organization contends,

106
have made “outstanding contributions toward eliminating homophobia.”
83
Often,
they are public figures who came out during that year. Orman, Sykes, and Degeneres
are all past honorees. In Suzanna Walters’ analysis of lesbian and gay visibility, she
says:
visibility is, of course, necessary for equality. It is part of the trajectory of any
movement for inclusion and social change. We come to know ourselves and
to be known by others through the images and stories of popular culture.
84

Coming out is thus imbued with a tremendous historical weight and symbolism.
Yet queer activists assail LGBT publications and organizations for the
perceived narrow focus on openly lesbian and gay celebrities, criticizing them for
paying homage to figures who are “ridiculously wealthy” and “shamelessly white,”
with few actual connections to the LGBT civil rights movement.
85
Playing on
GLAAD’s mission statement to ensure “fair, accurate, and inclusive” LGBT
representation in the media, queer, Asian blogger Haruki posted an entry on his
website called “GLAAD’s Unfair and Exclusive Media Awards.” In his tirade
against GLAAD for praising white, gender-conforming celebrities, Haruki quotes a
common criticism of the media watch-dog group: that it is “overly cozy with the
entertainment industry and [focuses] on glitzy celebrity parties rather than grassroots
level work.”
86
Honing in on the command of celebrity culture, Haruki and other
queer activists criticize GLAAD for honoring wealthy, white celebrities, excluding
racial, class, and gender identity-based differences.
Critics also argue that the celebrities and media representations honored by
GLAAD and other civil rights organizations frame LGBT lives as a defense of

107
normality and right to equality. They argue that mainstream LGBT civil rights
operate reactively, letting homophobic activists shape the agenda and self-
conceptions of LGBT citizens. Urvashi Vaid, the former director of The National
Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the oldest LGBT civil rights organization in the nation,
has more generally argued that the top-down approach of civil rights organizations
reflects an investment in a culture of assimilation and normalcy. In Virtual Equality:
The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation, Vaid says, “We consciously
chose legal reform, political access, visibility, and legitimation over the long-term
goals of cultural acceptance, social transformation, understanding, and liberation.”
87

Detailing the single-issue focus of mainstream LGBT civil rights, Vaid draws
attention to the movement’s predominantly white, upper-class leadership.
Scholars troubled by the over-emphasis on an individual’s power to change
public opinions of lesbians and gays have also criticized the press, award shows, and
civil rights organizations perceived as being responsible for this kind of myopic
focus. For them, the problem with the idea that LGBT celebrities foster greater
freedom for all LGBT citizens is that it mistakes symbolic representation for political
representation and social legitimation. That is, visibility is not a guarantee of
anything but just that. In her analysis of lesbian celebrities, communications scholar
Martha Gever says:
The causal relationship between visibility and power is not only difficult to
demonstrate, it is also based on an unexamined faith in the unmediated
veracity of documentary evidence, including that produced by photographic
media.
88

108
Visibility politics problematically use famous lesbians and gays as cornerstones of
community building, wherein they are equated with political involvement and
enfranchisement. In this way, lesbian and gay celebrities become symbols of LGBT
identity.
While they bring up valid anxieties about the institutionalization of LGBT
politics, the role of consumer culture, the politics of representation, and the shifting
relationships between LGBT citizens and heteronormative society, these critiques
oversimplify the complexity of a phenomenon like lesbian TV celebrity. That is,
they generalize cultural phenomena in ways that hamper and obscure interlocking
meanings. Attributing the privileged position of lesbian and gay celebrities to a
mainstreamed and ineffective LGBT politics prevents analysis, which for example,
accounts for the complex and interconnected relationships among celebrity culture,
the modern TV industry, and lesbian sexuality. The dynamics among them
emphasize the ways in which the talk show genre is a site of cultural populism,
producing sources for consumer-citizens’ attention to public life. For, as Gamson
says, talk shows “are, in a very real sense, battlegrounds over what sexuality and
gender can be in this country.”
89
Seen in the context of talk show genre conventions
and audiences, Orman’s, Sykes’, and Degeneres’ public personae open up questions
about how post-network TV brands lesbian sexuality and how lesbian celebrities
position their own identities within mainstream culture. They present a resource for
rethinking the role of out TV celebrities in producing popular culture and politics.
Orman’s, Sykes’, and Degeneres’ interactions and discussions with audiences offer

109
something of a contradictory space, where dominant norms might be contested or at
least made visible. Understanding the ways in which these lesbian celebrities are part
of a complex that includes texts, audiences, production, marketing, distribution, and
industry regulations deepens our perceptions of why their images are simultaneously
marketable, commodifiable, and political.

110

Chapter Two Endnotes
1
“The Power 50,” Out Magazine, April 2007, http://out.com/detail.asp?id=22394.

2
Elizabeth Picard, “Influential Lesbian Celebrities,” Helium, http://www.helium.com/items/1035520-
influential-lesbian-celebrities.

3
“The Power 50.”

4
Joshua Gamson, Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talk Shows & Sexual Nonconformity (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1998), 20.

5
Joshua Gamson, Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1994), 198.

6
On May 14, 2010, The Hollywood Reporter announced that Fox had cancelled The Wanda Sykes
Show.

7
Gamson, Freaks Talk Back, 21.

8
Eva Illouz, Oprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery: An Essay on Popular Culture (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2003), 4.

9
Gamson, Claims to Fame, 54.

10
Ibid.¸ 172.

11
Ibid., 172.

12
Ibid.¸ 173.

13
Jonathan Gray, “Throwing Out the Welcome Mat: Public Figures as Guests and Victims in TV
Satire” in Satire TV: Politics and Comedy in the Post-Network Era, ed. Jonathan Gray, Jeffrey P.
Jones, & Ethan Thompson (New York: NYU Press, 2009), 149.

14
Amanda Lotz, The Television Will Be Revolutionized (New York: NYU Press, 2007), 14.

15
Liz Gannes, “Network TV is Dead; Warner’s Going Hulu,” NewTeeVee, February 27, 2008,
http://newteevee.com/2008/02/27/network-tv-is-dead-warners-going-hulu/.

16
William M. Kunz, Culture Conglomerates: Consolidation in the Motion Picture and Television
Industries (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007), 75.

17
Lotz, The Television Will Be Revolutionized, 87.

18
Gamson, Claims to Fame, 43.

19
Jonathan Gray, Jeffrey P. Jones, and Ethan Thompson, ed., Satire TV: Politics and Comedy in the
Post-Network Era (New York: NYU Press, 2009), 6.

111

20
Ibid., 19.

21
Kathleen Rowe, The Unruly Woman: Gender & The Genres of Laughter (Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1995), 70.

22
Ella Taylor, Prime-Time Families: Television Culture in Postwar America (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1989), 27.

23
Bonnie J. Dow, Primetime Feminism: Television, Media Culture, and the Women’s Movement
Since 1970 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 37.

24
Bridget Foley, “Ellen Degeneres,” W Magazine, March 2007,
http://www.wmagazine.com/celebrities/2007/03/ellen_degeneres.

25
Gray et al., Satire TV, 11.

26
George Test, Satire: Spirit and Art (Tampa: University of South Florida Press, 1991), 17.

27
Rowe, The Unruly Woman, 14.

28
Gray et al., Satire TV, 4.

29
W.E.B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folks (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 8.

30
K. A. Wisniewski, The Comedy of Dave Chappelle: Critical Essays (Jefferson: McFarland, 2009),
175.

31
Test, Satire, 17.

32
Gamson, Claims to Fame, 113.

33
Christine Acham, “‘I’m Rich, Bitch!!!’” The Comedy of Chappelle’s Show,” in Cable Visions:
Television Beyond Broadcasting, ed. Sarah Banet-Weiser, Cynthia Chris, & Anthony Freitas (New
York: NYU Press, 2007), 323.

34
Acham, “‘I’m Rich, Bitch!!!’” 328.

35
Beretta Smith-Shomade, “Target Market Black: BET and the Branding of African America,” in
Cable Visions: Television Beyond Broadcasting, ed. Sarah Banet-Weiser, Cynthia Chris, & Anthony
Freitas (New York: NYU Press, 2007), 189.

36
Gray et al., Satire TV, 25.

37
Rip Empson, “HuffPost Review: Wanda Sykes’s ‘I’ma Be Me,’” The Huffington Post, October 10,
2009, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rip-empson/wanda-sykes-ima-be-me_b_316294.html.

38
Gray et al., Satire TV, 15.

112

39
Kristal Brent Zook, Color by Fox: The Fox Network and the Revolution in Black Television (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 3.

40
Ibid., 4.

41
Quantcast Audience Profile, March 2, 2010, http://www.quantcast.com/sykes.com#demographics.

As a small part of my argument for the political power of Orman, Sykes, and Degeneres, I rely on
audience data from Quantcast, a media measurement service. While I do incorporate a few statistics
from Quantcast’s website, I want to emphasize my own skepticism in relying on quantitative data to
support theoretical and discursive claims. As such, the data presented in this chapter are not intended
to fully back up the arguments I am making. Rather, they are intended to illustrate the potential
function of the talk show audience vis-à-vis discussions about race, gender, and sexuality.

While the numbers provided are not considered “official” data used by the talk shows, I was unable to
acquire Nielsen data. I did work with a sales representative from Nielsen who provided me with a
quote for the data I wanted to use for this chapter. However, licensing the data was cost-prohibitive.
Below is the full price quote provided by Nielsen:

Data
National ratings and projections (estimated viewers in thousands) for 3 syndicated programs:
The Ellen Degeneres Show, The Suze Orman Show and The Wanda Sykes Show. Data to be
provided for the following demographic groups:
! Age/Gender: Males18-49, Females18-49, M50+ and F50+
! Income: Head of Household Income 20-59K and HoH Income 60-100K
! Race: African American, Hispanic, White
! Education: Head of Household 1-3 years high school, HoH 1-3 years college, HoH
4+ years college
Data to be provided in quarterly averages from January 2008 through March 2010. Ratings to
be based on Live+Same Day viewing data stream.

Delivery
The data will be delivered in Excel format via email.

Study Description & Permissible Uses
Julia Himberg is a graduate student in the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of
Southern California. The Data may be used solely to conduct an academic study examining
the effects of audience composition among select talk shows on social and political topics
featured by the program’s host. The Data may be used to determine the political potential of
select women talk show hosts. Limited excerpts of the Data may be used in an academic
paper summarizing the results of the study, to be submitted for publication in academic
journals or included in academic presentations on this subject. The Data shall not be used for
media buying, planning or selling, or for any other purpose.

Price
The price for a one year agreement of the Data within the Permissible Uses outlined above is
$3,355.00. The price for bi-annual averages of the Data from 2008 through 2010 YTD is
$3,200.00. These prices are valid for 60 days.

42
Gray et al., Satire TV, 13.

113

43
Gamson, Claims to Fame, 44.

44
John Ellis, Visible Fictions (London: Routledge, 1982), 107.

45
Ibid., 107.

46
Gamson, Freaks Talk Back, 16.

47
E. Ann Kaplan, “Feminist Criticism & Television,” in Channels of Discourse: Reassembled:
Television & Contemporary Criticism (2nd Ed.), ed. R.C. Allen (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1987), 223.

48
Dow, Primetime Feminism, xx.

49
Ibid., xxi.

50
Jeffrey P. Jones, “Beyond Genre: Cable’s Impact on the Talk Show,” in Thinking Outside the Box:
A Contemporary Television Genre Reader, ed. Gary Richard Edgerton and Brian Geoffrey Rose
(Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2008), 166.

51
Illouz, Oprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery, 140.

52
Chastity Bono was quoted saying Ellen Degeneres was “too gay” in the March 10, 1998 edition of
the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, although Bono claimed the quote was taken out of context.

53
Bill Keveney, “Everyday Ellen,” USA Today, September 3, 2003, Life section.

54
Matthew Gilbert, “On TV: Returning To Her Lighter Side, Ellen Degeneres Rises Once Again,”
The Boston Globe, October 30, 2003, Living section.

55
Jones, “Beyond Genre: Cable’s Impact on the Talk Show,” 171.

56
Mimi White, Tele-Advising: Therapeutic Discourse in American Television (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 184.

57
Susan Dominus, “Suze Orman Is Having a Moment,” New York Times, May 17, 2009, Section MM.

58
“The Suze Orman Show,” CNBC, http://www.cnbc.com/id/15838523/.

59
Naomi Klein, No Logo (New York: Picador, 2000), 30.

60
Ibid., 59.

61
Ibid., 60.

62
Dominus, “Suze Orman Is Having a Moment.”

63
Ibid.

114

64
White, Tele-Advising, 11.

65
Ibid., 180.

66
Illouz, Oprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery, 131.

67
“Tell us how Suze has influenced your life!” SuzeOrman.com,
http://www.suzeorman.com/igsbase/igstemplate.cfm?SRC=SP&SRCN=suzesinfluence2&GnavID=10
6

68
Ibid.

69
Illouz, Oprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery, 163.

70
Ibid., 131.

71
Nick Couldry, Media Rituals: A Critical Approach (London: Routledge, 2004), 24.

72
Ibid., 25.

73
Foley, “Ellen Degeneres.”

74
Gamson, Freaks Talk Back, 225.

75
Quantcast Audience Profile for ellen.warnerbros.com,
http://www.quantcast.com/ellen.warnerbros.com (accessed March 10, 2010).

76
Michael Curtin, “Reinventing Public Media,” Flow, April 1, 2005, Vol. 2, Issue 1.

77
Quantcast Audience Profile for suzeorman.com,
http://www.quantcast.com/suzeorman.com#demographics (accessed March 10, 2010).

78
Gamson, Freaks Talk Back, 221.

79
Heather Hogan, “Review of ‘The Wanda Sykes Show,’” AfterEllen.com, November 9, 2009,
http://www.afterellen.com/TV/2009/11/the-wanda-sykes-show.

80
Lisa Bernhard, “Wanda Sykes Uncensored!” TV Guide Magazine, November 4, 2009,
http://www.tvguidemagazine.com/feature/wanda-sykes-uncensored-3083.html.

81
Greg Hernandez, “Wanda Sykes talks about her new show!” Greg In Hollywood, August 11, 2009,
http://greginhollywood.com/wanda-sykes-talks-about-her-new-show-9786.

82
“Mission Statement,” glaad.org, http://www.glaad.org/mission.

83
“21st Annual GLAAD Media Awards: Special Honorees,” glaad.org,
http://www.glaad.org/mediaawards/21/specialhonorees.

115

84
Suzanna Danuta Walters, All the Rage: The Story of Gay Visibility in America (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2003), 13.

85
Keith Boykin, “Patrik-Ian Polk Takes on GLAAD,” KeithBoykin.com, April 24, 2006,
http://www.keithboykin.com/arch/2006/04/24/patrikian_polk_1.

86
Haruki, “Wiqaablog: GLAAD’s unfair and exclusive Media Awards,” wiqaable.com,
http://www.wiqaable.com/2009/05/media-glaads-unfair-and-exclusive-media.html.

87
Urvashi Vaid, Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation (New York:
Anchor Books, 1995), 106.

88
Martha Gever, Entertaining Lesbians: Celebrity, Sexuality, & Self-Invention (New York:
Routledge, 2003), 5.

89
Gamson, Freaks Talk Back, 5.

116
Chapter Three
Multicasting: Market Research, Cable Television, and Lesbian Programming
Community Marketing researchers are often asked,
“What’s new in lesbian and gay market trends?” This
year, the most important insights come from new
significant research findings into lesbian consumers.
Based on this new wealth of research and analysis, we
are calling 2008 “The Year of the Lesbian.”
– Community Marketing, Inc.
Press Release February 14, 2008

In 2008, researchers at Community Marketing, an LGBT market research
firm, claimed to have found a goldmine in lesbian consumers. They, along with
members of the lesbian press, treated the Lesbian Consumer Index as exciting and
surprising news. It said, among other things, that lesbian women had higher incomes,
better educations, and spent more time online and watching TV than advertisers ever
dreamed possible. The upscale lesbian lifestyle magazine Jane and Jane wrote that
the Index “breaks stereotypes… [the] buying habits of lesbians rival those of gay
men.”
1
The L Word’s creator Ilene Chaiken cited the research in her August 2008
announcement that the final season of the Showtime series would use more product
integration; the Lesbian Consumer Index reported that 39% of lesbian women watch
Showtime, compared to 18% of gay men. Like gay men in the early 1990s, lesbian
women in 2008 were hailed as untapped wealth, promoted as a promising discovery
for advertisers to target with a world of products and services.
The attention to a “lesbian consumer market” occurred with two interrelated
trends, one in marketing and the other in the television industry. Since the 1970s,

117
niche marketing has become the primary way that advertisers court consumers.
Communications scholar Joseph Turow notes that while niche marketing has always
been part of advertiser-media relations, “what was different…[was] the emergence of
target marketing as a hot, hip, even central strategy after decades of being considered
a relatively marginal part of the national ad industry’s thinking.”
2
Contemporary
marketing strategies build consumer categories based on information that people
disclose about their consumption practices. Turow says, “before, a person could
shop around, see what the options were, and buy at the best price… [Now], the
vendor gathers information about a person and decides whether it can profit from his
or her loyalty and habits.”
3
Increased customization separates consumers into
narrow market segments, encouraging them to feel attached to particular brands,
products, and services.
As targeted marketing became central to advertisers’ strategies for reaching
consumers, the proliferation of cable TV channels promoted a concentrated focus on
niche audiences. Targeting niche audiences is intended to create a loyal and intimate
relationship between specific groups of viewers and cable channels. Since the
1980s, television executives have tried to reach small groups of viewers with specific
messages about how certain products and TV shows tie into their identities and
lifestyles. Unlike broadcast channels, which are subject to heavy regulation because
they use public airwaves, cable is a profit-driven, private enterprise, less regulated
and more diverse in its ownership. Cable networks are not as concerned about
advertiser backlash as broadcast networks, because broadcast networks seek to reach,

118
and not to offend, the widest audience segment possible. Because revenue comes
from cable distributors that pay the network for content and from advertisers buying
space, cable networks can afford to target smaller niche audiences than the mass
demanded by the more expensive broadcast networks. Smaller audiences mean that
cable can take more risks with programming choices; each cable network is tailored
to particular demographics that presumably seek out the unique material shown on a
specific cable channel.
Paying particular attention to the ways in which lesbian consumers and
lesbian programming are co-constituted, this chapter examines how cable TV’s
lesbian images are constructed, represented, and received in various contexts of
contemporary culture. Based on personal interviews with openly lesbian and gay
market researchers and television executives, investigation of the inner-workings of
the niche cable industry, and analysis of Showtime’s drama series The L Word and
Bravo’s reality show Work Out, this chapter considers the forces that construct
modern lesbian identity on cable TV.
Drawing on the work of communications scholars Joseph Turow and
Katherine Sender, this chapter argues that lesbian-themed programming has been
successful both financially and ideologically primarily on niche cable channels such
as Bravo and Showtime, which target specific groups of gay, lesbian, and straight
viewers. Examining the industrial logic behind the rhetoric, experiences, and
preconceptions of market researchers and TV executives, I consider the use of

119
lesbian programming as a strategic method for attracting cable television’s
increasingly diverse and fragmented audiences.
Expanding Sender’s “dualcasting” argument, this chapter accounts for cable
TV’s lesbian representations, positing an emerging trend in television: Niche cable
channels use stereotypically feminine, affluent, and classy lesbian characters and
personalities to tap into multiple niche markets. In “Dualcasting: Bravo’s Gay
Programming and the Quest for Women Audiences,” Sender argues that
dualcasting— targeting two audiences— specifically gay men and straight women,
makes Bravo “financially viable” and increases its “profile.”
4
Lesbianism’s strong
associations with rejecting the norms of femininity and consumption mean that
“dualcasting” for lesbian programming does not satisfy advertiser and TV
executives’ needs to attract a sizeable cable audience. That is, “traditional” lesbian
identities are not inherently commercial and thus require a makeover to meet the
demands of the consumer-driven television marketplace. Lesbian-themed shows such
as Work Out and The L Word depict a particularly class-based expression of
femininity that relates directly to cable structures, especially its requirements for and
methods of targeting audiences. Lesbian representations require what I’m calling
“multicasting:” targeting a set of specific audience demographics. “Multicasting”
allows niche cable channels to target several defined audiences, namely lesbian
women, straight women, and straight men.

120
Beyond Lesbian Chic
The prevailing lesbian woman on television since 2000 has been
stereotypically feminine, fashion-conscious, upper-middle class, and well-educated.
While the women of The L Word have garnered the most attention in both academic
and popular discourse, lesbian characters and personalities on shows including ER,
Passions, Nip/Tuck, The OC, Work Out, Cashmere Mafia, Queer as Folk, South of
Nowhere, All My Children, The Amazing Race, Sex and the City, and America’s Next
Top Model have presented equally feminine, voguish lesbian women.
The presence of classy, feminine lesbian TV characters and personalities
generates newspaper headlines like these: “From dysfunctional dyke to designer
doll.”

“Vivacious and never far from a vibrator.” “Lipsticked, hyper-femme, and
sexy as hell.”
5
Critics’ and academics’ debates about lesbian femininity run the
gamut from a progressive new visibility to an old voyeuristic pandering. Some argue
that femme characters debunk the notion that femininity requires heterosexual male
appreciation. Advocate columnist Guinevere Turner touted The L Word as “shifting
the aesthetic of actual lesbians and the way lesbians in general are perceived.”
6

Queer theorist Eve Sedgwick’s review of the show for The Chronicle of Higher
Education places high hopes on The L Word to “make a real and unpredictable
difference in the overall landscape of the media world.”
7
Sedgwick’s praise for the
show is tempered, however, by her claim that “Edgy is not the word for the series’
relation to reality or political process.”
8
Critics in this camp argue that femininity
sanitizes, depoliticizes, and even de-homosexualizes lesbian characters. As lesbian

121
comedienne Marga Gomez quips about The L Word, “you only see plain dykes in the
background when the hotties go to a dance.”
9

Television images today correspond to a legacy of lesbian-themed films that
privilege images of classy women. Films such as Rebecca and Queen Christina
depict upper-class women born into the strictly regulated worlds of the ruling class,
which provides a degree of protection in the form of access to wealth. In Uninvited:
Classical Hollywood Cinema and Lesbian Representability, Patricia White traces the
roots of these images in Hollywood films. She examines the types of lesbian images
that appeared in films of the Production Code era, from 1930-1968, detailing the
ways in which lesbian women were visible. In the films she discusses, lesbian
visibility “is veiled in the feminine display that is the cinema’s primary dream
language rather than embodied in the cross-gender identifications offered by the
invert or the butch.”
10
More recent films such as Desert Hearts (1986), Claire of the
Moon (1992), High Art (1998), and Loving Annabelle (2005) carry on these early
cinematic traditions, depicting lesbian women as stereotypically feminine, educated,
and refined.
Foregrounding classy lifestyle and aesthetic taste codes, lesbian characters
and personalities on cable TV shows are usually white-collar professionals who
make references to canonical literary texts and paintings, know a fine wine when
they see it, and understand that the hand-bag must always match the shoes.
Furthermore, femininity in these shows normalizes and adheres to white standards of
taste in beauty, education, and physical fitness. As feminist scholar Susan Bordo

122
writes, modern female representations “smooth out all racial, ethnic, and sexual
‘differences’ that disturb Anglo-Saxon, heterosexual expectations and
identifications.”
11
While shows like Work Out and The L Word include characters of
color, and directly address contemporary discussions of race, the characters’ looks
reflect a distinctly white aesthetic defined by youthful, slender women with light
eyes, narrow noses, and straight hair.
One of the most instructive ways to see how class and femininity are
embodied in cable TV shows is to look at their marketing campaigns and title
sequences. Ad campaigns and title sequences are often the first glimpses viewers
have of a show, conveying key information to attract audiences. Work Out, which
premiered in 2006 following Bravo’s success with reality programs like Project
Runway and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, is a lifestyle reality show that stars
openly lesbian gym owner and personal trainer Jackie Warner, and follows the
personal and professional lives of Warner, her entourage of trainers, and their clients.
Work Out presents lesbian sexuality within the context of Beverly Hills beauty
culture, where high-end fashion, healthy food, and physically fit bodies are the norm.
Work Out’s title sequence immediately draws the viewer into an elite world, first
with street signs marking the entrance to Beverly Hills, and to Rodeo Drive,
followed by quick cuts of Warner and her trainers in the gym, of the gym equipment,
and shots of their well-toned bodies. Along with the images, the show’s theme song
establishes a tone of fame, voyeurism, and exhibitionism that comes from the
worked out body: “you can really work it out/Beverly Hills where the rich keep it

123
sexy, work hard, play hard, turn into celebrities/whatever drives your passion, Jackie
keeps you motivated, top of your game, your lifestyle will change.” Opening with
Beverly Hills culture establishes a tone of an elite world of fitness and beauty that
only few attain. There are no signifiers of Warner’s sexuality; the show’s title
sequence thus codes itself foremost with social and aesthetic markers of wealth and
beauty, suggesting that, like much of TV, it targets working class or lower-middle
class viewers who are aspiring to make it in a white-collar world.
The show’s montage editing and extreme close-ups of well-toned, beautiful
bodies focus visual attention on the athletic female body. Warner’s representation in
this opening sequence and throughout the show draws on a long tradition of lesbian
women in sports. While women have faced uphill battles in professional sports for
centuries, not until the 1930s did female athletes became associated with failed
heterosexuality and eventually with lesbianism. In her case study of lesbian tennis
star Martina Navratilova, communications scholar Martha Gever notes that
lesbianism became “the danger awaiting women who ventured into this masculine
domain.”
12
Films like Personal Best (1982) and The Gymnast (2006) capitalized on
associations between athleticism and lesbianism, appealing to wide variety of social
tastes and attitudes. In her review of Personal Best, Linda Williams notes that, “In
box office terms, the combination of sports and sex was a stroke of genius. Those
who would normally be shocked or at least irritated by a lesbian relationship in any
other context find it quite ‘natural’ among female athletes.”
13
Twenty-five years

124
later, Work Out recalls this association, aided by Warner’s firm and chiseled body,
and her strong, savvy, and exacting personality.
The L Word, which aired on Showtime from 2004 to 2009, is the first
television show to feature an ensemble cast of openly lesbian characters. The show’s
initial ad campaign promoted the show as a lesbian version of Sex and the City, using
the tag-line “Same sex. Different city,” hoping to make associations with the show’s
bold approach to talking about and having sex. Print and billboard ads feature the
show’s cast dressed in elegant gowns and feminine suits, foregrounding their looks
above all else. Utilizing fashion photography lighting and runway poses, the show’s
cast members stand alongside one another, looking directly at the camera, lights
accentuating their lean, female figures against a sleek black backdrop. The ads do
not promote the show with any actor names, instead featuring only exquisitely
adorned, hyper-feminine women.
Marking class as central to the show’s identity, Showtime also advertised The
L Word in upscale women’s publications like Elle magazine, which targets
consumers interested in “fashion, beauty, and style – with a brain” who are looking
for “high-end inspiration.”
14
Curve Magazine’s Lya Carrera writes,
what was lesbian chic in the 1980s has come full circle with the emergence of
The L Word and it has put lesbian fashion back on the map…The image of
lesbians that was prevalent in the media – two words: flannel shirts – has now
been replaced with something more positive, as gay women are now seen as
being fashion-conscious.
15

“Flannel shirts” signifies lesbian women’s rejection of conventional femininity,
“rendering them less desirable or recuperable within a model of ideal

125
consumption.”
16
Traditional addresses to women as consumers appeal to their roles
as wives, mothers, and caretakers of the home and family. But the publicly visible
lesbian woman that emerged in 1960s and 1970s refused the heterosexual contract,
both ideologically and practically. Sender notes that “lesbians and, especially,
lesbian feminists are not easily allied with either image of consumption; imagined to
be hostile to the family and to fashion, they are neither the ‘fish’ of heterosexual
women, nor the ‘fowl’ of gay men.”
17
For marketers, then, lesbian women before
the rise of Work Out and The L Word tended to imply the rejection of stereotypical
femininity and the separation of consumption from heterosexuality.
The rise of “lesbian chic” in the 1990s helped to diversify the public image of
lesbian women. In popular discourse, “lesbian chic” was proof that lesbian women
were no longer associated with feminist, anti-consumption stereotypes, and instead
were seen as apolitical, postfeminist consumers. In addition, an unprecedented
number of female celebrities have come out since that time including k.d. lang, Ellen
Degeneres, Rosie O’Donnell, Martina Navratilova, Melissa Etheridge, Suze Orman,
Wanda Sykes, and Rachel Maddow. But Sender notes that “the whole lesbian chic
thing has been largely a media event rather than reality.”
18
Quantitatively, few
changes have occurred. Most of the LGBT characters on TV are white, gay men.
Lesbianism thus remains associated with feminist rejections of stereotypical
femininity, codes of style, dress, and consumption.
Media scholar Danae Clark’s widely cited 1991 essay “Commodity
Lesbianism” argues that the intensified marketing of lesbian images that began in the

126
1990s is less indicative of a growing acceptance of lesbianism, or homosexuality
more broadly, than of capitalism’s appropriation of lesbian styles for mainstream
audiences. She examines the marketing strategy called “gay window advertising”
that allows lesbians and gays to “read into an ad certain subtextual elements,”
deciphering queer elements that heterosexual consumers are unaware of.
19

Therefore, as Clark observes, “If heterosexual consumers do not notice these
subtexts or subcultural codes, then advertisers are able to reach the homosexual
market along with the heterosexual market without ever revealing their aim.”
20
This
strategy lands marketers in the best of two worlds, keeping heterosexual consumers
in the dark and safely multiplying their consumer base.
Sender’s concept of “dualcasting” functions in a similar way because
television content simultaneously reaches two distinct audience demographics.
Bravo’s style of shows and its consistent incorporation of lesbian and gay people in
its reality programming have led critics to describe the network as the de facto “gay”
channel. Critics such as Variety’s Anna Stewart and The New York Times’
Alessandra Stanley assert that Bravo is in Stanley’s words, “the premier gay
network.”
21
Against claims in the popular press that Bravo is the de facto gay
channel, Sender argues that “dualcasting” provides the network’s required audience
base of women, 18-49, and still appeals to a niche audience of gay men. With its
programming choices, Bravo draws on what Sender describes as “long-standing
associations between gay men and heterosexual women in order to appeal to a
sizeable female audience.”
22
Tapping into the image of gay men as the stylish,

127
classy, trend-setting best friends of heterosexual women, Bravo uses gay-themed
programs as an integral part of its strategies for attracting media audiences. With the
development of Work Out, as well as shows such as Top Chef and Millionaire
Matchmaker, which feature lesbian contestants, Bravo also multicasts, drawing a
wider audience.
The Role of the Internet
Bravo initially launched in 1980, covering drama, performing arts, and
independent films. In the early 2000s, after being acquired as a division of NBC
Universal, executives transformed it to focus on pop culture, creating its own brand
of reality, fashion, makeover, and celebrity shows including Top Chef, Project
Runway, and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. According to NBC Universal’s Bravo
fact sheet, it “is the cable network that plugs people into arts, culture and pop culture
with original programming, movies and by showing a whole different side of
celebrities.”
23
Aside from a clear commitment to the cultures of beauty and fashion,
Bravo’s signature is the contrast it portrays between the everyday and an elite world.
In reinventing itself, Bravo aggressively embraced online revenue. To
generate profits, Bravo like other cable channels, maintains websites for its shows
that include cast blogs, special “webisodes,” entire show episodes, social networking
sites for fans, as well as online stores that sell brands worn by the characters. Taping
into the lucrative internet market, the network launched Outzone TV in 2006, a
broadband-only site aimed at LGBT users, and in early 2007, Bravo acquired the
indie website Television Without Pity. Trying to widen the network’s reach, Bravo’s

128
president Lauren Zalaznick described the purchase as broadening “the scope of our
sites to create a community where smart people with something to say about their
favorite shows…can get together.”
24
In 2006, Zalaznick also outlined a strategy
mandating that all programming extend into digital media. Positioning digital as
intrinsic to the identity of each Bravo show, Zalaznick said “it’s a concerted effort to
make each of the projects have a legitimate digital DNA to them from the get-go.”
25

Under this directive, show creators have to pitch ideas to the network that include a
detailed picture of the show and its online components.
This emphasis on the digital aspects of programming is part of the network’s
appeal to a narrow, but wealthy audience segment. Bravo’s target audience is 18-49,
affluent, educated, and tech-savvy males and females with high levels of disposable
income, who Zalaznick calls “affluencers.” In a 2007 interview, she described
“affluencers” as “consumers who spend just as much time blogging about their
favorite shows as they do watching them.”
26
In targeting “affluencers,” the network
capitalizes on research that shows lesbians and gays to be a lucrative market.
According to Zalaznick, “consumers with speedy [internet] access are more affluent”
and combined with “‘gays’ higher spending…you get a perfect storm drawing more
advertisers.”
27

Showtime also promotes itself to a high-tech audience demographic. In
2000, the network launched a series of online ventures aimed at broadening its
viewer base, creating a series of original and fan-produced content exclusively for
the internet. Audiences could view, rate, and review featured works, chat with

129
content creators, and participate in technology forums. Showtime’s aggressive
targeting of wired audiences earned it the reputation of being “the premier next-
generation entertainment destination featuring original content created exclusively
for the web.”
28
With The L Word, in particular, the network appealed to a high-tech
demographic, holding fan fiction contests where the winner’s scenario was used as
an episode’s opening sequence. The show also launched two social networking sites
that incorporate fans into the narrative of the show, buying an island on Second Life
and creating Our Chart, an off-shoot of the fictional chart on the The L Word.
Online websites and surveys have driven much of the focus on the growing
lesbian consumer market. In 2000, Marketing to Women reported that “websites
targeting lesbians are becoming much more profitable and prominent.”
29
Using two
niche websites as examples, Lesbianation.com and Lesbian.com, the article says that
mainstream companies are courting lesbian women through online sponsorship and
branded content. According to Thomas Roth, founder and President of Community
Marketing, use of the internet to distribute marketing surveys has “broadened the
range of responses.”
30
Before using the internet, Community Marketing received
between 700 and 800 respondents to their surveys; now, they receive “many
thousands” of responses.
31
While scholars such as Pierre Bourdieu, Walter Lippman,
and Justin Lewis show that the “public” in polls and surveys is, in Lewis’ words, “a
less inclusive category than its sampling techniques imply,”
32
for market researchers
like Roth, the more numerous the survey responses, the more accurate and reliable
the findings.

130
In this context, the internet often has been envisioned and described as a
powerful tool for reaching LGBT citizens, in much the same way scholars and
members of the press have promoted utopian views of the internet in reaching youth,
poor people, rural Americans, and racial and ethnic minorities. Communications
scholar Larry Gross writes that the Internet provides a place for rural LGBT youth,
who are often alienated from their small, and often conservative and homophobic
communities, to find support. In his essay “Gideon Who Will be 25 in the Year
2012: Growing Up Gay Today,” Gross contends that scholars should not
underestimate the power and influence of the presence of LGBT characters on
television and the large LGBT presence online, especially on blogs and discussion
boards that act as support groups for rural and isolated youths. Despite the notable
ways in which the terrain of coming out has changed, Gross says,
Coming out earlier is hardly a guarantee of smooth passage. Most kids still
find themselves growing up in enemy territory, in a country where
heterosexuality is the love that needn’t speak its name, because it’s taken for
granted, and where gay is a term of abuse to rival faggot or queer.
33

In some cases, he argues, online support for LGBT youth saves lives, preventing
them from committing suicide due to their lack of direct contact with positive images
of LGBT people.
Legal scholars, such as Yochai Benkler, are also proponents of the internet as
a community builder, describing it as a distinct technology that, for the first time,
connects people across physical distances. Virtual space, in this utopian argument, is
a new, distinct one that connects people in a way that lived space does not; many of

131
the communities formed online are as new as the medium itself. Viewer
participation in TV show websites, message boards, and fan sites implies a level of
free will. Audiences invest in the possibilities of the ways things could be (instant
wealth, bodily transformation, overnight celebrity status). In The Wealth of
Networks, Benkler says,
the Internet allows for a radically more diverse suite of communications
models than any of the twentieth-century systems permitted…It simply offers
more degrees of freedom for each of us to design our own communications
space.
34

In this way, Benkler describes the internet as a technology that enables new, multi-
faceted social networks to be established.
In addition, market researchers proffer this idyllic view when communicating
their findings to companies that seek to court LGBT consumers. At the 2009 Gay &
Lesbian Market Symposium held in San Francisco and Los Angeles by Community
Marketing, market researchers presented a set of data about LGBT consumers from
their most recent polling and focus groups to a range of HR personnel in businesses
including banks, hotels, airlines, magazines, law firms, film festivals, building
contractors, and non-profit organizations.
In his presentation at the Symposium, Matt Skallerud touted the power of
online interactivity for reaching LGBT consumers. Skallerud, an openly gay man
whose work focuses on connecting LGBT communities to online information and
social-networking sites, emphasized how a business can use Web 2.0, email
marketing, and microsites to reach out to LGBT consumer groups.
35
These forms of

132
communication, he said, provide the space for businesses to speak “with” not “to”
their target markets. Websites, blogs and social networking sites like Facebook and
MySpace allow consumers to “talk back” to businesses, thus engaging in a dialogue.
As Skallerud said, “it’s scary how well it works.”
36
For less money, time, and effort
than it takes to create a direct-mail campaign, and with better results than email or
banner ad campaigns, viral marketing using social networking sites is hailed by
marketers as the premier way to find consumers.
Arguments like these, however, are technocratic ones that ignore the key
issue of access to the internet, determined by factors such as race, class, gender, and
geography. As media scholar Ellen Seiter observes in her 2005 book The Internet
Playground: Children’s Access, Entertainment, and Mis-Education, “While
inequalities in the distribution of money, education, and resources have only
worsened in the last three decades, Americans cling nevertheless to the myth that we
are mostly classless.”
37
Deep inequities in the nation’s technological economy have
produced undeniable consequences in who has access to and control over digital
space.
Utopian discussions of online interactivity in both academia and market
research thus leave a range of topics unaddressed and questions unanswered. First,
the way that Skallerud advocated tagging individuals in photos on Facebook from a
company event ignores the still prevalent problem of unwanted outings. As Gross
notes in Contested Closets: The Politics and Ethics of Outing, “Most accounts of
outing have noted that disclosing someone’s homosexuality is not currently a

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respectable journalistic practice.”
38
Some participants at the Gay & Lesbian Market
Symposium expressed their concern about people who may be out to family and
friends but may “not be ready to be that out.” Up to now, there has not been a legal
case regarding photo releases and tagged photos on social networking sites like
Facebook, but the possibility does bring up relevant issues relating to the ethics of
public outing.
Second, these discussions tend to ignore systems of inclusion and exclusion
that structure social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, and OurChart. Just as
critics accuse liberal social movements of being counterproductive, perpetuating
discrimination and social attitudes against minority groups, online social networking
sites tend to have similar effects. In her essay “Practicing at Home: Computers,
Pianos, and Cultural Capital,” Seiter critiques Yochai Benkler’s work for its focus on
individual and psychological “motivation” rather than on the real conditions that
create unequal access to the internet. In her words, for Benkler, “the problems of
inequity have been magically solved by the limitless opportunities offered by
technology.”
39
In this way, Benkler’s argument reduces society’s divisions to a
simple case of different tastes that produce different rewards. Thus, much of the
rhetoric about online forums and networking sites diverts attention and energy from
fundamental issues such as race, class, and gender. In addition, the sites themselves
and scholarly writing tends to construct norms of behavior and etiquette, rendering
others deviant.

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Third, utopian arguments for the internet have sparked debates concerning
the concept of “democracy” in community-building networks. “Democratic” implies
that internet users have the opportunity to participate in the marketing process, its
uses and approaches. Media scholar Mark Andrejevic points out that vastly different
forms of participation get conflated in the democratic promise of interactivity. He
says, “sweatshop labor and free labor are both forms of participation (and tightly
constrained ‘free’ choice), but not necessarily power sharing.”
40
Andrejevic also
reminds us that “the adjective, ‘democratic,’ like its somewhat more dramatic
modern ancestor, ‘revolutionary,’ is rapidly becoming one of the more overused and
under-defined terms in the promotional lexicon of the ‘interactive’ era.”
41
In this
sense, democracy does not mean that consumers rule in the literal sense of the word.
Constructing an Audience, Constructing a Market
Despite the troubling embrace of digital space, the internet has fueled belief
in quantifiable LGBT groups. This steadfast conviction is the foundation of LGBT-
dedicated TV channels. On the assumption that an LGBT audience already existed
and would flock to watch programming aired just for “them,” Logo, here!, and Q
Network launched in the early 2000s. This pre-existing community, however, did
not materialize in the way TV executives envisioned. Q Network, the first LGBT
channel in the U.S., debuted in 2000 and shutdown in 2006 due to lack of funding.
The subscription-based channel here! launched in 2003 and continues to struggle
with establishing and maintaining an adequate subscriber base. Logo, founded in
2005 by openly gay MTV President Brian Graden, is a fully advertiser-supported

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channel, available to all subscribers of basic cable tiers. MTV originally proposed
the channel be a partial-pay channel but ultimately decided to make it a bundled
channel in hopes of ensuring wider distribution.
Logo, however, is stuck in a cycle in which it cannot draw advertisers
without high enough ratings, but cannot draw the audience without better quality
programming that ad dollars could buy. Without the move to niche channels aimed
at narrow audience segments, Logo might not be possible at all; but its lack of
success, both in audience numbers and revenue, suggests that shifts in marketing and
distribution do not necessarily correspond to changes in programming. Logo
initially provided a space where established LGBT-friendly companies could
advertise products, another outlet for capitalizing on supposed LGBT customer
loyalty. Logo benefited financially less from the reality TV craze than from
acquiring low-budget documentaries, fictional films, mini-series, and series
programs. Many of the channel’s films and original series explore subjects
considered taboo in network television: LGBT dating shows, adoption stories,
coming out stories, and transgender experiences of dating, transitioning, and sex
reassignment surgery.
Since its founding, the channel has produced only two original series about
lesbian women, both short-lived, lasting only six episodes. The first, Curl Girls
(2007) is a reality show about six lesbian friends who are all surfers. The other, Exes
and Ohs (2007) was Logo’s attempt to create its own version of The L Word.
Although centered on the dating life of one character, the show featured an ensemble

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cast of lesbian friends, most of who had been or were current lovers. Like the rest
of Logo’s programming, these shows were small-budget programs that lacked the
impressive and eye-catching aesthetics that dominate television today; Logo’s
aesthetic is more akin to public television than to the dazzling look of other young
channels. Compared to other niche television channels like Bravo, Logo’s self-
promotion is minimal. There are no ads on other TV channels owned by MTV or
Viacom, its internet affiliates carry its name but do not promote its programming,
and few LGBT print publications advertise the channel. Promotions for Bravo’s
shows, on the other hand, regularly appear on other channels owned by its parent
company NBC Universal, such as NBC and USA Network.
While the internet provided the initial data to hype a quantifiable LGBT
population, TV ratings are still what determine a channel’s success or failure. One
of the major issues plaguing lesbian-themed programming is that there is no data on
lesbian audiences that is considered valuable to advertisers; Nielsen Media Research
does not count LGBT viewers. In 2004, GLAAD held meetings with representatives
from Nielsen to discuss different ways of monitoring LGBT audiences’ viewing
habits. According to GLAAD’s Entertainment Media Director, Damon Romine, as
of September 2008, talks between the two organizations were still “on-going” but
that no system for counting LGBT viewers had been designed. Without Nielsen
numbers for lesbian audiences, network executives have improvised and found ways
to keep their pulse on what their audiences want. In interviews, Meredith Kadlec,
Vice President of Programming and Development for here!, and Stephen Macias,

137
Senior Vice President of Marketing and Corporate Communications for Regent
Entertainment, described informal and unreliable ways of counting their audience:
emails from viewers, online discussion boards, and general market research that
shows a large LGBT-identified population with disposable incomes who can and
want to pay for LGBT-directed products. As Showtime President Robert Greenblatt
told me, “If there hadn’t been an Ilene Chaiken [creator of The L Word], I don’t
know how many there were out there trying to pitch the lesbian stories.”
42
Thus,
lesbian viewers remain an enigmatic TV demographic.
For TV networks, Nielsen ratings are supposed to account for what the nation
likes to watch. While Nielsen Media Research claims that “Everyone Counts,”
television scholar Eileen Meehan writes, “ratings become fully commoditized
through producers’ manipulation of continuities and discontinuities in corporate
demand for estimates of the commodity audience.”
43
In other words, Nielsen ratings
do not account for what all viewers actually watch. Instead, Meehan says, “ratings
do not count the viewers, but only the commodity audience which is sellable to
national advertisers and networks.”
44
In order to create a “commodity audience,” TV
executives rely on market research data to convince advertisers that there is a clearly
defined and populous lesbian and gay consumer market and media audience.
While 2008 was the first time market researchers offered up data suggesting
that lesbian women were a desirable target market, advertisers had begun reaching
out to the broader “gay market” in the late 1980s. The beginnings of marketers’
concerted efforts to reach LGBT consumers resulted from a series of surveys

138
indicating that lesbians and gays were unusually affluent and well-educated. Those
results, released by the Simmons Market Research Bureau and later by Overlooked
Opinions, encouraged mainstream advertisers to buy space in lesbian and gay
publications. But they also put forth an image of a mythical gay consumer: white,
wealthy, educated, and ready to spend money. Subsequent research revealed that
initial surveys were based on a limited pool of consumers, made up mostly of the
readers of lesbian and gay publications such as The Advocate and openly lesbian and
gay people who volunteered to be interviewed at pride events. These surveys were
thus skewed toward lesbians and gays who were already purchasing LGBT
publications, could afford to be out and not lose their jobs, and who had enough free
time to travel to pride events, local and national. The data also skewed heavily
toward men, not women.
Economist M.V. Lee Badgett, considered by many to have done the most
systemic research in the U.S. on the economics of lesbians and gays, reviewed a
series of books published in the 1990s that asserted the affluence, good taste, and
high education levels of America’s LGBT consumers. She writes that, “their
collective focus on middle- and upper-middle class gays and their concerns
unfortunately reinforces the stereotypes of affluence.”
45
She attributes this focus on
the high end of the economic spectrum partly to “market forces in the publishing
world.”
46
By this, she means that almost all the books published on the topic were
not intended to be scholarly explorations of the economic status of LGBT citizens.
Rather, they were published by mainstream commercial presses and made available

139
at major bookstore chains, whereas scholarly books tend to be available only by
special order. Based on these facts, Badgett concludes,
the logical market for such guidebooks would be actual and aspiring gay
members of the managerial class. They are the ones with the motives and
money to buy expensive books, to redirect their investment and consumer
dollars, and to use these books to guide their management of their sexual
identity in the workplace.
47

Her analysis makes clear that whether published in the popular press or the academic
press, books about LGBT consumers nevertheless construct knowledge about the
lives and experiences of LGBT citizens.
While Badgett and other economists have detailed the reasons that early
research on LGBT consumers was inaccurate and newer research has made
significant corrections to the way studies are conducted about LGBT consumers,
marketers ignore most of the updated information. According to Sender, the more
accurate research “is inconvenient to marketers not only because it challenges the
ideal image of the ‘gay market,’ but because it undermines the notion of the
taxonomic collective upon which market segmentation rests.”
48
This ideal “gay
market” is driven by an image of an enumerable and desirable consumer population.
Marketers construct this image based on three interrelated assumptions:
homogeneity, separation, and essence. Together, these assumptions form a
“taxonomic collective,” or a group that is the result of institutional attempts to neatly
classify and organize a population according to one distinguishing feature, in this
case, homosexuality.

140
Sender explains that market segmentation has a homogenizing effect because
“market segmentation as a taxonomic collective, assumes that each taxonomic
collective shares one defining characteristic that renders all other differences within
the group unimportant.”
49
In the case of LGBT consumers, this homogeneity ignores
differences in class, race, gender, geography, and education —only one’s
homosexuality matters. The second assumption, separation, allows marketers to
deliver a distinct consumer group to advertisers. In order to deliver this kind of
clearly defined market niche, marketers “must assume that there is a stable,
identifiable, and discrete characteristic that identifies people in the target group.”
50

Essence, the third assumption of market segmentation, means that marketers can
undoubtedly identify a characteristic that distinguishes those within a target market
from those outside it. In the case of the LGBT consumer market, this essence
functions to maintain the distinctiveness of the LGBT market from the mainstream,
heterosexual market. In this way, Sender says, “the gay market [is] a fictional
construct organized around the characteristics of gayness.”
51
Because LGBT
consumers are asked to feature their sexuality as the basis of their consumption,
preferences and tastes are tied to sexual orientation.
Furthermore, the construction of the “gay market” means that those who fall
outside the narrow boundary of this niche market are invisible in the consumer
marketplace. As Sender says, the “gay market” “erases both the real diversity and
the political potential of queer lives.”
52
It produces what Sender calls “contained
visibility” for LGBT citizens, wherein a limited and narrow image of what it means

141
to be LGBT is held up as the image of gayness. This image is marked by wealth,
privilege, and good taste, which renders poor, working-class, uneducated, and LGBT
people of color invisible in the consumer marketplace. This image of a monolithic
“gay market” also erases gender differences among women, men, and transgender
people. In this way, despite substantial differences, the way the concept of the “gay
market” circulates in public discourse means that diversity among LGBT people gets
reduced to a superficial value, entirely eclipsed by sexual preference.
The focus on the sole characteristic of same-sex desire particularly disregards
gender-based differences. In 2001 the OpusComm group, GSociety, Inc., and the
S.I. Newhouse School at Syracuse University released what they described as the
first “comprehensive, in-depth” census of the economics and purchasing habits of the
LGBT market. LGBT news networks hailed the study as a victory, claiming that its
“findings are destined to change the way advertisers cozy up to the affluent gay and
lesbian market.”
53
While news reports about the 2001 census describe the findings
for lesbians and gays in equal terms, the economic statistics are actually substantially
different. In 2001, 15% of gay male couples reported having an annual income over
$100,000 compared to 3% of lesbian couples. The average household income of a
gay couple was $52,624, 41% above the national average while lesbian households
earned an average of $42,755, 26% above the national average. News reports in
publications such as the Gay and Lesbian International News Network, the
Associated Press, and Advertising Age treated this census report as a unanimous
decision that gay men and lesbian women were “advertising’s most elusive, yet

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lucrative market.”
54
Both the press and market research firms tend to conflate
lesbians and gays, ignoring the considerable financial disparities between them.
Because of the difficulty of accessing a variety of LGBT communities and
citizens, market researchers end up guessing the size of the “gay market” and
positioning this population as representative of all LGBT people. As Sender says,
the data that researchers gather tends to be presented as “the gay market rather than
as a segment.”
55
In this way, the LGBT consumer market is what Ien Ang describes
as a discursive construct. In her pioneering work on television audiences in
Desperately Seeking the Audience, Ang contends that audience measurement “works
through the production of knowledge rather than through direct domination.”
56
Like
TV audiences, consumer markets are discursive structures that work in the service of
an institutional control that is never actually met, and that, as Ang says, “has to be
continuously pursued by accumulating ever more information.”
57

While market researchers at Community Marketing claim that lesbians and
gays are not a homogenous consumer group and that their research methods attempt
to account for a wide variety of personal tastes, backgrounds, and attributes, the 2008
Lesbian Consumer Index is an attempt by market researchers to further quantify and
define a segment of the population in the interests of providing a sense of control to
companies and advertisers. Community Marketing calls on its clients to “toss out
your assumptions. There is no singular gay market…Today, gay marketing is about
segmentation and stratification. Gays and lesbians want to be reached on a personal
level, according to individual interests and preferences.”
58
This frenzied focus on

143
increasingly smaller market segments reflects a broader, society-based fracturing of
communities. In Breaking Up America: Advertisers and the New Media World
Turow argues, “the U.S. is experiencing a major shift in balance between society-
making media and segment-making media.”
59
Society-making media are forms of
media that carry the potential to engage disparate segments while segment-making
media promote the further fragmentation and separation of those segments. Mapping
what he calls a “fractured society,” Turow argues that contemporary American
media and marketing embrace the latter to the detriment of society at-large.
“Marketers” he says, “look for splits in the social fabric and then reinforce and
extend the splits for their own ends.”
60
Segment-making media prevents individuals
from learning about other identities, lifestyles, and social categories. As a result,
market segmentation erodes acceptance, tolerance, and interdependence.
The proliferation of niche cable channels poses similar concerns. Cable
channels such as Logo and Bravo are offered by cable companies as part of a channel
line-up, making them available to any customer surfing through channels. In this
way, TV viewers are more likely to encounter programming that may not fit their
social identities or political views. While this means that bundled cable channels tend
to, as media scholar Anthony Freitas says, “mirror other commercial television
stations by taking a status quo and ‘centrist’ perspective on social and political
issues,” there is a greater chance that viewers will come across material that may run
counter to their values.
61
Subscription-based networks such as here! and Showtime,
on the other hand, have to be purchased by individuals actively seeking out the kind

144
of programming specific to that network. Because of this business structure,
premium cable channels are not subject to federal regulation of their content and
offer edgier, more progressive programming. However, subscription channels also
often reinforce the viewer’s tendency only to watch programming that aligns with
her or his views

because she or he is unable to stumble upon the material on those
networks by channel surfing.
62

According to television scholar Amanda Lotz, common ownership practices
allow cable channels like Bravo to “operate…as a space to test boundary-pushing or
niche-focused content.”
63
To reduce costs, Bravo airs original reality programming
as well as reallocated shows, which were developed for broadcast networks.
“Reallocation” Lotz says, “consequently decreases the risk inherent in program
development; it also encourages programmers to pursue shows that would otherwise
be deemed too uncertain by offering an additional opportunity to recoup production
expenditures.”
64
Inter-conglomerate reallocations often come under scrutiny because
they foreclose opportunities for independent television productions. However, niche
cable channels such as Bravo distribute shows that would not have aired on
broadcast TV, allowing them to push “generic boundaries on a niche network or
influencing programming beyond.”
65
Moreover, as a financial practice, reallocation
offers Bravo a means of sustaining itself and amortizing costs for NBC Universal.
Andy Cohen, Bravo’s Senior Vice President of Production and Programming,
came to the network as it was reinventing itself in the early 2000s. In a phone
interview, Cohen dismissed any notion that Bravo seeks out shows that feature

145
lesbians and gays. Instead, he said, “When we go out looking for programming or
looking for characters to follow, we don’t say, let’s go find a gay male house
flipper…we just look for really talented people.”
66
He added, “Whether they’re a
gay man or a gay woman is secondary.”
67
For Cohen, the bottom line was looking
for “great shows,” ones that would be popular, would bring in advertiser support, and
increase Bravo’s audience.
Lesbian critics and viewers praised Work Out for being the first and only
reality show to feature a lesbian lead, and one in a relationship, as well as for doing
so in a “realistic” and “authentic” way. Lesbian journalist Lydia Marcus started her
glowing review of the show by describing it “one of the most realistic lesbian
relationships ever seen on television.”
68
For AfterEllen.com’s managing editor
Malinda Lo, not only is there a lesbian lead, but also, she explained, “lesbian
sexuality is presented on the series as completely normal, and the camera does not
shy away from showing same-sex kissing.”
69
These remarks suggest that Warner’s
openness about her lesbianism and sexuality in general comes across as no big deal,
treating lesbians and gays as “normal.”
Interviews as Industrial Discourse: Activism and “Post-Gay” Rhetoric
The goal to find “great shows” with “normal” lesbian women denotes a
common move in television to be “post-gay.” The term, like “post-racial” and “post-
feminist,” claims to represent social progress, wherein a TV character or personality
just “happens to be gay.” That is, sexual orientation does not define the totality of the
character or her or his motivations on a show. In popular discourse, “post-gay”

146
indicates that society has evolved to a place where the politics of identity categories
have been transcended. This goal is arguably a dangerous one, benefitting cable
TV’s and consumer culture’s needs, and ignoring and even perpetuating
contemporary forms of homophobia and heteronormativity. As Media scholar
Suzanna Walters says in her analysis of LGBT television characters,
in this new era of “tolerance,” homophobia in public realms such as TV more
often appears in ambiguous form… [T]he new homophobia takes the form of
a “gloves off” approach that many mistakenly see as the true sign of inclusion
and integration.
70

Amy Shpall, executive producer of Work Out, reinforced Cohen’s “post-gay”
rhetoric. For her, that the show’s star was lesbian was purely coincidental. Shpall
was employed by a production company hired by Bravo in 2005 to create a reality
show about a gym in Los Angeles. Shpall told me that she interviewed gym owners
of all kinds, and was never seeking one who was lesbian or gay. Once she found
openly lesbian Jackie Warner, owner of the Beverly Hills gym Sky Sport and Spa,
her goal was to show lesbians and gays as “completely normal.”
71
For her, the show
was a reflection of her own reality, in which lesbians and gays surround her in her
personal and professional lives.
Shpall, along with the other TV executives I interviewed, used their own
work environments to make sense of broader patterns in lesbian television
production. During a series of interviews in 2008 with openly lesbian and gay
network executives, I asked each of them why there are so many more
representations of gay men than lesbian women on TV. None had an answer, but all

147
drew on their work worlds to theorize a reason. In decoding their comments, I am
attempting to study the TV industry’s own self-representation. Their comments are a
form of industrial discourse, which requires, in television scholar John Caldwell’s
words, one to “intelligently unravel the many cultural, conceptual, economic,
corporate, social, professional, and interpersonal strands of self-disclosure that are
constantly thrown at the viewer and scholar alike as part of industrial habit.”
72
Their
reflections on their own work spaces are significant sites of cultural and economic
expressions in their own right.
When I asked Meredith Kadlec about here!’s lack of lesbian programming,
her tone turned frustrated. As an openly lesbian executive, she regarded the issue as
personally perplexing and aggravating. She concurred with my observation about
the disparity in representation: “I get a lot more male material [than lesbian
material]…I’d say it’s three to one. I haven’t seen a big increase in the lesbian
material we’re getting…There just isn’t a lot that comes in.”
73
The rest of her
response did not directly address the question; instead, she initially defended the
quality of here!’s lesbian representations, comparing them to the ubiquitous
characters on The L Word. She discussed the ways she believes programming at
here! does more than most networks to show more lesbian women, and more lesbian
women of color. For her, the cast of The L Word “looks all the same.”
74

Acknowledging that industry workers are active agents in the production of cultural
knowledge, she said, at here! “there is a conscious effort to not fall into the ‘all the

148
lesbians look the same,’ I don’t want to do that, I don’t think it’s a good thing to
do.”
75

Kadlec told me that most of here!’s employees are men, gay and straight, and
that “lesbians are a small minority of the company.”
76
Drawing on the make-up of
employees at here!, she seemed to defend her status as a minority in a company of
mostly men. At the same time that she claimed a sense of responsibility to produce
lesbian images, she rationalized her lack of power to create those representations
given here!’s male majority. This conversation underscored for me the ways in
which lesbian executives experience a sense of powerlessness based on the male to
female and gay to lesbian ratios of their networks. Showtime President Robert
Greenblatt affirmed Kadlec’s experience in the television industry; Showtime is
known for having a loyal lesbian and gay audience, although aside from the wildly
popular series The L Word, its programming has mostly featured gay male
characters. Speculating, Greenblatt said that, “just like there are more straight men
running the world than straight women, there’s probably more gay men running the
world than gay women.”
77
Based on his own experience, he said, “I know a lot more
gay male show runners and I know many fewer lesbians. I don’t know why.”
78

The tendency of openly lesbian and gay executives to use their work
environment to answer questions about programming trends uncovers ties between
being out and feelings of responsibility to make positive representational changes on
behalf of lesbians and gays. While John Caldwell’s research shows that film and
television industry workers by and large do not consider themselves “activists”

149
operating in support of underserved populations, openly lesbian and gay executives
are quick to own that title. Kadlec’s experience with lesbian friends and audiences
moved her to feel a sense of personal obligation to provide here!’s viewers with
quality TV shows about lesbian women.
Stephen Macias, a marketing executive at Regent Entertainment, which
owned here! at the time of my 2008 interview, likewise defined himself as an activist
for the LGBT community.
79
Before working in marketing, he was Entertainment
Media Director for GLAAD, where he worked on the organization’s national
entertainment media strategy. Before GLAAD, he worked with other LGBT media
organizations including Outfest and the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Film Festival.
Macias’ “activist” background, however, is limited to organizations that tend to
concentrate their work on mainstream projects, and thus signal the assimilation of
LGBT citizens into heteronormative society. While valuable and perhaps necessary
assets in the liberal fight for equal rights, organizations like GLAAD are also
problematic in the ways they privilege particular images of LGBT lives.
As a member of the GLAAD TV jury for two years, I witnessed and
participated in numerous debates about the importance of representational politics
and the “accuracy” of LGBT television images. While the jury’s criteria give high
marks to well-rounded, fallible, true-to-life LGBT characters, jury meetings had an
undeniable subtext of judging images based on how positively they represented “the
community.” Jurors expressed the sense that positive images are automatically a
televised argument for LGBT equality and civil rights. As one of the only panelists

150
not working in the television industry, I often found myself challenging the jury’s
unwavering support for simplistic and assimilationist representations. Self-conscious
of how “we” look to the rest of the world, jury members were overly influenced by
what they saw as the power of television to affect viewers’ opinions of LGBT
people.
While Macias indentified what he sees as an inherent gender divide in lesbian
and gay media production and distribution, he said, “I don’t know what that’s about,
but it’s a consistent problem.”
80
Audience research, he said, shows that
“programming and events succeed when men and women are separate.”
81
This
segregation confused Macias because at Regent, he said, lesbians and gays work and
socialize together; according to him there is no gender divide at the company.
Macias willingly addressed the disparity between lesbian and gay programming, but
his matter-of-fact tone suggests that this is not a problem worthy of further study.
Belying his investment in marketing’s financial bottom-line, he remarked: “If you
look at the things that perform better, they’re male oriented things.”
82
In business
terms, this means that the lack of lesbian programming does not concern a company
like Regent.
83
In other words, if research shows that it does not “perform” well (read:
make a profit), there is little motivation to invest money in the development,
production, and marketing of lesbian programming.
While these executives’ constructions of industry reality offer self-conscious,
activist agendas, they conceal and oversimplify the complex workings of television.
Their willingness to speak for lesbians and gays outside the TV industry, reveals

151
how television workers rely on personal experience to negotiate trends in their
industry. This kind of industrial discourse privileges executives’ control over
conceptions of program content and television audiences. As a result, their ideas
about programming tastes and processes of show development overlook the ways
that cable channels brand their network and programming to maintain a uniqueness
that distinguishes them from the hundreds of other niche channels.
“TV by Bravo”: Post-Network Branding
As profit-driven companies, cable channels still require minimum audience
numbers to get the advertising revenue needed to sustain and market themselves.
Basic cable networks receive partial funding from fees paid by cable TV systems for
the right to include a channel in its channel lineup. These channels also include
advertising to supplement those fees. Thus, as mentioned earlier, while cable
channels do not need the ratings required to keep broadcast networks afloat, they
must maintain a ratings level high enough to keep them on Nielsen’s charts. Sender
notes,
In order to be included in the Nielsen Cable Activity Report, the cable
equivalent to the broadcast television ratings, a cable channel has to be
available in at least 3.3% of U.S. households and to generate a minimum .1
rating in those households (approximately 100,000 homes).
84

This dynamic constantly forces cable channels to walk a fine line between targeting
small, loyal audiences and appealing to a big enough audience to keep advertisers
invested.

152
Examining network demands for revenue illuminates the ways in which TV
shows like Work Out and The L Word result from of careful and strategic choices
about what to film and air as well as from certain financial limitations. Work Out,
for example, had a relatively small budget; it did not have the luxury of filming each
cast member throughout the day as the show’s structure implies. It had one camera
crew, which forced the show to be, as Shpall says, “very scheduled.”
85
Producers
mapped out every hour of shooting time for each episode. They delivered to Bravo
executives an entire “beated out season” before shooting ever began.
86
The map for
the show was based on extensive pre-production interviews with each cast member.
Shpall describes the process: “We sit down with each one of them and grill them
about everything going on, big events, small events. We put it all on a board and then
say, okay, we want to follow this, this, and this.”
87
What producers choose is the
product of a combination of forces. According to Shpall, goals of the show include
avoiding gay stereotypes, making sure Warner looks like a “hero,” and airing
“outrageous” storylines that fit Bravo’s style. These kinds of principles guide what
ends up making it onto the screen, building a structure for the narrative.
When airing Work Out and other shows, Bravo uses the tagline “by Bravo,”
invoking the advertising language of companies that sell material goods (e.g. “by
G.E.,” “by Mattel”). The tagline explicitly points out that the network owns and
produces its own content and products. Emblematic of post-network ownership
structures under increased deregulatory practices, “by Bravo” illustrates how the
development of “original” programming has become an integral part of a cable

153
network’s brand identity. Looking at TV network branding strategies, television
scholar Joshua Green says, “The industry focus on ‘engagement’ across platforms
requires a re-imagining of what a television network looks like, how it behaves, and
how it constructs its audience.”
88
With its consistent use of dramatic and character-
driven reality shows, Bravo solidified its image as what television scholar Jane Feuer
calls “the ‘quality’ reality cable service.”
89
Work Out’s physically attractive core
cast, which includes openly lesbian Warner, two openly gay trainers, and several
straight trainers, provides eye candy for women and men, lesbian, gay, and straight.
Shpall’s experience with the network affirms the goal to target several
distinct demographics; while Work Out presents the cast as a group of trainers whom
the network simply “discovered” all working at Warner’s gym, it actually required
Shpall to find attractive trainers who would be comfortable talking on-camera.
Describing this process to me, she said: “it’s hard to find personal trainers who have
great bodies, can be articulate in front of the camera, are motivated, and have faces
that are camera friendly.”
90
This challenge forced Shpall and her team to seek out
trainers from all over Los Angeles, transferring them to Warner’s gym, and
structuring the show’s narrative to make it seem as though they had always worked
there. In addition, when casting Work Out’s trainers, Bravo executives requested
several “very straight” men to balance Doug and Jesse, two gay male trainers.
91

“Multicasting” for this show thus tries to appeal to straights and gays (females and
males) on the premise that there is someone for everyone to identify with and to
desire.

154
During The L Word’s six-season run, the show self-consciously
acknowledged that it served more than a lesbian audience. In interviews, Ilene
Chaiken, creator of The L Word, claimed that the show was for “everyone,” not just
for lesbian women. In a discussion with Los Angeles Times TV critic Howard
Rosenberg, Chaiken said that the network’s research showed that The L Word’s core
audience was lesbian and straight women. She also easily conceded that
heterosexual men do watch the show for the pleasure of seeing sex between two
women. For Chaiken, such is the reality of making a TV show: “we can’t afford to
give up audiences.”
92
As a show runner, Chaiken understands the business needs of
television and considers them inevitable; at the same time, she feels that meeting
these needs does not hinder the authenticity of The L Word’s lesbian representations.
Fans and critics, however, objected to the show’s use of voyeuristic male
characters that clearly took pleasure in watching two stereotypically feminine lesbian
women have sex. Critics such as The New York Times’ Alessandra Stanley contend
that while femme images may challenge traditional viewers’ sense of what being
lesbian looks like, these same images are constructed for the pleasure of the straight
male. Stanley’s review of The L Word calls the show “a manifesto of lesbian
liberation and visual eye candy for men.”
93
Such criticism is concerned with the way
that TV as a business commodifies images for the mainstream public, without regard
for political implications, and is particularly ignorant of the content’s connection to
pornography.
94
In the second season, the show introduces Mark, an aspiring
filmmaker who moves in with two of the main characters, Shane and Jenny. His new

155
project involves “putting his finger on” how lesbians work, especially in the
bedroom, centering on Shane, Jenny, and their friends, whom he pays 20 dollars an
interview to probe them about their sex lives on camera. Mark's friend persuades him
to install hidden cameras in the house in order to further capture his “objects of
study.” With nine “strategically and respectfully placed” cameras (placed
everywhere but the bathrooms) Mark becomes obsessed with Shane's bedroom
practices, envious of her ability to seduce any woman she wants. He goes so far as to
pay a woman to masquerade as a delivery girl and sleep with Shane, because, he
says, “reality just needs a little help sometimes.”
Mark's character, however, addresses concerns that parts of the show pander
too much to the viewing preferences of its voyeuristic straight male audience.
Through representing a projected audience of straight men “getting off” on
depictions of lesbian sex, the show problematizes their voyeurism. In addition, the
show intersperses Mark’s grainy, black and white surveillance footage with brightly-
lit color shots of the show, acknowledging that viewers are also in the position of
voyeurs. By offering two perspectives, The L Word reminds viewers that the show
itself is always mediated by a lens. Thus, while Mark offers a negative image of a
voyeuristic, heterosexual man, his character is an acknowledgement that the show
considers this demographic necessary to drawing a large enough audience to make
the show successful in business terms.

156
Something to Prove
Although TV executives and market researchers understand the demands for
sizeable and commodifiable audiences, they still set out to “prove” that particular
demographics exist. Trying to produce what they consider accurate representative
samples, market researchers use U.S. census data as their reference. This
methodology, however, produces deeply flawed information. The U.S. census began
counting same-sex couples in 2000, but it only includes lesbians and gays living in
the same household who specify the relationship between them as “partner.” While it
includes categories such as age, race, and gender, the U.S. census does not include an
individual’s sexual orientation. More specifically, the census does not include single
lesbians and gays, lesbian and gay couples living in separate households, or same-
sex couples who interpret their relationship as something other than “partners” (in
instances where states allow same-sex couples to marry legally or where same-sex
couples choose alternative family structures and refuse conventional designations for
their relationship). As a result, market researchers’ representative samples are only as
accurate as the very limited data provided by the U.S. census.
In addition, the promotion of findings in studies like the Lesbian Consumer
Index conceals the methods that market researchers use to produce publicity
materials like these. In the case of the Lesbian Consumer Index, researchers culled
the data from Community Marketing’s annual LGBT survey. From this single
survey, market researchers perform what they call “sub-group analysis” for various
identity groups; the Gay Consumer Index drew data from surveys in which

157
respondents self-identified as “male” and “gay,” while the Lesbian Consumer Index
drew from respondents who self-identified as “female” and “gay.” Market
researchers allege that this methodology guarantees accurate comparisons among
“sub-groups;” with a single survey for all respondents, researchers can precisely
compare consumer behaviors of different niche markets.
Yet, “sub-group analysis” also begs the question – what drives market
researchers to perform “sub-group analysis” at particular times? That is, Community
Marketing has conducted an annual survey of LGBT consumer behavior since 2000,
but only began creating a separate lesbian index in 2008. In a phone interview, Roth
told me that “we had a gut feeling that lesbians weren’t…not buying anything [and]
the research was able to prove that.”
95
While he acknowledged to me that market
researchers “observe and influence trends,”
96
Roth maintained that influence occurs
at the level of advertising, not in the research itself. Despite some pushing on my
end (“but why not do this research earlier?”), Roth refused to address the fact that
market researchers always had the means to produce materials like the Lesbian
Consumer Index, but did not use them.
The promotion of the Lesbian Consumer Index also reinforces the belief that
market researchers discover preexisting consumer markets. Falling prey to the idea
that their studies uncover a niche market, market researchers do not acknowledge the
ways in which their research itself helps to construct consumer markets. In Business,
Not Politics: The Making of the Gay Market Sender explains that market research
“selectively and strategically gathers, manipulates, and reports data gleaned from

158
[the] world.”
97
Through market segmentation, researchers shape images of lesbian
women to make them identifiable and sellable to advertisers. Because it draws on
cultural knowledge about lesbian women, market research data ends up reproducing
assumptions about sexual identity. Closely examining the 2008 Lesbian Consumer
Index, I learned that one of the ways this data gathering and manipulation works is
through sponsored survey questions. In my interview with Roth, I asked him why the
survey used specific brands such as Michelin Tires and Absolut Vodka. He
explained that advertising agencies approach Community Marketing each year and
pay for their brands to appear in the firm’s surveys. Roth described this strategy as
mutually beneficial because Community Marketing receives revenue from the
agencies sponsoring questions and the agencies receive what is called “third party
validation” for their products.
98
In other words, companies like Absolut use
consumer surveys to find new and profitable market opportunities for their products.
Absolut, as well as other companies that sponsor questions in Community
Marketing’s surveys, has a long history of advertising in LGBT publications and
sponsoring LGBT events; in 1979, Absolut Vodka was the first mainstream company
to advertise in The Advocate. At the time, the vodka was just being imported from a
Swedish producer and was virtually unknown. Consequently, executives’ choice to
advertise in an LGBT publication was not a significant risk to the product. In what
writer Dan Baker calls the “domino effect” once the product was successful, other
companies began advertising in LGBT newspapers and magazines.
99
Because
Absolut Vodka already knows it has a loyal LGBT customer base, sponsoring

159
questions in consumer surveys only reinforces its role in constructing niche markets.
That is, by incorporating questions about Absolut Vodka consumption into a survey
about consumer behavior, Community Marketing reinstills the belief that lesbian
women, because of their sexual orientation, are likely to drink that particular brand.
Although not explicitly stated, Sender’s argument builds on the work of
communications scholar Stuart Ewen, who, in his 1979 book Captains of
Consciousness, argues that consumers are not simply found; rather, they are created
by advertising He says, “the functional goal of national advertising was the creation
of desire and habits.”
100
Ewen sees the underlying dynamics of the system of needs
as being based not on the interests of consumers but rather on the historic needs of
capitalist production and overproduction. Applying his theories about consumer
markets specifically to the LGBT market, Sender explores the ways marketers and
media-makers construct meaning rather than simply represent it.
Market research also conceals lesbian and gay communities’ participation in
the construction of these markets. For LGBT citizens, representation and
participation in the consumer marketplace and in mainstream media has often been
seen as an essential route to social acceptance and political inclusion. Sender locates
agency in the construction of the “gay market” both with mainstream heterosexuals
involved in corporate marketing and with LGBT activists. Rather than being
imposed on LGBT citizens, the “gay market” was produced partly by members of
the LGBT community who saw access to and representation in the consumer
marketplace as a means to gain financially, and in terms of public visibility,

160
recognition, and cultural influence and authority. In my interview with Roth, he went
so far as to insist that “markets drive social change,” explicitly stating neoliberal
ideology.
101

As a market research firm dedicated to LGBT consumers, Community
Marketing considers itself uniquely positioned to meet the needs of this particular
population. As Turow points out in Breaking Up America, firms like Community
Marketing have historically “claimed the right to shape the words and pictures that
national marketers used to speak to and about their constituencies.”
102
In 2009,
GLAAD established an arm of its operations that monitors advertising content in all
media forms. Before that time, GLAAD focused solely on the LGBT content of
current television programs, film releases, and magazine and newspaper stories.
Turow reminds us that marketing and media industries have become intertwined to
such a degree that “what advertisers do gives them the power over the very structure
of the media system.”
103
This new focus on advertising signals the way in which
LGBT participation in the consumer marketplace has become an increasingly
significant part of the battle for inclusion in mainstream American cultural practices.
With increasing segmentation, market researchers seek out narrower and
narrower demographics. At the Gay and Lesbian Market Symposium, Roth and
Senior Projects Director David Paisley stressed that the 1990s had one “gay market,”
but the 21
st
century has many “gay markets” to tap into and that businesses must
understand the different LGBT niches and cater to the one(s) most appropriate to the
products or services they want to sell to consumers.
104
Community Marketing

161
considers itself an activist-oriented company “built on market research and
education.”
105
However, because the company packages lesbian and gay consumers
into commodifiable markets, in reality, like lesbian and gay TV executives and
producers, the company tries to disprove negative or inconvenient images of lesbians
and gays.
Showtime’s 2010 documentary series The Real L Word: Los Angeles is
arguably one of the most explicit examples of a television show trying to “prove” the
truthfulness of specific lesbian images. Throughout the six-year run of The L Word,
critics and audiences alike fumed that the show’s characters were not accurate
representations of lesbian women. Fans, bloggers, and journalists described the
show’s characters as “too beautiful, too thin, and too unrealistic.”
106
In response to
this criticism, Chaiken developed a reality series with Showtime that sets out to
“prove” that lesbian women really do look like the characters on the show. The
casting call for the show reads: “Are you and your friends proof the The L Word
exists in real life? Do you want to be part of groundbreaking television? The L Word
was a runaway iconic hit, affecting millions of lives – imagine what the real life
version will do!”
107
Drawing on critiques that the fictional show was unrealistic with
its depictions of wealthy, hyper-feminine, and fashion-forward lesbian characters,
the reality spin-off version reveals a deep investment in creating evidence that these
representations of lesbian women are accurate, enumerable, and waiting to be
discovered by television producers. Like Bravo’s Real Housewives franchise, which
has spread from city to city, The Real L Word: Los Angeles also leaves open the

162
possibility of “proving” that chic, beautiful, affluent lesbian women exist in cities all
around the country, not just in L.A.
Rather than debate the veracity or authenticity of these lesbian images, seeing
the characters as desirable to mainstream audiences because they’re stereotypically
feminine, I urge critics and scholars to see these images as being involved in the
production and maintenance of social reality itself, particularly embedded in issues
of class, the consumer marketplace, and shifts in the cable TV market. The impulse
to “prove” that lesbian women exist in commodifiable terms implies ambivalence
about the role of lesbian TV shows, consumers, and audiences in the post-network
era. While these lesbian representations will inevitably frustrate, and even infuriate
some viewers, they are critical indications of how cable television is grappling with
and navigating demands for smaller and smaller consumer niches. Lesbian
programming suggests that, for the moment, “multicasting” makes lesbianism
palatable to cable TV executives and advertisers.

163

Chapter Three Endnotes
1
Debbie Wells and Alison Zawack, “Lesbian Market Gains Strength with 2008 Consumer Survey,”
Jane and Jane, http://janeandjanemag.com/_pdf/12.18.08_PR_CMI_Survey.pdf.

2
Joseph Turow, Breaking Up America: Advertisers and the New Media World (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1997), 19.

3
Joseph Turow, Niche Envy: Marketing Discrimination in the Digital Age (Cambridge: MIT Press,
2006), 189.

4
Katherine Sender, “Dualcasting: Bravo’s Gay Programming and the Quest for Women Audiences,”
in Cable Visions: Television Beyond Broadcasting, ed. Sarah Banet-Weiser, Cynthia Chris, &
Anthony Freitas (New York: NYU Press, 2007), 314.

5
Julie Bindel, “Women: From Dysfunctional Dyke to Designer Doll,” The Guardian, June 12, 2006,
Features section.

6
Guinevere Turner, “The Age-old Question: How to stay young in Hollywood? Become a lesbian,”
The Advocate 998, December 4, 2007, 20.

7
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, “The L Word: Novelty in Normalcy,” The Chronicle of Higher Education,
January 16, 2004, Vol. 50, Issue 19, B10.

8
Sedgwick, “The L Word,” B10.

9
Marga Gomez, “Lesbian AWOL: Switching Teams Once in a While is Okay As Long As You’re
Hot,” The Village Voice, June 14, 2005, http://www.villagevoice.com/2005-06-14/people/lesbian-
awol/.

10
Patricia White, Uninvited: Classical Hollywood Cinema and Lesbian Representability
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 14.

11
Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture & the Body (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1993), 24-25.

12
Martha Gever, Entertaining Lesbians: Celebrity, Sexuality, and Self-Invention (New York:
Routledge, 2003), 170.

13
Linda Williams, “Personal Best: Women in Love,” JumpCut, July 1982, no. 27, 11.

14
“About Us,” Elle, http://www.elle.com/aboutus/.

15
Lya Carrera, “Style from the streets ATKM and DITC reinvent lesbian fashion,” Curve 18, no. 7
(September 2008), 52.

16
Sender, “Dualcasting,” 311.

164

17
Katherine Sender, Business, Not Politics: The Making of the Gay Market (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2004), 174.

18
Ibid., 189.

19
Danae Clark, “Commodity Lesbianism,” in The Gay and Lesbian Studies Reader, ed. Henry
Abelove, Michele A. Barale, & David M. Halperin (New York: Routledge, 1993), 186.

20
Ibid., 190.

21
Alessandra Stanley, “Sex and the Gym: ‘Work Out’ and the Gaying of Bravo,” The New York
Times, July 19, 2006, Section E.

22
Sender, “Dualcasting,” 309.

23
“NBC Universal Fact Sheet,” Hoovers,
http://www.hoovers.com/company/NBC_Universal_Cable/ryxxfci-1.html (accessed May 2, 2007).

24
Marisa Guthrie, “Bravo is Casting a Wider Net with Deal for Online Fan Site,” Daily News, March
14, 2007, 83.

25
Jon Lafayette, “Bravo Making Digital Mandatory: All Projects to Be Designed with Broadband
Components,” Television Week, May 15, 2006, 5.

26
“How Bravo’s President Lures ‘Affluencers’ to Bravo Fold,” Advertising Age, April 9, 2007, S-2.

27
Jim Hopkins, “Media offer new outlets for gay audiences: TV, radio, Web evolve as spending
power, acceptance grows,” USA Today, March 2, 2006, Money Section.

28
“Showtime Networks Launches Phase 2 of alt.SHO.com Targeting Viewers/Consumers,” Business
& Entertainment Editors, September 28, 2000.

29
“Websites Tap Lesbian Online Market, ” Marketing to Women 13, no. 3.

30
Thomas Roth, telephone interview by author, June 22, 2009.

31
Ibid.

32
Justin Lewis, Constructing Public Opinion: How Political Elites Do What They Like and Why We
Seem To Go Along With It (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 27.

33
Larry Gross, “Gideon Who Will be 25 in the Year 2012: Growing Up Gay Today,” International
Journal of Communication, Vol. 1 (2007): 121-138.

34
Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 10.

35
Microsites are small, self-contained Web destinations that are separate from a company’s primary
site, have their own distinct URLs, and consist entirely of content focused on a particular product or
service. Because of their narrower focus, they function as hubs for a specific marketing campaign.

165

36
Matthew Skallerud, Presentation at the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Market Symposium, April 30, 2009.

37
Ellen Seiter, The Internet Playground: Children’s Access, Entertainment, and Mis-Education (New
York: Peter Lang, 2005), 101.

38
Larry Gross, Contested Closets: The Politics and Ethics of Outing (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1993), 3.

39
Ellen Seiter, “Practicing at Home: Computers, Pianos, and Cultural Capital,” in Digital Youth,
Innovation, and the Unexpected, ed. Tara McPherson, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur
Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008): 27–52.

40
Mark Andrejevic, “Reality TV is Undemocratic,” Flow, September 22, 2006,
http://flowtv.org/2006/09/reality-tv-is-undemocratic/.

41
Ibid.

42
Robert Greenblatt, interview by author, June 8, 2008.

43
Eileen R. Meehan, “Why We Don’t Count: The Commodity Audience,” in Logics of Television:
Essays in Cultural Criticism, ed. Patricia Mellencamp (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990),
118.

44
Ibid., 118.

45
M. V. Lee Badgett, “Review: A Queer Marketplace: Books on Lesbian and Gay Consumers,
Workers, and Investors,” Feminist Studies 23, no. 3 (1997): 607-632. 608.

46
Ibid., 608.

47
Ibid,. 608.

48
Sender, Business, Not Politics, 154.

49
Ibid., 154.

50
Ibid., 163.

51
Ibid., 168.

52
Ibid., 173.

53
Gay/Lesbian International News Network, “Gay Purchasing Power a Significant Force, Major
Study Reveals,” October 14, 2001, http://www.glinn.com/gaydem.htm.

54
Ibid.

55
Sender, Business, Not Politics, 152.

56
Ien Ang, Desperately Seeking the Audience (London: Routledge, 1991), 8.

166

57
Ibid., 8.

58
Community Marketing Inc. Gay and Lesbian Market Research,
http://www.communitymarketinginc.com/.

59
Turow, Breaking Up America, 3.

60
Ibid., 7.

61
Anthony Freitas, “Gay Programming, Gay Publics: Public and Private Tensions in Lesbian and Gay
Cable Channels,” in Cable Visions: Television Beyond Broadcasting, ed. Sarah Banet-Weiser,
Cynthia Chris, & Anthony Freitas (New York: NYU Press, 2007), 226.

62
Ibid., 226.

63
Amanda Lotz, The Television Will be Revolutionized (New York: NYU Press, 2007), 126.

64
Ibid., 126.

65
Ibid., 127.

66
Andy Cohen, telephone interview by author, May 22, 2008.

67
Ibid.

68
Lydia Marcus, “Jackie Warner Talks Back,” AfterEllen.com, September 5, 2006,
http://www.afterellen.com/People/2006/9/warner.html.

69
Malinda Lo, “‘Work Out’ Complicates Lesbian Stereotypes,” AfterEllen.com, May 15, 2007,
http://www.afterellen.com/TV/2007/5/workoutseason2.

70
Suzanna Danuta Walters, All the Rage: The Story of Gay Visibility in America (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2003), 113.

71
Amy Shpall, interview by author, February 22, 2008.

72
John Thornton Caldwell, “Cultures of Production: Studying Industry’s Deep Texts, Reflexive
Rituals, and Managed Self-Disclosures,” in Media Industries: History, Theory, and Method, ed.
Jennifer Holt and Alisa Perren (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 199.

73
Meredith Kadlec, interview by author, January 22, 2008.

74
Ibid.

75
Ibid.

76
Ibid.

77
Robert Greenblatt, interview by author, June 3, 2008.

167

78
Ibid.

79
In January 2009, PlanetOut, Here Networks, and Regent Entertainment Media announced a merger
to Create Here Media Inc. The public company became Here Media Inc. Under the terms of the
merger, Here Media owns and operates a variety of media assets including: Here Studios, Here Films,
Here! Networks, as well as print brands including Out, The Advocate, HIV Plus, and Alyson Books.
Also, the company's online properties include Gay.com, Planetout.com, Advocate.com, Out.com and
SheWired.com.

80
Stephen Macias, interview by author, February 21, 2008.

81
Ibid.

82
Ibid.

83
Ibid.

84
Sender, “Dualcasting,” 303.

85
Amy Shpall, interview by author, February 22, 2008.

86
Ibid.

87
Ibid.

88
Joshua Green, “What Does an American Television Network Look Like?” Flow, November 16,
2007, http://flowtv.org/2007/11/what-does-an-american-television-network-look-like/.

89
Jane Feuer, “Bravo! Stars: An Ode to Jeff, Bethenny, and Tabatha,” Flow, September 4, 2008,
http://flowtv.org/2008/09/bravo-stars-an-ode-to-jeff-bethenny-and-tabathajane-feuer-university-of-
pittsburgh/.

90
Amy Shpall, interview by author, February 22, 2008.

91
Ibid.

92
Ilene Chaiken, Q&A with Howard Rosenberg at the University of Southern California, November
11, 2008.

93
Alessandra Stanley, “Women Having Sex, Hoping Men Tune In,” The New York Times, January 16,
2004, Section E.

94
For decades, debates about pornography have raged among feminist media scholars. Scholars such
as Michelle Citron, B. Ruby Rich, Chris Straayer, and Linda Williams, to name just a few, have
debated the relationships between media, women, and pornography. Much of what is called lesbian
“mainstreaming,” where lesbianism is an accessory to heterosexuality, has its roots in girl-on-girl
pictorials of the 1950s, in magazines like Playboy. These arguments continue today in response to
TV industry claims that “lesbian sex, girl-on-girl, is a whole cottage industry for heterosexual men.”
Even the entertainment media director of GLAAD told the New York Daily News that the

168

pornography connection in TV shows is a smart cross-over move, attracting advertisers and a wide
range of viewers.

95
Thomas Roth, telephone interview by author, June 22, 2009.

96
Ibid.

97
Sender, Business, Not Politics, 142.

98
Thomas Roth, telephone interview by author, June 22, 2009.

99
Dan Baker, “A History in Ads: The Growth of the Gay and Lesbian Market,” in Homo Economics:
Capitalism, Community, & Lesbian & Gay Life, ed. Amy Gluckman and Betsy Reed (New York:
Routledge, 1997), 12.

100
Stuart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of Consumer Culture
(New York: McGraw Hill, 1979), 37.

101
Thomas Roth, telephone interview by author, June 22, 2009.

102
Turow, Breaking Up America, 80.

103
Ibid., 11.

104
Notably, Roth and Paisley were clear that businesses should not target a singular “gay market” yet
they consistently described a singular LGBT “community.”

105
Thomas Roth, telephone interview by author, June 22, 2009.

106
Jill Dolan, “Life After ‘The L Word,’” The Feminist Spectator, April 23, 2009,
http://feministspectator.blogspot.com/2009/04/life-after-l-word-at-times-talks.html.

107
The Godfather, “The Real L Word, ” Boxed Lunch: LA Lesbians, September 23, 2009,
http://boxedlunchlalesbians.blogspot.com/2009/09/real-l-word.html

169
Chapter Four
Where the “Lavender Menace” Lives: California’s Proposition 8 and the
Limits of Television Representation
At once sign of the most public challenge and most
humiliating defeat, gay marriage serves as one of the
most contradictory of public images.
-Suzanna Walters, All the Rage:
The Story of Gay Visibility in America
1

On November 4
th
, 2008, the same day that Barack Obama was elected
America’s first African American President, California voters passed Proposition 8,
a state-wide ballot initiative that limited marriage to a union of one man and one
woman. Prop 8 overturned the California Supreme Court’s May 2008 ruling that
marriage was a fundamental right, which could not be denied to lesbian and gay
couples.
2
On June 2
nd
, only weeks after the Justices issued their decision,
homophobic activists qualified Prop 8 for the November ballot. Its official summary
read: the measure “changes the California Constitution to eliminate the right of
same-sex couples to marry in California.” On November 4
th
, Prop 8 passed with
52% of the vote.
Television commercials dominated the campaigns for and against Prop 8. The
commercials ran from September 29
th
to November 4
th
, 2008. Supporters and
opponents raised $39.9 million and $43.3 million, respectively, making it the
highest-funded ballot initiative campaign in California history.
3
Post-election
polling indicated that of the different media forms used by the campaigns, TV

170
commercials were far more influential than direct mailings, telephone calls, or
official websites.
4
The “Yes on Prop 8” campaign, which sought to take away the
rights of lesbians and gays to marry in California, aired TV commercials that
claimed that marriage for lesbians and gays has everything to do with religion and
education. By contrast, the “No on Prop 8’s” television commercials tend to either
rebut claims made by “Yes” campaign commercials or appealed to voters to treat
lesbians and gays “equally” and “fairly.” During the campaign, newspaper articles
focused more on the strengths and weaknesses of the television commercials’ content
and rhetoric than on the legal issues at-hand in the measure. Arguing that the
campaigns’ commercials made it difficult to tell exactly what was at stake in the
measure, The Los Angeles Times ran a series of headlines that read: “No on 8’s
White Bias,” “Prop 8 commercials’ Invisible Gays,” and “Missing from Prop 8 Ads,
Gays.”
The passage of Prop 8 generated a heated debate over “what went wrong”
with the “No on Prop 8” campaign. The loudest criticism was that the TV
commercials did not feature lesbians or gays. Prop 8 opponents argued that leaving
lesbians and gays out of TV commercials was tantamount to putting them back in the
closet. According to Steve Smith, the campaign’s lead consultant, “there was a
hypersensitivity to staying in the closet” throughout the campaign.
5
On February
26
th
, 2009, over 400 people gathered in San Francisco to vent their frustrations to the
“No on Prop 8” campaign leaders. Echoing newspaper articles that criticized the
campaign in the months leading up to election day, many citizens at this town hall-

171
style meeting felt that the “No on Prop 8” campaign made a fatal mistake by not
including lesbians and gays in its TV commercials.
During the meeting, campaign leaders acknowledged that they had made a
mistake in handing over decisions about the commercials to several marketing
consultants. The fact that the “No on Prop 8” campaign reached out to marketing
consultants, however, is not unusual; as evidenced by local and national elections
over the past decade, campaigns increasingly see value in combining the high
production values and high concept ideas of brand advertising with political
messages. In a 2005 interview, the Human Rights Campaign’s director of marriage
projects, Seth Kilborn, articulated this perspective; he said, “we need to figure out
new ways to communicate with the American public…We need to really get the help
of some of the best creative minds in the ad and communication world.”
6

In response to objections that lesbian and gay images were absent from the
“No on Prop 8” campaign, the “Get to Know Us First” campaign took to the
airwaves after Prop 8’s passage with 30-second Public Service Announcements
(PSAs) that aired throughout the state in January and February 2009. Organized by
John Ireland, an openly gay Los Angeles-based filmmaker and journalist, the PSAs
feature lesbian and gay families describing their love for each other, their life-long
commitment to one another, and the myriad ways in which they resemble families
with heterosexual parents. The “Get to Know Us First” campaign produced a total of
seven PSAs: two featuring lesbian families and five featuring gay families. Similarly,
the official “No on Prop 8” campaign aired a total of five commercials, two with

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lesbian couples. Both of these commercials, however, markedly contain lesbian
visibility. One “No on Prop 8” commercial only talks about a lesbian couple, but
does not show them, and the other displays several brief photographs of a lesbian
woman and her family near the end of the commercial. In the context of my analysis
of the rise of lesbian characters and personalities in the previous chapters, this
chapter considers the limits of lesbian representation on television in the early 21
st

century. This study asks why lesbian women were scarcely visible in the “No on
Prop 8” and “Get to Know us First” campaigns given that the TV landscape is
increasingly populated by lesbian characters and personalities. Using both campaigns
as case studies, I investigate the ways that political campaigns reveal and reinforce
cultural norms about women and lesbian sexuality.
This chapter foregrounds the “No on Prop 8” and “Get to Know Us First”
campaigns’ television commercials, data from polling and focus groups, and
interviews with consultants who designed the campaigns. In discussing those who
produced the campaigns, I try to bear in mind television scholar John Caldwell’s
warning that such media workers often reveal “entrenched interpretative frameworks
and self-analysis.”
7
While the workers I interviewed seemed genuinely eager to talk
to me about the careful work they had done on this polarizing campaign, they often
seemed unaware of the visual and ideological constraints of lesbian TV
representations. These limits occur at three primary levels: in campaign research, in
TV commercial content and production, and in the distribution of the commercials in
cable and broadcast markets. This chapter integrates economics, policy issues,

173
textual analysis, and qualitative methods to enable a productive understanding of
Prop 8’s approach to lesbian representation. This chapter then is not about
establishing an “authentic” story of California’s Prop 8. Rather, by synthesizing
textual analysis, polling and focus group data, and interviews with campaign staff,
this chapter maps the cultural construction of lesbian women in LGBT television
campaigns.
The Political Campaign as Cultural Form
The idea that the “No on Prop 8” campaign did not let lesbians and gays
“speak for themselves” goes against the civil rights mantle of coming out, being
visible, and being seen and heard by straight Americans across the nation. Activists
such as Harry Hay, Phyllis Lyon, Del Martin, Harvey Milk, Larry Kramer, Urvashi
Vaid, and Judy Shepherd (mother of Matthew Shepherd) have used strategies of
public visibility to legitimate the status of lesbians and gays in society, to foster pride
and community among lesbian and gay people, and to convince state and federal
governments that lesbians and gays are worthy of equal treatment under the law.
The “getting to know us” framework has been heralded as crucial to increasing
tolerance and open-mindedness across the country; as communications scholar
Katherine Sender notes, “Commentators express optimism that increasing visibility
through media facilitates a wider acceptance of gay and lesbian people among
heterosexuals.”
8
While scholars question and contest its efficacy, visibility
nonetheless remains the battle cry of mainstream LGBT activists, media advocacy
groups, and civil rights organizations.
9

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The “Get to Know Us First” campaign reflects a strong belief in the power of
individual stories, a belief that not just seeing, but also getting to know lesbian and
gay couples and families can impact others’ views. In “Talking Gay,” Todd Mundt,
director of content and media at Iowa Public Radio, makes a strong call for
presenting “our concerns more widely to mainstream media.”
10
He explores the
ways that LGBT people talk about themselves in television programs in light of the
media’s growing attention to LGBT characters, the establishment of LGBT dedicated
channels, and shifting political views about sexual minorities. He urges LGBT
citizens to find “new ways to express ourselves to each other and to straight
America.” He continues, “The process is a part of strengthening our community
bonds and increasing the respect we need to have for our own community.”
11
The
“Get To Know Us First” campaign takes up Mundt’s call.
Attempting to redress the lack of lesbian and gay images in the official “No
on Prop 8” commercials, the “Get to Know Us First” campaign produced seven
PSAs featuring lesbian and gay families. In the PSAs, the families express their love
and strong sense of family values to viewers. The PSAs produced by the campaign
reflect a concerted effort to reach Spanish-speaking voters; unlike the overwhelming
whiteness of the “No on Prop 8” commercials, the “Get to Know Us First” PSAs
feature black, Latino, white, and interracial families. The campaign contends that by
reaching Spanish-speaking voters, “many minds will change when culturally-held
beliefs about the ‘stereotypical gay’ begin to break down…as the negative images
are replaced with authentic ones.”
12
Vital to their strategy is the belief that lesbians

175
and gays need to be the messengers of their own stories. At a 2008 press conference
for “Get To Know Us First,” participants were reminded that they were there to
speak their truth, “to tell your story, that’s the strength of it. We are all the experts of
our families.”
13
The campaign’s purpose was to capture the hearts and minds of
people who do not understand why marriage is so important to lesbian and gay
couples and families.
Both the “Yes” and “No” on Prop 8 campaigns, by contrast, used straight,
white “everyday” citizens and government officials to convey their messages. Using
straight people to speak on behalf of lesbians and gays, the campaigns drew on
fictional television’s long history of framing LGBT characters as a defense of
normality and right to equality. As Suzanna Walters observes, in most shows,
“Gayness is seen through the eyes of confused heterosexuals, struggling with their
own actions and feelings.”
14
In Larry Gross’ Up From Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay
Men and the Media in America, he adds that between the 1960s and the 1990s, the
number and scope of lesbian and gay representations increased greatly, appearing on
shows across television markets. But, he says, “those appearances are almost
invariably in the context of some controversy centering on our right to pursue lives
in ways that heterosexuals take for granted.”
15
In this way, television narratives tend
to depict lesbians and gays struggling for acceptance by heterosexuals rather than
featuring stories about well-adjusted, already out lesbian and gay characters.
Although a recurrent narrative device in fictional programming, use of
unambiguously straight people to tell lesbian and gay stories in the No on 8

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campaign came out of polling and focus group research. While the public “No on
Prop 8” campaign got underway immediately after the initiative qualified for the
November 2008 ballot, polling began on the issue a year and a half earlier. The
campaign was run by a group of prominent leaders from civil rights organizations
including the HRC (Human Rights Campaign), the ACLU (American Civil Liberties
Union), NCLR (National Center for Lesbian Rights), and Equality California. In
detailing the methodologies of the campaign, I am attempting to go beyond the
critique of polling as sheer manipulation that says little about citizens’ lived
experiences. As communications scholar Justin Lewis writes, “Polls may not
produce objective, scientific knowledge, but they produce something – and we need
to consider what that something might tell us.”
16
The data used by “No on Prop 8”
leaders to establish the message of the campaign, and the strategies used to deliver
that message, are not only information gathering tools, but are cultural forms that
construct knowledge about lesbian women and lesbian sexuality.
As with any political campaign, leaders consider polling and focus group
results reliable and accurate reflections of public beliefs. The dicta implicitly used to
produce these data however, are, in sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s words, “a whole
series of distortions.”
17
They depend on a set of presuppositions, which Bourdieu
says, produce “the artefact of public opinion” rather than a straightforward reflection
of public sentiment.
18
In “Public Opinion Does Not Exist,” he questions the three
underlying assumptions of public opinion polls: everyone is in the position to have
an opinion: opinions are all of equal value: and there is consensus on what questions

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are worth asking. Challenging these foundational tenets, Bourdieu argues that polls
create “the idea that there is such a thing as a unanimous public opinion, and so
legitimates a policy and strengthens the power relations that underlie it or make it
possible.”
19
Questions used in public polling are always and inevitably interpreted
and reinterpreted by people in relation to their own interests and world views. In
addition, the questions rely on the ideal of the autonomous voter-individual. In this
way, public opinion is constructed, not simply made legible by the labor of pollsters
and data analysts.
Public polling concluded that 80% of California voters was already “decided”
on Prop 8, leaving 20% “undecided.” Pollsters and campaign staff tend to treat these
numbers as independent verifications of public attitudes rather than what Lewis aptly
describes as “structured interventions in public discourse.”
20
What these percentages
mean, Steve Smith said, is that pollsters assume nothing will change the minds of
that 80% of voters. Consequently, the campaign’s challenge becomes ignoring that
80%, directing campaign messages only to the “undecided” 20% of voters. Smith
added that while the official percentage of undecided voters was 20, he believed that
the actual number was closer to only 10 to 15%.
21

Both campaigns sought to persuade voters whose opinions were determined
to be either unformed or changeable. The “No on Prop 8” campaign called these
voters “undecided” and the “Get to Know Us First” campaign called them the
“movable middle.” Because the “Get to Know Us First” campaign launched after
the passage of Prop 8, voters who “may not recall how s/he voted” were those in the

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“movable middle.” The campaign determined who was in the “movable middle”
based on data from The Pew Research Center for People and the Press. In addition,
the campaign used the Pew Center’s 2008 biennial news consumption survey, which
determined that there are four distinct segments in the news audience: “Integrators”
(23% of the public), who get news from both “traditional” sources as well as the
internet, the less populous “Net-Newsers” (13%), who tend to turn to the internet for
news, the “Disengaged” (14%) who show low levels of interest in the news and in
news consumption, and “Traditionalists,” the largest segment (46%) who have a
median age of 52, are less educated, and prefer television as their source of news.
Ireland said that the “Get To Know Us First” campaign targets the “Traditionalists”
as well as specific groups of women, rural demographics, and religious voters.
The line between the “decided” and the “undecided” on a political issue is
often under-theorized and taken for granted. The constant use of these categories
begs an examination of their limits and potentials. As Lewis says, terms like these
“may not reflect the world they signify, but they do relate to it, as well as to the
shifting battleground of meaning in which the popular is configured.”
22
The
categories of “decided” and “undecided” imply that there are pre-existing positions
on any given issue, which voters will inevitably take with proper convincing.
Campaign rhetoric and public discourse speak about, “‘taking a position”’ as if,
Bourdieu says, “the positions are there already to be taken.”
23
Consequently, political
campaigns seek to persuade voters to take one of those positions. Returning to
Bourdieu’s challenge that there is in fact consensus about which questions are worth

179
asking, there is a similar and causal consensus within political campaigns about the
stances one can take in relation to those questions. Bourdieu briefly touches on this
point to make the case that voters are inclined to take a particular position based on
their own interests, experiences, and socio-economic status. The idea that positions
exist before one takes them, however, is crucial within itself. Both the “No on Prop
8” and “Get to Know Us First” campaigns constructed the debate with two positions:
voters could only be “for” or “against” marriage rights for lesbians and gays. As a
practical matter, that was true. While framing a political issue as a black and white,
either/or issue is an intrinsic component of modern campaigns that rely on “Yes” or
“No” votes, the construction of Prop 8’s two sides ultimately plays an essential role
in limiting the terms and televisual representations of the marriage debate.
Political campaigns rely on what is known as a “disciplined message.”
24

Amongst the committee formed to fight Prop 8, however, Smith observed an
unusually high amount of internal disagreement about what the campaign’s message
should be. Smith described the campaign as more “contentious internally” than other
campaigns he had worked on.
25
LGBT civil rights leaders and organizations
involved in the “No on Prop 8” campaign lacked the kind of internal coherence and
unified leadership that have helped other campaigns defeat similar ballot initiatives.
26

California’s 2005 campaign for “No on Proposition 73,” for example, did not use the
word “choice” in any of its advertising until six days before the election. The
measure was an attempt to amend the California Constitution to bar abortion for an
unemancipated minor until 48 hours after the physician notifies the minor's parent or

180
legal guardian, except in a medical emergency or with a parental waiver. Polling and
focus groups indicated that not using the word “choice” would get the “No” votes
needed by the campaign. Smith, who also worked on that campaign, explained that
the leadership for “No on Prop 73” was concentrated in the Planned Parenthood
organization. The reason the campaign’s strategy was successful, he insisted, was
that Planned Parenthood leaders understood the message required to defeat the
initiative and were able to convey that message to their pro-choice base. Although
Planned Parenthood leaders ideologically disagreed with the approach of the
campaign, they understood its necessity in defeating Prop 73, the goal at the time.
The inability (or refusal) of the “No on Prop 8” campaign to recognize the
need for pragmatism, or to convincingly communicate that message to its voter base,
suggests that LGBT leaders are less able to reconcile and communicate a
“disciplined message” to both their base and to “undecided” voters. This is not to
say that LGBT activists, scholars, and organizations have not acknowledged internal
strife for decades. Despite bitter contention about issues of race, class, gender, and
gender identity, however, the mainstream LGBT civil rights movement consistently
argues that the common cause is still the same: the fight for visibility and equality.
Part of that common cause is an apparent consensus that coming out, being publicly
visible, and making LGBT stories seen and heard is the incontestable route to
achieving legal and cultural equality.
These principles, however, did not emerge in the “No on Prop 8” campaign’s
research. Smith, along with pollsters David Binder and Celinda Lake, designed and

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led the polling and focus groups that were used to create the “No on Prop 8” TV
commercials. Potential focus group participants were screened three times before
being accepted into the final groups. They were asked a range of questions related to
religious beliefs, political affiliation, and views on marriage. If potential participants
self-identified as lesbian or gay in the screening process, they were eliminated from
the focus group because the voters targeted by the “No on Prop 8” campaign (as well
as by the “Yes on Prop 8” campaign) were those considered “undecided” on the
issue.
27

Smith and his colleagues determined the “No on Prop 8” campaign’s strategy
based on themes that emerged from the focus groups. The first piece of data was that
“undecided” voters felt there was no good public spokesperson for the “No” position.
Because Prop 8 threatened to take away same-sex couples’ right to marry, focus
group participants reported that they did not want to see lesbian and gay couples in
the commercials because they felt they were inevitably self-interested. Instead,
“undecided” voters said they wanted to see TV commercials that featured “neutral
figures” but they could not determine who exactly those figures might be. Smith and
his colleagues decided that a relatively “neutral figure” would be a family member of
a lesbian or gay person. As a result, the campaign initially chose to feature straight
citizens talking about their lesbian and gay family members.
In addition, focus group participants expressed their view that as “undecided”
voters, they did not find the parallel between black civil rights and LGBT civil rights
convincing; they felt that racial discrimination operates differently than

182
discrimination against lesbian and gay couples. Scholar and activist John D’Emilio
describes this distinction in the introduction to Creating Change: Sexuality, Public
Policy, and Civil Rights. He writes:
The context of civil rights struggles has looked very different around matters
of race and sexual identity… For sexual minorities, while the immorality and
injustice of invidious discrimination remain the same, its specific
manifestations, and therefore the most effective means of resistance, are
different.
28

This view is entirely opposed, however, to the legal arguments made by LGBT civil
rights attorneys. In fact, the California Supreme Court’s May 2008 decision was
based on the claim that barring lesbian and gay couples from marriage discriminates
on the basis of sex and sexual orientation, violating the fundamental right to marry,
which is protected by the California Constitution’s guarantees of privacy, due
process, and intimate association.
Other successful legal cases about marriage rights including Goodridge v.
The Department of Public Health (2003) in Massachusetts, and Iowa’s Varnum v.
Brien (2009) drew parallels between black and LGBT civil rights, arguing that the
ban on marriage between blacks and whites (overturned federally in the 1967
Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia and overturned in California in 1948 in the
case Perez v. Sharp) was found to be discriminatory. So too, lawyers contend, is
forbidding marriage between two people of the same sex. Yet, the “No on Prop 8”
campaign’s focus group data claimed that using the black civil rights framework of
discrimination was less effective than arguing that lesbians and gays should not be
“treated differently” from heterosexual citizens. Based on these findings, “treated

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differently” became the semantic choice of the “No on Prop 8” campaign and was
the thematic basis for most of its TV commercials. By offering focus group
participants these two options (discrimination and treated differently), the campaign
proffered the idea that such strategies are pre-existing entities. In this way, not only
are positions there for the taking, but political strategies are too.
While the “No on Prop 8” campaign’s polling and focus group data suggest a
straightforward summation of pure, unbiased, and individual opinions, they are
actually the product of established political positions. “In real situations,” Bourdieu
says, “opinions are power relations between groups.”
29
These “power relations”
exist both in the space of the focus groups as well as in participants’ lived
experiences. The opinions generated in the focus groups thus need to be seen as
discourses, rather than as scientific methods of enumeration. As such, the data, as
Lewis says, do “not mean that those constructions are not meaningful in people’s
lives. What is important is how these constructions are used and how they relate to
people and practices.”
30
The conclusions drawn by the “No on Prop 8” focus group
staff directly relate to particular strategies of the campaign to normalize and contain
lesbian visibility.
The “Normalcy” of Lesbianism
The assessment by campaign leaders that the “No on Prop 8” campaign
would approach the issue of marriage rights through the framework of “difference”
rather than discrimination illustrates what Bourdieu calls the “dominant
problematic.”
31
That is, the set of questions asked in polling and focus groups

184
reveals the interests of particular social and political groups, weighted toward those
in positions of power. In the case of the “No on Prop 8” argument, a profound drive
existed to convince voters that lesbian and gay couples are the same as heterosexual
couples and have the same needs and desires for marriage. As Walters notes,
While there is no measurable correlation between desire to marry and desire
to assimilate, testimonies and anecdotal evidence suggest that many gays who
desire marriage ceremonies are precisely those gays who are most interested
in showing straight America that they are just the same as them.
32

The campaign’s choice to build the TV commercial campaign around straight
citizens arguing for their lesbian family members’ rights as a matter of equal
treatment, belied the campaign’s broader goals to depict a homonormative ideal of
lesbian and gay couples.
Framing the “No on Prop 8” argument through the lens of normalcy and
sameness rather than discrimination, the campaign established a generic appeal to the
notion of equal protection under the law. Through this strategy, the campaign hoped
to appeal to the so-called “Golden Rule” – “Do unto others as you would have them
do unto you.” Post-election research by Freedom to Marry, a national, non-profit
coalition that fights for lesbian and gay marriage rights, reported that “Americans
organically and consistently name the Golden Rule as one of their basic values, and a
tenet by which they live their lives.”
33
In this way, sexuality was not the issue at-
hand. That is, the campaign centered the rhetoric of “fairness” and “equality” and in
doing so decentered lesbian sexuality.

185
The “No on Prop 8” campaign’s decision to avoid the language of
discrimination highlights this decentering of lesbianism. Understood in legal terms as
prejudice in action, discrimination functions as an exclusionary discourse. As a
discursive construct, discrimination is a system of exclusions actively imposed on
one population by another, based on individual categories of identity. Associated
with stigma, and premised on a set of constructed norms and deviance from those
norms, discrimination produces a boundary between inclusion and exclusion. The
notion of difference, on the other hand, denotes variation rather than the rigid
binaries created by discourses of discrimination. Difference implies degrees of
distinction, a progression rather than a distinct boundary. Difference is also
structured in a more positivist and passive way, seen as the “natural” state of human
variation. By positioning Prop 8 as a matter of treating lesbian and gay couples
differently, the “No on Prop 8” campaign appealed to voters’ perceived desire to
treat people fairly. In this way, the campaign shaped the issue of marriage to be part
of the “natural” gradations of human variation, which do not warrant unequal
treatment.
The choice to portray marriage rights in heteronormative terms was
especially evident in the campaigns’ representations of lesbian women. The “No on
Prop 8” campaign chose lesbian women as the subjects of its first two TV
commercials while gay men were completely invisible. Initially, one might interpret
this choice as an indication that lesbian sexuality is somehow more digestible to
“undecided” voters than gay sexuality. Gay men are often seen as a bigger threat to

186
the maintenance of the heterosexual, nuclear family than lesbian women are. As
Michelangelo Signorile argues, “Men having sex with each other is much more
threatening to most men than women having sex with each other…To many men, the
next step after the idea of men having sex is those men coming after them.”
34

Indeed, by producing five PSAs about gay couples and families, the “Get to Know
Us First” campaign suggests that there is some truth to this belief. Trying to dispel
myths and stereotypes about gay men, the PSAs establish them as devoted spouses
and loving parents. In the campaign’s third PSA, Miguel and Ru only “want what’s
best for our kids.” Showing the Latino couple and their infant triplets playing in their
back yard, surrounded by dozens of smiling family members at the children’s
birthday party, the campaign focuses on normalizing images of these men and their
family.
The “Get to Know US First” campaign, moreover, was sponsored and
partially funded by Power Up, the Professional Organization of Women in
Entertainment Reaching Up. Power Up is the only non-profit organization or
production company that seeks to “to promote the visibility and integration of gay
women entertainment, the arts, and all forms of media.”
35
The organization, founded
in 2000, produces its own films and provides funding and assistance to filmmakers.
In addition, each year, the organization recognizes 10 “Amazing Gay Women” who
are “working, creating and changing lives as they continue their way up the ladder of
success.”
36
Past recipients of the award include Ellen Degeneres, comedienne
Suzanne Westenhoffer, L Word creator Ilene Chaiken, independent filmmaker Rose

187
Troche, Advocate editor-in-chief Anne Stockwell, and writer Jan Oxenberg.
According to Ireland, Power Up is the “Get to Know Us First” campaign’s fiscal
sponsor “so all of the money goes through Power Up and then directly to our ad
agency for the media buys.”
37
When Ireland was seeking a sponsor for the “Get to
Know Us First” campaign, he says he immediately thought of Power Up because he
had worked with them in the past on fund-raising and project support. Calling Power
Up, he said to them, “I would not know how to start to produce these commercials,
but Power Up is the gold standard. Everything you touch turns into gold, so make me
some kick-ass commercials and I'll do the rest.”
38

Power Up is a class-based network, though, which seeks to increase the
visibility of a particular group of lesbian women – ones with economic and cultural
capital. It has honored Ellen Degeneres, for example, but not Suze Orman or Wanda
Sykes. The organization draws on Los Angeles’ public and well-established lesbian
culture. Starting in the late 1970s, L.A. lesbian culture aligned itself with glamorous
Hollywood styles and a sense of professionalism. Influenced by feminism (radical
and second wave) and anti-discrimination legislation, lesbian women formed clubs
and organizations invested in promoting images of affluent, successful, and stylish
lesbian women. For example, Southern California Women for Understanding
(SCWU) was founded in 1976 by Betty Berzon in response to other organizations’
focus on gay men. According to Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons in Gay LA:
A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians, with SCWU,
Berzon “hoped to establish what had never existed – a political group made up

188
exclusively of upper-middle-class lesbians.”
39
Trying to combat the negative furor
erupting with the Briggs Initiative, the SCWU set out ‘“to change the [public] image
of lesbians by presenting our membership as successful, achieving women.”’
40
This
public image included a rejection of “negative lesbian stereotypes” such as butch-
femme as well as what Faderman describes as “the poorly dressed and ill-mannered
lesbian feminists.”
41
Instead, the organization sought out successful, high-achieving
women who conformed to upper-middle class norms of style and dress. Building on
SCWU and other organizations like it, Power Up is invested in a class-based project
of regulation, which includes norms of education, professionalism, femininity, and
gender presentation.
This funding source for the “Get to Know Us First” campaign, as well as the
presence of lesbian women in the “No on Prop 8” commercials, arguably suggests a
reversal of the concept that gays are more threatening than lesbians. The limited use
of lesbian images by “No on Prop 8” ’s commercials, coupled with the campaign’s
powerful drive to represent marriage rights as a straightforward matter of equality,
arguably positions lesbianism as needing normalization. That is, minimizing
discourses of sexuality, depicting contained images of lesbian women, and using
straight people to speak for lesbian women, these commercials structure lesbianism
in specifically controlled and heteronormative ways.
In both their rhetoric and visual representation, the “No on Prop 8” and “Get
to Know Us First” campaigns’ TV commercials limit lesbian visibility. The first TV
commercial aired by the “No on Prop 8” campaign was called “Thorons,” and

189
featured Julia and Sam Thoron, a real-life, gray-haired, white heterosexual couple
explaining that their lesbian daughter should not be treated differently by the law
than their straight daughters. Seated next to each other on their living room couch,
Sam says, “Julia and I have been married for 46 years.” Smiling and turning to look
at each other, Julia continues, “Together we’ve raised three children who are now
adults.” The camera moves to a close-up of Sam as he says, “My wife and I never
treated our children differently, we never loved them any differently, and the law
shouldn’t treat them any differently either.” As the camera pans across several family
photos, the Thorons point out that if Prop 8 passes, “our gay daughter and thousands
of our fellow Californians will lose the right to marry.”
With the second commercial, “Conversation,” the campaign tried a tactic it
hoped would sway “undecided” voters who might not change their opinions about
lesbians and gays, but also might not be willing to take away rights from another
group of citizens. The commercial’s theme suggests that a voter can be at once
uncomfortable with lesbians and gays but support that all people should have access
to the same legal rights. In “Conversation,” two white women sit at the kitchen
counter while one woman shows her friend photos from a recent family gathering.
Coming to a photo of two women, she excitedly points out her niece and her niece’s
partner at their wedding. Her friend looks up from the photos: “Listen, honestly, I
just don’t know how I feel about this same-sex marriage thing.” The camera turns
back to the woman holding the photos. She leans toward her friend, reassuring her:
“No, it’s okay. And I really think it’s fine if you don’t know how you feel. But, are

190
you willing to eliminate rights and have our laws treat people differently?” With a
look of resolve on her face, her friend’s immediate and emphatic response is “No.”
While it employs the language of difference rather discrimination, the commercial
represents an alternative position that recognizes and validates conflicting views.
The “Get to Know Us First” campaign produced one PSA with a lesbian
couple and one with a lesbian family. With “Diane and Robin,” the campaign
featured Diane Olson and Robin Tyler, who were one of the original plaintiffs in the
2008 California Supreme Court lawsuit. Tyler, a long-time LGBT civil rights
activist and her partner Olson, married after the Court’s decision in a televised
ceremony on June 16
th
, 2008, the first day that the ruling became law. As public
figures in the marriage rights debate, Olson and Tyler were recognizable faces to put
on the air. In their PSA, they stand side-by-side in their kitchen. Tyler says,
“marriage says to the world, this is my person, this is my heart. This is the person I
love, this is the person I choose to spend the rest of my life with.”
The other PSA, “Gina and Sonia,” featured a lesbian couple and their two
biracial children. The PSA opens to the sound of their young daughter’s voice as the
mothers play with both children. The camera then frames a close-up of Gina’s face
as she says, “We worry about the same things.” Cutting to a scene of the family
playing outside, Gina lists some of their worries: “our kids drinking too much juice,
how they’re doing in school.” Framing the couple sitting on their living room couch,
Gina says of Sonia, “She’s more indulgent.” Smiling Sonia agrees; “I let them jump
around a little longer.” Returning to the topic of marriage, Gina says, “Even after 12

191
years, I still admire her.” Sonia replies with equal respect; “I’m always taken by how
brave she is.”
Neither “Thorons,” “Conversation,” “Diane and Robin,” nor “Gina and
Sonia” uses the word “lesbian” to define the women they discuss. Sam and Julia
Thoron plead California voters to treat their “gay daughter” just as they do their
straight daughters. The woman in “Conversation” talks about her “niece and her
niece’s partner,” never uttering either the words lesbian or gay. Diane and Robin as
well as Gina and Sonia are clearly lesbian couples, but they do not use that word to
name themselves. While aligned with the goals of the campaigns, where sexuality
was not the issue, the absence of “lesbian” as a descriptor used to define women’s
homosexuality indicates an unyielding strategy to portray lesbian couples and
families in assimilationist terms.
The “LGBT community hated” the “Conversation” commercial in particular,
Smith said, and future TV commercials did not return to its theme, which hoped to
convey the message that inner dissonance was okay.
42
Smith said he hoped voters
could “rise to their better nature” and say “just because I’m uncomfortable with it,
doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be able to do it.”
43
Not only did the “No on Prop 8”
campaign not return to the message of “Conversation,” but it also did not incorporate
lesbian women in its other commercials. By the time “Conversation” aired, however,
an internal switch had taken place in the “No on Prop 8” campaign’s leadership and
six consultants were now involved in the television commercial process. Each
consultant provided her or his own advice to the campaign manager, who made the

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final decisions. Smith articulated the challenge of working within this structure:
Because of the sheer number of people involved in the campaign, getting from
concept to air was slower than is ideal when trying to react to the type of
commercials produced by the “Yes on Prop 8” campaign. It took the “No on Prop 8”
campaign nine days in the month of October, for example, to get a commercial on
the air that responded to the “Yes on Prop 8” campaign’s claim that if Prop 8 were
defeated, “gay marriage” would be taught in California’s schools. In the two-month
span of media campaign like Prop 8’s, nine days is a long time for one side to have
the only say on an issue.
It was also at this juncture that Smith described the trajectory of the campaign
as “going off message.”
44
At this point, 70% of “No on Prop 8”’s airtime was
devoted to the campaign’s last commercial, “Internment.” The commercial was
narrated by African American actor Samuel L. Jackson. Jackson says, “It wasn’t that
long ago that discrimination was legal in California.” Over black and white images,
Jackson speaks of America’s dark past; of Japanese internment camps: about how
Armenians were not able to buy a home in the Central Valley; and about the time
when blacks and Latinos were told who they could and could not marry. He says, “It
was a sorry time in our history.” Jackson goes on to say that supporters of Prop 8
want to eliminate fundamental rights. Without using the words gay, lesbian, or
marriage, he closes with the words: “We have an obligation to pass along to our
children a more tolerant, more decent society. Vote no on Prop 8, it’s unfair and it’s
wrong.”

193
The “Internment” commercial was a pure discrimination message opposed to
the campaign’s established message not to treat same-sex couples “differently.” The
“Internment” commercial, Smith said, was supposed to be used if the campaign got
“desperate,” when it looked like a sure thing that Prop 8 would pass. As election day
neared, the campaign was under-funded, especially compared to the “Yes on Prop 8”
campaign, creating a sense of panic and desperation among some members of the
campaign committee. Thus, “Internment” was put on the air. But, at the last minute,
money poured into the “No on Prop 8” campaign and several other commercials
were produced by independent consultants. Smith says in the week before the
election, four different commercials were airing on television, made by four different
consultants. Three of the commercials, he added, were “off message,” straying from
the “don’t treat differently” campaign mantra that focus groups said would be more
effective in swaying “undecided” voters than a message about discrimination.
Creating Proximity: Marriage, Religion, and Children’s Education
The discord that Smith described within the “No on Prop 8” campaign
indicates a paradox that nearly came to the surface during the campaign, but was
never fully realized. This paradox is the idea that straight people can simultaneously
be uncomfortable with lesbians and gays and agree that rights should not be stripped
from them as a group of citizens. While it was pulled from the air quickly, the
commercial “Conversation” attempted to make this very case. According to polls
conducted in California before the November 2008 election, 58% to 60% of voters
opposed marriage rights for lesbians and gays. But, this data also showed that

194
“undecided” voters were not sure whether they should inflict their personal
opposition onto everyone else by way of voting their opinion in a ballot measure.
Smith and his team worked with a psychologist throughout the campaign who tried
to help them find ways of getting people to accept this kind of inner conflict when
voting “No” on Prop 8.
This paradox is complicated further in requiring lesbians and gays to allow
others to be uncomfortable with their sexuality, and not open to changing their
views. That is, lesbians and gays would have to accept that others can disapprove of
them but still vote in favor of their legal equality. While contradicting the
framework of the LGBT civil rights movement—specifically the logic that public
visibility naturally produces increased tolerance and acceptance— this dilemma
signals a progressive move toward a more nuanced identity politics. It creates a
space arguably built on the negotiation of pragmatism and radical opposition. This
perspective recognizes the need for access to the rights and privileges tied to
marriage but does not base that need on the demand for social acceptance of
homosexuality. As a lesbian theorist, I would like to see much more of this kind of
careful negotiation in mainstream LGBT politics. As a political practice, this
negotiation holds onto the queer stance against assimilation and homonormativity,
refusing the need for approval from heterosexist society. Yet, it also understands the
practical protections required for economic, social, and political stability and
viability in the U.S.

195
The “No on Prop 8” campaign’s effort to offer progressive ways of re-
thinking LGBT civil rights strategies was shutdown though by the “Yes on Prop 8”
campaign’s relentless focus on religion and children’s education. Not uncommon in
homophobic campaigns, the rhetoric of “family values,” as sociologist Judith Stacey
writes, “provides an infinitely malleable symbolic resource that is understandably
irresistible to politicians from both major parties in the age of corporate-sponsored,
mass-media politics.”
45
The first “Yes on Prop 8” commercial, titled “Whether You
Like It or Not,” opens with footage of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom giving a
speech in response to the California Supreme Court’s May 2008 decision that
allowed same-sex couples to wed. In front a cheering audience, Newsom declares
“It’s going to happen now, whether you like it or not.” The commercial twists
Newsom’s words to criticize the Court’s decision for “ignoring four million voters
and imposing same-sex marriage on California.” Adopting the view that lesbian and
gay marriage rights are a matter of “personal belief” rather than a fundamental right,
the commercial suggests that this decision opens a Pandora’s box of problems:
citizens will now sue over any personal belief; churches will lose their tax exempt
status; and so-called “gay marriage” will be taught in schools.
The “Yes on Prop 8” campaign followed this commercial with one called
“Princes.” The TV commercial created so much public controversy that the “No”
campaign immediately pulled “Conversation” from the air to rebut the claims made
in “Princes.” With “Princes,” the “Yes on Prop 8” campaign invoked the image of
the innocent child living in a world where Prop 8 has been defeated. The

196
commercial features an elementary school-aged girl excitedly telling her mother that
she learned in school today that “a prince can marry a prince and I can marry a
princess.” Law professor Richard Peterson from Pepperdine University, a politically
conservative school affiliated with the Churches of Christ, steps into the frame and
says that education about marriage for lesbians and gays will become part of the
public school curriculum in California. He claims that after Massachusetts’ 2003
decision that allowed lesbians and gays to marry, second graders began learning
“that a boy can marry a boy.” He adds, “The courts had no right to object.” The
commercial closes with the warning that California’s education code includes
teaching marriage and that if marriage for lesbians and gays remains legal in the
state, it will have to be taught in schools.
Bourdieu argues that “the greater the interest one has in a problem, the more
opinions one has on it.”
46
“Interest” is determined, he says, by one’s proximity to
the issue-at-hand. The two “Yes on Prop 8” commercials create proximity to the
issue of marriage by exaggerating links between marriage and the institutions of
religion and education, which hold treasured places in the national imaginary.
“Lesbians and gays” Walters writes, “are the last group against whom it is still legal
and acceptable to discriminate, publicly denigrate, and socially ostracize, thus
making them good targets for a right-wing incensed by their ability to gather more
public support.”
47
The “Yes on Prop 8” campaign’s commercials produce a
relationship among these institutions in order to appeal to a broad range of voters
who already consider themselves aligned with religious and/or education-based

197
concerns. In No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, Lee Edelman argues
that politics rely on a future-oriented logic that is intertwined with heterosexuality
and with what Edelman terms “reproductive futurism.” In other words,
heteronormativity builds itself around the future, represented by the child. Social
and political debates get played out using the image of the child to win support.
After all, who would argue against the pure and innocent child? Edelman says,
“That Child, immured in an innocence…condenses a fantasy of vulnerability…in its
form of sublimation: [it is] an insistence on sameness that intends to restore an
Imaginary past.”
48
This image of the child, like the more general rhetoric of “family
values,” has been invoked to alter public policy, to discipline “deviant” citizens such
as sexual minorities, and to stigmatize non-conventional family structures that “fail”
to achieve the ideal of the heterosexual nuclear family.
In the U.S., notions of being a woman are bound up with these tropes of
reproduction and the nation. The Prop 8 campaigns’ unyielding arguments about the
measure’s ramifications for churches, religious freedoms, and children’s education
brought these issues to the fore. In Identity Games: Globalization and the
Transformation of Media Culture in New Europe media studies scholar Anikó Imre
articulates Hungary’s reaction to the nation’s seeming emasculation in its post-
totalitarian state. “As is the case elsewhere in the region,” she says, “the right-
leaning moral and political coalition has been trying to rebuild the eroding narrative
fortress of nationalism under the triple umbrella of ‘God, Nation, and Family’ and
pin the nation’s future on the increasing production of wholesome new citizens.”
49

198
Consequently, national policies and media representations embrace heterosexuality,
and rebuke homosexuality, which is seen as non-reproductive. In this context, Imre
describes lesbian women, who are perceived to be non-reproductive, as “poised to
disrupt the discursive economy of nationalism.”
50
Without discounting the national
and regional specificity of Imre’s argument, I would contend that similar anxieties
surface in campaigns like Prop 8.
The “Yes on Prop 8” campaign’s appeals to the abstract and mythic role of
religion and public education in America made the threat to the stability of the
reproductive nation especially pronounced. By containing lesbian visibility, the “No
on Prop 8” and “Get to Know Us First” campaign commercials function as reminders
that women are the reproductive center of the idealized family and nation. When
couched in the heteronormative terms of the campaign’s TV commercials, moreover,
lesbian women are no longer an ideological threat. That is, both the “No on Prop 8”
and “Get to Know Us First” campaign commercials operate in the space of
mainstreaming, normalizing, and neutralizing lesbian women.
Cable TV: Exploiting Its Segmenting Potential
For over ten years, the debate about marriage rights has been a divisive issue
in American state and national politics; it is one of the most explosive political and
legal questions and one of the most provocative issues before American courts and
voters. Marriage in the U.S. has become a critical nexus for the distribution of public
and private rights and benefits. Historian George Chauncey’s research on marriage
details the extent to which the allocation of benefits is “a distinctly American

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approach,” rooted in 20
th
century legal changes that made deviating from
heteronormativity more and more costly.
51
Unlike other industrialized countries, the
U.S. has built a system in which a host of benefits, including healthcare and social
security, are linked to the institution of marriage, particularly to federally recognized
marriage.
In making their case, marriage rights advocates frame their arguments in
terms of individual identity categories and protections. Arguing that defining
marriage as the union of one man and one woman is unconstitutional, attorneys point
to tax, property, and healthcare benefits denied to each lesbian and gay person
because they cannot marry, the rights denied to the children of lesbian and gay
parents, and to the symbolic power of marriage to validate committed relationships.
In courts and public forums across the country, marriage advocates such as Therese
Stewart, San Francisco’s chief deputy attorney, argue that forbidding lesbians and
gays to marry “violates equal protection…Once the [country] has entered into the
regulation of marriage…it has to do so on an equal basis.”
52
While a handful of
states and corporations offer forms of domestic partnerships, which thus grant
lesbian and gay couples some of the same state benefits as legally married
heterosexual couples, attorneys contend that the issue is not whether those forms of
relationship recognition are fair or equal. As NCLR lead counsel Shannon Minter
argued to California’s Supreme Court on March 4
th
, 2008, “the case is about whether
denying marriage to lesbians and gay men is equal.”
53
Drawing parallels to
California’s landmark 1948 ruling in Perez v. Sharp that invalidated the state’s ban

200
on interracial marriage, Stewart, Minter, and others for marriage rights contend that
lesbians and gays are discriminated against based on sexual orientation, biological
sex, or both.
Homophobic activists, on the other hand, contend that there is no basis for a
discrimination case. They argue that marriage is by definition between a man and a
woman, that it is so engrained in law that it cannot be changed, and that because
sexual orientation has not been ruled a suspect class at the federal level, like race and
biological sex have, it is not eligible for the same kinds of legal protections.
Religious conservatives add that marriage is for procreation, and that allowing same-
sex couples to marry would demean and threaten the institution of marriage.
Employing the rhetoric of “family values” to portray marriage rights for lesbians and
gays as a threat to children and the social order, they claim that marriage is a sacred
and preordained institution.
Following from these legal frameworks, television commercials for and
against Prop 8 explicitly stated what citizens’ investment in marriage should be.
With “Thorons” and “Conversation,” the “No on Prop 8” campaign encouraged
voters not to support a ballot initiative that stripped rights from a group of citizens
who wanted nothing more than the legal, financial, and symbolic benefits of state-
sanctioned marriage. The “Yes on Prop 8” campaign exploited voters’ allegiance to
religion and children’s education with “Whether You Like It or Not,” and “Princes;”
these commercials went so far as to appeal to the innocent child only protected by
state education, a concept that is otherwise abominable to the homophobic right. In

201
this way, the commercials reveal the synergy between the nation and the nuclear
family, emphasizing how religion mediates between the two.
In distributing these TV commercials, both campaigns primarily relied on
niche cable markets to reach religious, conservative, and “undecided” voters. For
political campaigns, niche marketing is the most cost-effective way to target a small
and defined group of voters. Since the 1970s, consumer and population databases
have been continually used to refine consumer categories, which communications
scholar Joseph Turow says, “tag consumers as desirable for their business.”
54
Using
niche markets, marketers seek to customize messages about products depending on
what they conclude about consumers’ tastes, personalities, spending habits, and
lifestyle choices. In an age of unbridled consumer surveillance, databases have
moved to the center of marketing. In this climate, people voluntarily give out private
information about themselves in order to receive special treatment and better offers
on products and services. Television’s multi-channel environment, aimed at small,
defined audience demographics, provides an inexpensive and efficient platform for
reaching specific voter groups. Once it uses polling and focus group research to
determine its target voter groups, the political campaign’s media team selects the
niche television markets best suited to the campaign’s desired voters.
The “No on Prop 8” commercials aired in all broadcast markets throughout
the day as well as in selected cable markets. However, the specific markets are
difficult to ascertain because there is no accessible record of them and I was unable
to get an interview with Maggie Linden, Senior Vice President of Public Affairs for

202
Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide. She and her team at Ogilvy were responsible for
creating, producing, and buying air time for the “No on Prop 8” TV commercials.
Based on my own unscientific observations, the “No on Prop 8” commercials
appeared several times during numerous daytime and primetime programs across
cable and broadcast markets between September 29
th
and November 4
th
, 2008.
The “Get to Know Us First” campaign launched its TV PSAs during Barack
Obama’s Presidential Inauguration on January 20
th
, 2009, and followed with PSAs
aired during the Super Bowl, the NAACP Awards, and the Academy Awards.
During the inauguration, one of the most watched televised events in history, the
commercials were broadcast primarily on CNN and Fox News. According to
Ireland, “we specifically picked Fox News because of their more conservative
audience.”
55
Geographically, the campaign’s focus was on California’s Central
Valley because the area is rural and more socially conservative compared to the
state’s coastal cities. Ireland adds that “this correlates with religiosity, as well,
which has been found to be the single greatest factor in the decision to vote Yes on
Prop 8.”
56
In choosing what television markets to buy into, the campaign relied
heavily on Marriage Equality’s post-election research as well as on the California
General Exit Poll conducted by Edison Mitofsky on November 4
th
, 2008.
While the campaign considers cable TV ideal for targeting the specific
audiences they try to reach, there is an advantage to advertising in broadcast markets:
it is less expensive. With broadcast markets there is also the lure of the millions of
viewers that tune in. For example, airing one of the “Get To Know Us First”

203
campaign PSAs in the Los Angeles broadcast market has a potential of reaching 3.5
million people. Ireland says that “although the margin of victory for Prop 8 was slim
[in Los Angeles], the audience includes close to half of the aggregate number of
voters we want to reach and convert.”
57
This goal to reach as many viewers as
possible though, goes hand-in-hand in with the campaign’s effort to reach
California’s Spanish-speaking population, who largely voted in favor of Prop 8.
Ireland says that “images of actual gays and lesbians are much less prevalent in [the
Spanish-language] market” and advertising on channels like Univision and
Telemundo is relatively inexpensive.
58

After focusing on a series of nationally televised events in early 2009, Ireland
says the campaign shifted strategies to target cable TV viewers rather than broadcast
audiences. He says that when targeting specific audiences, “we do find niche
marketing helpful in our effort to drill-down and sub-segment our viewership.”
59

Targeting shows with a “socially moderate to conservative audience,” the campaign
aired PSAs during specific cable shows: trying to reach middle-aged men and
women, the campaign aired PSAs during TNT’s The Closer and USA’s Monk:
targeting the socially conservative male voter, “Get To Know Us First” aired PSAs
during The Discovery Channel’s Myth Busters and ESPN’s Sports Center.
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, niche marketing and cable TV held
the promise of a new media frontier filled with vast choices for entertainment and
educational programming. With the ensuing media-conglomeration as well as
debates over cable’s role in serving the public interest, however, scholars have

204
questioned the early utopian visions of the cable industry. Niche cable markets
specifically have been both applauded and condemned for the way they represent
LGBT characters. On one hand, niche cable channels such as Bravo, Logo, here!,
and Showtime have been praised for their ability to serve LGBT audiences, a
minority underrepresented in network era television. But, the targeting of LGBT
audiences and the concept of “serving their needs” in both programming and
advertising have also prompted the critique that by separating LGBT content from
mainstream content, cable TV has accomplished a kind of de facto segregation of the
audience. Turow writes, “The emerging marketplace will be far more an inciter of
angst over social difference than a celebration of the American ‘salad bowl.’”
60
He
contends that because marketers rely on technologies that emphasize the individual
“to an extreme,” niche markets encourage segmentation of cultural groups.
61
As a
result, the multi-channel television landscape still ends up defining the norms of
representation.
In his conclusion to Up From Invisibility, Gross addresses the contradictions
that result from media visibility of cultural minorities. He says, “Writing about black
popular culture, Stuart Hall remarked that ‘what replaces invisibility is a kind of
carefully regulated, segregated visibility,’ and in so noting he acknowledged the
complexity and ambiguity of progress in media representations.”
62
While niche
channels have been envisioned as vehicles for social progress, Gross points to the
uncertainty and intricacy of their structures. Media relations consultant Anthony
Freitas also explores the tightrope of validating representation and segmenting sexual

205
minorities in “Gay Programming, Gay Publics.” He argues that LGBT dedicated
channels such as here!, Logo, Pride Vision, and Q Network in the U.S. and Canada
have positive effects for LGBT viewers including recognition of oneself in the
media, connection to a larger community through the media, and discussions of
topics relating to LGBT identity, politics, health, and community. These channels,
however, “operate to privatize the community, separating it and its interests and
issues from those of the general public.”
63
In this way, LGBT issues become our
issues alone, rendering them irrelevant to mainstream culture at-large. This critique
has also been directed at channels dedicated to audiences such as women (Lifetime,
Oxygen, WE Network) and African Americans (BET and the now defunct UPN),
about which critics argue that niche markets do not end up serving the needs of the
audiences they address, but rather relegate their issues, concerns, and experiences to
the periphery of society.
Gross, Freitas, and others have addressed this topic in depth, but with
particular attention to entertainment programming. There has been little discussion of
the concept of segmentation in relation to news reports, political advertisements, or
television coverage of LGBT political campaigns. The problem discussing them
together is two-fold: First, there is also a great deal of public mystery behind the
actual process of running political campaigns. Press releases and campaign
spokespeople tightly control what information is released to the public about
campaign strategies, and public polls often have significant problems in their
methodologies, rendering them inaccurate, as earlier sections of this chapter

206
outline.
64
Second, political campaigns see TV segmentation as advantageous. To
them, it is a cost-effective, pre-existing means of reaching specific groups of voters
with particular messages about a political issue. Arguably, the “No on Prop 8”
commercials in particular support the critique that niche cable separates the concerns
of cultural minorities from those of mainstream society. By choosing not to show
lesbian women or use the word lesbian, the “No on Prop 8” commercials reinforce
the absence of lesbian women in “conservative” broadcast and niche cable markets.
After the passage of Prop 8, the “Get to Know Us First” campaign aired
PSAs with mostly gay families, offering few images of lesbian families to the niche
audiences they reached. The campaign, however, undeniably brought these images
into the realm of cable channels targeted at socially “conservative” audiences,
supplying viewers with a space to engage with the images and stories of sexual
minorities who are often screened out of those cable markets. In this way, the “Get
to Know Us First” campaign’s PSAs broke into niche markets that LGBT-themed
TV shows and commercials usually do not. In all of the PSAs, lesbian and gay
families talk directly to the camera about their families, inviting viewers to witness
archetypal family moments (having dinner, running in the yard, tucking the children
into bed, laughing and playing together). By airing these PSAs on networks like
TNT, ESPN, and Fox News, the “Get To Know Us First” campaign injects gay, and
to a lesser degree, lesbian images and voices into the segmented world of niche cable
channels. In this way, they arguably act as counter-classifications that encourage TV

207
audiences to question epistemologies of normative and non-normative sexualities
and families.
Straight Women & Gay Men: A Happy Marriage
While the relative lack of lesbian representation in these PSAs undermines
their potential to speak for lesbian couples and families, it also reflects broader
implications about the voters both campaigns targeted. While the “No on Prop 8”
and “Get to Know Us First” campaigns had different messages, addressed a range of
demographics, and used different strategies in their television commercials, they
both targeted straight women. They assumed that straight women, as Ireland put it,
“are more likely than men to convert to support of marriage equality due to their
likelihood to have social friendships with gay men.”
65
Neither campaign had
empirical data that supported the ideas that women were more easily persuaded to
vote “No” or were likely to do so because of their assumed friendships with gay
men. Yet, “No on Prop 8” and “Get to Know Us First” pursued media campaigns
that addressed straight women.
The “No on Prop 8” campaign specifically targeted straight women voters
with a commercial featuring Senator Dianne Feinstein. Identified by the campaign
as a prominent government official with a long history of support from mainstream
feminist organizations such as The League of Women Voters and the National
Organization for Women (NOW), Feinstein has a resolutely Democratic voting
record, but one that is less progressive than junior California Senator Barbara Boxer.
Using Feinstein in the commercial, the “No on Prop 8” campaign hoped to appeal to

208
politically moderate women who would be swayed by allegiance to and respect for
her causes.
66
In the commercial, Feinstein tells voters that she has seen a lot of
discrimination in her time as a California Senator. She says, “I see it again in
Proposition 8. Eight would be a terrible mistake for California. It changes our
Constitution, eliminates fundamental rights, and treats people differently under the
law.” Rebuffing the provocative claims made in the “Yes on Prop 8” commercials,
she adds that Prop 8 is not about children or education. Rather, she says, “it’s about
discrimination and we must always say no to that.” Finally, she reiterates the
campaign’s previous message that personal feelings about marriage are irrelevant,
voting “No” is about being fair and treating people equally under the law.
The Feinstein commercial aired for four days, between October 28
th
and
October 31
st
, as the only “No on Prop 8” commercial running during that time. After
those four days, the campaign shifted down the commercial, airing it 30% of the
time. The other 70% of the airtime was devoted to the campaign’s final TV
commercial, “Internment.” Despite the reduced circulation of the Feinstein
commercial, post-election surveys indicated that it was the commercial voters most
recalled.
67
The “Get to Know Us First” campaign also capitalized on straight
women’s supposed bonds with gay men, producing a series of five commercials
featuring gay couples and families. In addition to reaching middle-aged women
(“Traditionalists”) watching show such as Monk and The Closer, the campaign
addressed a conservative female audience by purchasing air time during cooking
shows on the Food Network and during CNN’s morning programming.

209
A symbiotic relationship between straight women and gay men has appeared
as a theme in my research about Prop 8 as well as in my research about marketing,
detailed in the previous chapter. The association between straight women and gay
men is a consumer-driven relationship, premised on shared interests in style,
aesthetics, and consumption. Sender attributes this symbiosis to gay men’s
“historical association with taste and fashion, their status as straight women’s best
friends, and their availability as objects of desire.”
68
This pairing sustains a belief in
straight women as ideal consumers for themselves and for the home, as well as in
gay men as promoters of female consumption. In this coupling, gay men are also
seen as asexual in an effort to break long-standing associations with gay men as
hypersexual. Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’s “fab five” set out each week to
transform a poorly styled man into a straight woman’s dream. They are gay—that is
very clear. But, they are not only stereotypes of gay men who are “naturally” gifted
designers, stylists, and groomers, they are also constantly facilitating heterosexual
romance, without any romance of their own. This image has come to be a prevalent
stereotype, which carves out a cultural space for gay men premised on an intrinsic
relationship to heteronormative femininity. In the mainstream American cultural
landscape, lesbian women do not occupy an equivalent space. In contrast to gay men,
they arguably exist outside any relation to heterosexuality.
“Lesbians Are Not Women:” A Provocation
The carefully constructed lesbian presence in both campaigns’ television
commercials arguably suggests particular ideas about lesbian women as consumer-

210
citizens, namely that “lesbians are not women.” At the 1978 Modern Language
Association (MLA) convention, Monique Wittig announced that “I am a lesbian, not
a woman.” Fourteen years later, in The Straight Mind and Other Essays, Wittig
writes:
What is woman?...Frankly, it is a problem that the lesbians do not have
because of a change of perspective, and it would be incorrect to say that
lesbians associate, make love, live with women, for “woman” has meaning
only in heterosexual systems of thought and heterosexual economic systems.
Lesbians are not women.
69

Although Wittig’s widely-circulated claims were criticized and often misunderstood,
they nonetheless set in motion a range of theorizations about female sexuality apart
from the institution of heterosexuality. In Teresa de Lauretis’ tribute to Wittig after
her death in 2003, she says, “Witting’s writings opened up a conceptual, virtual
space that was foreclosed by all discourses and ideologies left and right, including
feminism.”
70
On the premise that the category of “woman” is an ideological
construct, scholars including de Lauretis, Judith Butler, Cheshire Calhoun, and
Barbara Smith produced important and, I think, enduring frameworks for
understanding lesbian sexuality.
Philosopher Cheshire Calhoun’s analysis of lesbianism is a particularly
cogent example of this scholarship. Using a poststructuralist framework, she creates
a platform for seeing “lesbian” as a concept beyond categories of woman and man.
In “Separating Lesbian Theory from Feminist Theory,” she argues that women are
constructed in relation to particular economic, political, and ideological dynamics,
which lesbianism falls outside of. According to Calhoun, “the lesbian experience of

211
the institution of heterosexuality is of a system that makes her sexual, affectional,
domestic, and reproductive life unreal…Unlike the heterosexual feminist, the lesbian
has no socially supported private sphere, not even an oppressive one.”
71
In this
context, Calhoun says, lesbian women “are not recognized as social beings because
they cannot enter in the most basic social unit, the male-female couple. Within
heterosexual systems the only social arrangements that apply to nonheterosexuals are
eliminative in nature.”
72
In this sense, lesbian women have a negative social reality,
suggesting that lesbian women in fact are not part of the population considered
“women.” Against this backdrop, Calhoun calls for the separation of sexual politics
from gender politics. This separation, she contends, allows lesbianism not to be read
solely as resistance to patriarchal male-female relationships. Through this lens,
heterosexuality is not a matter of the “orientation of individual sexual desire” but
rather a tool of social organizing.
73

It is in the space of this negative reality, I argue, that the “lesbian menace”
still lives. Originally used by NOW President Betty Friedan in 1969, the phrase
singled out lesbian women as a threat to the viability of the second wave feminist
movement. Drawing on stereotypes of lesbian women as “mannish” and “man-
hating,” straight, mainstream feminists excluded lesbian women and lesbian “causes”
from their political advocacy work. Consequently, lesbian women were alienated
from the so-called “women’s movement,” literally and symbolically revealing
cultural beliefs that “lesbians weren’t women.” By exploring the intricate stories
behind the TV commercial campaigns for “No on Prop 8” and “Get To Know Us

212
First,” the various forms of data used in designing the campaigns, and gaining insight
into the cultural dynamics of the campaigns, the notion of the “lesbian menace”
resurfaces. These sources offer insights into where knowledge comes from about
who lesbian women are and how political campaigns go about constructing this
knowledge. The stories of Prop 8’s TV commercials suggest the medium’s
ambivalent role in representing lesbian women; it is a potential site for lesbian
political self-recognition, but is also limited to a simplistic, consumerist identity
politics.
The lack of a cultural position for lesbian women signifies the extent to
which political campaigns rely on consumer-driven constructions of identities to
determine media strategies. Those who welcome the inclusion of LGBT citizens into
the consumer marketplace view it as further increasing visibility and therefore, as
validating political existence. As marketing scholar Lisa Peñaloza notes, the
consumer marketplace is a site “whereby disenfranchised groups engage in ongoing
struggles for social and political incorporation.”
74
While some scholars hail the so-
called “gay market” for validating lesbian and gay existence, increasing heterosexual
acceptance, and often galvanizing legal changes, others argue that political identity
and community have been effectively consolidated through consumption. Cultural
critic Sarah Schulman sums up the issues on both sides when she says, “We live in a
society deeply conflicted about homosexuality but no longer able to deny its
existence. This combination makes gay people simultaneously an ideal group for
niche marketing and for the containment inherent in commodification to straight

213
consumers.”
75
Wary of the so-called “gay market,” English and gender studies
scholar Rosemary Hennessy argues that “not only is much recent gay visibility
aimed at producing new and potentially lucrative markets, but as in most marketing
strategies, money, not liberation, is the bottom line.”
76
In this way, visibility in
consumer culture is certainly limited to those who are deemed desirable by
marketers. Moreover, that kind of visibility does not guarantee political or social
inclusion in society. Cultural critic Alexandra Chasin claims that the notion of the
gay market is counterproductive to social change. She argues that “identity-based
marketing and consumption are intimately related to identity politics, and that,
working together, they are inimical to progressive political change.”
77
Marketing to
lesbians and gays then becomes apolitical, devolving into forms of consumption;
protest becomes commodified into products such as hats, T-shirts, and buttons that
consumers buy and wear.
While the arguments for and against the incorporation of lesbian and gay
identity into the consumer sphere have merit, they assume that politics and the
market can be completely detached from one another. Using a utilitarian model,
these analyses frame financial and economic decisions separately from political
motivations. In Business, Not Politics, however, Sender reminds us that “no pristine
GLBT culture existed before, or outside of, consumer culture, nor are gay people
free of the need or desire to use products and services in socially meaningful
ways.”
78
Politics and the marketplace are arguably entities that cannot be treated
separately, in theory or practice. As legal scholars David Skover and Kelly Testy

214
observe, “America’s commercial culture moves far too fast for America’s legal and
political systems to control it.”
79
Claiming that the “gay market” is an area that
cannot be ignored by legal scholars or that politics and consumer culture can be
treated as distinct entities, they argue that commercial culture moves more rapidly
than the American legal system. As such, the identity constructed in the marketplace
must be a starting point for the legal framework of LGBT civil rights. Rather than
rejecting identities formed within the consumer marketplace, seeing them as
ineffective commodifications, LGBT politics ought to utilize them to propel the legal
system forward.
Prop 8 Post-Script
After the passage of Prop 8, a number of lawsuits were filed against the state
that sought to overturn the measure. These lawsuits argued that the public's right to
change the constitution does not extend to depriving a minority of the right to marry.
LGBT civil rights attorneys argued that the proposition is such a sweeping change to
the constitution's equal protection clause that it was a constitutional revision, not just
an amendment.
80
Rather than just requiring a simple majority like the initiative
process does, a revision first must pass the state legislature with two-thirds of the
majority. If it passes, the revision then goes to the voters. Opponents, led by
prominent conservative attorney Kenneth Starr, argued that California voters have an
“inalienable right” to amend the constitution and that taking away rights through the
initiative process is not a revision that alters the structure of government. On May
26
th
, 2009, the state Supreme Court ruled that Prop 8 was indeed valid and

215
enforceable. While the justices did rule that their decision could not be applied
retroactively to same-sex couples previously married in the state, they contended that
“Proposition 8 must be understood as creating a limited exception to the state equal
protection clause.”
81
Under this logic, the justices argued they were not stripping a
minority population of a fundamental right.
Unsatisfied with these results, Prop 8 opponents took the case to U.S. District
Court. In January 2010, an unlikely duo took the case before federal Chief Judge
Vaughn Walker. Attorneys Ted Olson and David Bois, known as staunch rivals
when they vociferously fought on opposing sides of Bush v. Gore in 2000, led the
legal team fighting Prop 8. Their joining forces caught the attention of the national
press, more so than the actual case did itself. Newsweek’s January 9
th
, 2010 edition
featured “The Conscience of a Conservative,” which examines Olson’s history as a
Republican attorney and his reasons for taking on the federal Prop 8 case. The New
Yorker’s January 18
th
cover, titled “A Risky Proposal,” details both the backgrounds
of Olson and Bois and the arguments they plan to present to the Court. As press
coverage shows, the two teamed up to argue that laws such as Prop 8, which ban
same-sex couples from marrying, do not make social, economic, or political sense
and are unconstitutional. Over a period of several weeks in early 2010, Judge
Walker heard arguments and testimony in the case known as Perry v.
Schwarzenegger. As of June 2010, Walker had delayed closing arguments until he
has reviewed all the evidence presented by both sides. Perry v. Schwarzenegger,

216
however, is widely considered a landmark case and will eventually reach the
Supreme Court.

217

Chapter Four Endnotes
1
Suzanna Danuta Walters, All the Rage: The Story of Gay Visibility in America (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2003), 183.

2
The Justices also made the unprecedented ruling that lesbians and gays are a suspect class, giving
them the protections afforded by minority group status. Being given the status of a suspect class
legally acknowledges that lesbian and gay individuals are likely to be the subject of discrimination,
and often have been historically. In the United States, other suspect classes include race, gender,
religion, and national origin. As a result, these classes receive strict scrutiny by courts when a
discriminatory claim is made.

The Supreme Court’s decision was part of a long and fiercely debated battle over the status of
marriage rights for lesbians and gays in California that began in 2000. That year, 61% of state voters
passed an initiative, Proposition 22, which said that California would only recognize marriages
between a man and woman. While Proposition 22 consists of only 14 words (“Only marriage
between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California”) its intent and meaning prompted
debate. By a vote of 61.4% to 38%, it passed and was added to section 308 as section 308.5 to the
state’s Family Code. Section 308 reads: “A marriage contracted outside this state that would be valid
by the laws of the jurisdiction in which the marriage was contracted is valid in this state.” Section
308.5 (Proposition 22) reads: “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in
California.” LGBT activists and attorneys argued that because Proposition 22 had been added to a
Family Code section that addressed only marriages performed outside the state of California,
Proposition 22 could therefore only apply to marriages performed outside the state. In this argument,
Proposition 22 did not deny California’s lesbian and gay citizens the right to marry, it simply stated
that California would only recognize marriages between a man a woman when a married couple
visited or moved to the state from outside California.

3
“Donors pumped $83M to Calif. gay marriage campaign,” Associated Press, February 2, 2009,
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hKiw9iO4JJqxjTDd98GqpwyqDEewD963PU
K00 (accessed March 12, 2009).

4
“Proposition 8 Post-Election California Voter Survey,” David Binder Research. Conducted
November 6-16, 2008.

5
Steve Smith, telephone interview by author, March 17, 2009.

6
Randi Schmeltzer and Andrew McMains, “Culture Wars Calling On Madison Avenue,”
AllBusiness.com, June 6, 2005, http://www.allbusiness.com/marketing-advertising/4213151-1.html.

7
John Thornton Caldwell, Production Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in Film
and Television (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 2.

8
Katherine Sender, Business, Not Politics: The Making of the Gay Market (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2004), 221.

218

9
The problem with the idea that public images of lesbians and gays foster greater freedom for all
lesbians and gays, is that it mistakes symbolic media representation for political representation and
social legitimation. Scholars including Martha Gever, Alexandra Chasin, Eric Clarke, Joshua
Gamson, and Rosemary Hennessey have written extensive work on his topic.

10
Todd Mundt, “Talking Gay,” in Media Queered: Visibility and Its Discontents, ed. Kevin G.
Barnhurst (New York: Peter Lang, 2007), 221.

11
Ibid., 222.

12
“The PSAs,” GetToKnowUsFirst.org, http://www.gettoknowmefirst.org/ThePSAs.html.

13
Ibid.

14
Walters, All the Rage, 104.

15
Larry Gross, Up From Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men & the Media in America (New York:
Columbia, 2001), 252.

16
Justin Lewis, Constructing Public Opinion: How Political Elites Do What They Like and Why We
Seem To Go Along With It (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), x.

17
Pierre Bourdieu, Sociology in Question (London: Sage Publications, 1993), 147.

18
Ibid., 157.

19
Ibid., 150.

20
Lewis, Constructing Public Opinion, 13.

21
Steve Smith, telephone interview by author, March 17, 2009. According to Smith, at the beginning
of most ballot initiative campaigns, one third of the voters are “undecided,” a much larger percentage
than Prop 8’s.

22
Ibid., 29.

23
Bourdieu, Sociology in Question, 154. Emphasis in original.

24
Steve Smith, telephone interview by author, March 17, 2009.

25
Ibid.

26
“No on Prop 8” was led by several LGBT rights organizations under an umbrella group, Equality
for All, which was formed specifically to fight Proposition 8. The LGBT rights groups involved
included Equality California, a non-profit civil rights organization that advocates for the rights of
LGBT Californians, NCLR (the National Center for Lesbian Rights), HRC (Human Rights
Campaign), and the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union). The campaign’s executive committee
included Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California, Kate Kendall, attorney and executive
director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Lorri Jean, executive chief officer of the Los

219

Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, Marty Rouse, national field director for the Human Rights
Campaign, and Heather Carrigan and Maya Harris from the American Civil Liberties Union.

27
Smith and his colleagues assumed that 85% to 90% of lesbians and gays would vote “No” on
Proposition 8.

28
John D’Emilio, William B. Turner, and Urvashi Vaid, Creating Change: Sexuality, Public Policy,
and Civil Rights (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), ix.

29
Bourdieu, Sociology in Question, 155.

30
Lewis, Constructing Public Opinion, 8.

31
Bourdieu, Sociology in Question, 154.

32
Walters, All the Rage, 189.

33
“Moving Marriage Forward: Building Majority Support for Marriage,” Freedom to Marry,
http://www.freedomtomarry.org/publications.

34
Michelangelo Signorile, quoted in John Gallagher, “The Amazing Invisible Men of Show
Business,” The Advocate 733 (1997): 31.

35
“About POWER UP,” POWER UP,
http://www.powerupfilms.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=11&Itemid=2.

36
“Awards,” POWER UP,
http://www.powerupfilms.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&id=11&Itemid=31.

37
John Ireland, e-mail message to author, March 21, 2009.

38
Ibid.

39
Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons, Gay L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and
Lipstick Lesbians (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 242.

40
Ibid., 243.

41
Ibid., 243.

42
Steve Smith, telephone interview by author, March 17, 2009.

43
Ibid.

44
Ibid.

45
Judith Stacey, In the Name of the Family: Rethinking Family Values in the Postmodern Age
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), 100.

46
Bourdieu, Sociology in Question, 155. Emphasis in original.

220

47
Walters, All the Rage, 39.

48
Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory & the Death Drive (Durham: Duke University Press,
2004), 21.

49
Anikó Imre, Identity Games: Globalization and the Transformation of Media Culture in New
Europe (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009), 130.

50
Ibid., 130.

51
George Chauncey, Why Marriage? The History Shaping Today’s Debate over Gay Equality (New
York: Basic Books, 2004), 71.

52
Therese Stewart, Video/Audio Recording of In Marriage Res Case Presented to California Supreme
Court. Available online at The California Channel, March 4, 2008.

53
Shannon Minter, Video/Audio Recording of In Marriage Res Case Presented to California Supreme
Court. Available online at The California Channel, March 4, 2008.

54
Joseph Turow, Niche Envy: Marking Discrimination in the Digital Age (Cambridge: MIT Press,
2006), 1.

55
John Ireland, e-mail message to author, March 21, 2009.

56
Ibid.

57
Ibid.

58
Ibid.

59
Ibid.

60
Turow, Niche Envy, 2.

61
Ibid., 3.

62
Gross, Up From Invisibility, 253.

63
Anthony Freitas, “Gay Programming, Gay Publics,” in Cable Visions: Television Beyond
Broadcasting (New York: NYU Press, 2007), 217.

64
In the case of public polls for Proposition 8, Steve Smith explained that they were inaccurate for
several reasons. First, because public polls can’t use voter files to determine who should be
questioned on the subject, they pose questions that allow citizens to self-select. In other words, these
polls ask a person if she or he is a voter. Not wanting to seem like they don’t participate in the
American democratic process, they always say “yes.” Second, public pollsters ask “How often do
you vote?” For the reason listed in the first instance, voters say “every time” when in fact, Smith
says, this is rarely the case. Finally, Smith said that public polls that asked which presidential
candidate the person was voting for before a question about Proposition 8, those who said they were

221

voting for Obama tended to say they were voting “No” on Proposition 8 because they thought they
should be for the “democratic” position on Proposition 8.

65
John Ireland, e-mail message to author, March 21, 2009.

66
Feinstein has not always supported LGBT civil rights. After the death of Harvey Milk, Feinstein
became San Francisco’s acting mayor. In 1983, as mayor, Feinstein angered San Francisco’s LGBT
community by refusing to march in pride parade as well as by vetoing domestic partner legislation. In
a 2008 interview with Maureen Dowd for NBC’s Nightly News, Feinstein said, “I think as more and
more people have gay friends, gay associations, see gay heroism, that their views change…I think
people are beginning to look at it differently, I know it's happened for me. I started out not supporting
it. The longer I've lived, the more I've seen the happiness of people, the stability that these
commitments bring to a life. Many adopted children who would have ended up in foster care now
have good solid homes and are brought up learning the difference between right and wrong. It's a
very positive thing.”

67
“Proposition 8 Post-Election California Voter Survey,” David Binder Research. Conducted
November 6-16, 2008.

68
Katherine Sender, “Dualcasting: Bravo’s Gay Programming and the Quest for Women Audiences,”
in Cable Visions: Television Beyond Broadcasting (New York: NYU Press, 2007), 310.

69
Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind and Other Essays (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992), 32. My
Emphasis.

70
Teresa de Lauretis, “When Lesbians Were Not Women,” in On Monique Wittig: Theoretical,
Political, and Literary Essays, ed. Namascar Shaktini (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2005),
52.

71
Cheshire Calhoun, “Separating Lesbian Theory from Feminist Theory,” Ethics 104, no. 3 (1994):
581.

72
Ibid., 580.

73
Ibid., 579.

74
Lisa Peñaloza, “We’re Here, We’re Queer and We’re Going Shopping!” in Gays, Lesbians, and
Consumer Behavior: Theory, Practice, and Research Issues in Marketing, ed. Daniel L. Wardlow
(Binghamton: Haworth Press, 1996), 14.

75
Sarah Schulman, Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1998), 107.

76
Rosemary Hennessy, Profit and Pleasure: Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism (New York:
Routledge, 2000), 34.

77
Alexandra Chasin, Selling Out: The Gay & Lesbian Movement Goes to Market (New York:
Palgrave, 2000), 24.

78
Sender, Business, Not Politics, 18.

222

79
David M. Skover and Kelly Y. Testy, “LesBiGay Identity as Commodity,” California Law Review
90, no. 1 (2002): 254.

80
Although not explicitly outlined in the state’s constitution, a revision is intended for changes to the
constitution that have a significant impact on the lives and well-being of a substantial part of the
population.

81
Ruling in Strauss, et al. v. Horton and related cases, nos. S168047, S168066, S168078, California
Supreme Court, May 26, 2009.

223
Chapter Five
Conclusion
It’s been a busy decade for lady loving ladies in that
business we call show. We’ve come out of the closets
and onto the small screen.
1

– December 14
th
, 2009, Lesbilicious

Television remains very much alive and an important part of
culture, and understanding the variety of production practices
and multiple functions of the medium provides a first step
toward explaining how television has been revolutionized.
2

– Amanda Lotz, The Television Will Be Revolutionized

At its core, this dissertation is about the ways that a particular set of industrial
practices and ideologies construct lesbian TV representations in the first decade of
the new millennium. It proposes a methodology for examining lesbian TV images
that focuses on production and consumption rather than simply on only issues of
representation. Integrating cultural studies and media industry studies offers a mode
of analysis that conceptualizes lesbian images in economic, political, and
sociological terms. Employing these modes of analysis enhances and enlivens both
of them, connecting aesthetics, content, and politics. From this framework, we come
away with deeper understandings of how modern media and culture wrestle with
evolving industrial practices and changing social ideas. This project, then, allows us
to recognize how and where specific cultural, industrial, and historical contexts
produce meaning.
When ABC cancelled Ellen Degeneres’ sitcom in 1998 and Will & Grace
debuted as the next landmark series, prospects for lesbian characters and celebrities

224
seemed bleak. Since the turn of the 21
st
century, however, lesbian images have
become a steady presence across cable and broadcast markets. In the post-network
era, studying TV’s form and content demands careful attention to the television
industry’s shifting and diverse structures. As Douglas Kellner notes, “The media
industries today stand at the center of our economy, politics, culture, and everyday
life.”
3
They are significant forces in society, which are critical to examine in order to
understand contemporary television representations.
Before exploring some of the implications of this dissertation, I consider the
ways that each chapter builds on the others, mapping the general process through
which the industry constructs lesbian images. Chapter one’s examinations of openly
lesbian TV celebrities underscore the ways that talk show conventions and audiences
present a contradictory space. The dynamics among celebrity culture, the television
industry, and lesbian sexuality reveal the ways that the talk show genre is a site of
cultural populism, producing sources for the consumer-citizen’s attention to public
life. In this space, Suze Orman, Wanda Sykes, and Ellen Degeneres make visible,
and at times even challenge, prevailing cultural norms. Their discussions of marriage
rights, in particular, offer a focal point for seeing their celebrity personae as both
commodifiable and political. Within the context of the talk show genre, Orman,
Sykes, and Degeneres open up questions about how post-network TV brands lesbian
sexuality and how lesbian celebrities position their own identities within mainstream
culture. They provide the opportunity to reconsider the ways that openly lesbian TV
celebrities produce politics and popular culture.

225
Chapter one pays attention to the industrialization of celebrity, specifically to
the ways that hype, branding, manipulation, and self-promotion are central elements
of modern celebrity culture. The chapter also emphasizes the role of broadcast
television in constructing these lesbian celebrities. Changes in regulatory policies
have drastically altered the industry. While broadcast networks have significantly
smaller audience shares than in the network era, consolidation has provided them
with more control and wider ownership over the medium. In addition, talk shows are
a staple of post-network television; amidst channel proliferation, reality and talk
shows offer endless opportunities for inexpensive programming. Talk shows are
especially lucrative in syndication, where repurposing allows networks to earn
additional revenue during a show’s original run. In this way, talk shows reach
viewers who use television and internet technologies differently, expanding their
presence in the mediascape. With their overt tropes of empowerment, particularly
female empowerment, and public disclosure of “private” matters, talk shows supply
a means of examining the limits and potentials of televisual representations of
lesbian celebrities. Studying Orman, Sykes, and Degeneres in the context of TV
show production, marketing, distribution, audiences, and industry deregulation
accounts for the complex set of factors that participate in the careful construction of
modern lesbian TV celebrities.
In chapter two, I move from an analysis of broadcast networks to one of
niche cable channels. Bringing together discourses of lesbian sexuality and market
research, this chapter seeks to explain the presence of stereotypically feminine

226
characters and personalities on cable television. While critics and scholars tend to
focus on the political merits of or problems with “lesbian femininity,” I suggest that
these images are involved in the production and maintenance of social reality itself,
specifically embedded in issues of class, the consumer marketplace, and changes in
the cable TV industry. The classy, stereotypically feminine women of shows like
Work Out, Nip/Tuck, The L Word, and South of Nowhere need to be understood in
the context of market research about lesbian women and increasing demands for
smaller and more distinct cable TV audiences. In this way, feminine, glamorous, and
fashion-conscious lesbian characters are constructed to meet the particular demands
of TV advertisers and executives. Drawing on Katherine Sender’s “dualcasting”
argument, chapter two maps the systems of power and knowledge that produce
lesbian images. What I call “multicasting,” targeting three distinct audience
demographics (lesbian women, straight women, and straight men), provides a
framework for understanding why these particular images are commodifiable in the
post-network cable market.
Chapters one and two account for the rise in lesbian representation on TV in
the first decade of the new millennium; chapter one examines this trend vis-à-vis
lesbian celebrities and the talk show genre, emphasizing the relationships among
celebrity, sexuality, and post-network industry changes. In chapter two, I argue that
classy, stereotypically feminine representations make lesbianism commodifiable and
appealing to cable TV executives and advertisers. Against this backdrop, chapter
three establishes the limits of lesbian representation in the American television

227
landscape. Through an examination of the TV commercials for the “No on Prop 8”
and “Get to Know Us First” campaigns, chapter three investigates the myriad ways
in which political campaigns reinforce cultural norms about lesbian women and
lesbian visibility. Critically examining campaign research and interviews I conducted
with campaign staff, this chapter offers insights into where political and cultural
knowledge comes from about who lesbian women are and how campaigns construct
this knowledge.
Both the “No on Prop 8” and the “Get to Know Us First” campaigns
produced commercials that contain lesbian visibility. Through polling and focus
group data, the “No on Prop 8” campaign constructed a particular set of knowledge
about what images and messages would persuade California’s small percentage of
“undecided” voters to vote “no” on Prop 8. The “Get to Know Us First” campaign,
which formed after the passage of Prop 8 to “correct” the mistakes made by the “No
on Prop 8” campaign, produced seven PSAs that relied on equally problematic and
essentializing practices. In campaign workers’ minds, these representations were
unproblematic and sure to be the most effective means of garnering votes and
swaying public opinion. However, these workers could not articulate how their
methodologies reaffirm conventional ideas about women as the reproductive center
of the heterosexual nuclear family and therefore as vital to the maintenance of the
nation. One of the core constructs both campaigns relied on was that straight women
were more likely to vote “no” or to change their opinions to favor lesbian and gay
civil rights because they tend to be friends with gay men. Utilizing this stereotype of

228
straight women and gay men as best friends, the campaigns revealed their reliance on
consumer-driven notions of women and men, straights and gays. As a result, the
campaigns positioned lesbian women in a “negative reality.” That is, their
construction of lesbian women existed outside of the kinds of commodified identities
described in chapters one and two. In this way, the campaigns conjured the
threatening trope of the “lesbian menace.” Through his analysis, chapter three
proposes television’s unsettled and equivocal state in depicting lesbian women; the
medium is both a limiting force, which reduces lesbian representation to a simplistic,
consumerist politics, and a site for political validation and self-recognition.
LGBT Television Networks: Viable in the Post-Network Era?
Reflecting on the preceding chapters, I note several themes that emerge about
the structures of the television industry itself and about the state of lesbian
representations in it. First, in the broader context of post-network TV structures, I
question the viability of LGBT-dedicated channels such as Logo and here! Chapter
two addresses these channels, but only to demonstrate the ways TV executives used
market research to launch Logo and here! The networks have undeniably affected the
lives of hundreds of LGBT industry workers, providing a professional environment
where they can be completely out without fear of repercussions. I brought up this
topic with all of the openly lesbian and gay industry workers I interviewed. I asked
them how channels like Logo and here! affect the lives of openly LGBT people
working in the TV industry. Regent Entertainment’s Stephen Macias encapsulated
the sentiment of those I interviewed:

229
I think what you’re finding in the entertainment industry now is that people
are much more comfortable in being out as executives, which means they’re
much more encouraging of folks that are on the other side of the camera
being out…There’s been a really interesting shift in momentum. I know that
when I go to cable shows…and [am] seated ironically enough next to the
Catholic Television Network affiliate marketing person and then the Gospel’s
channel’s over here and then the Bluegrass channel is next to me over here,
there’s always kind of a “oh you’re from the gay channel.” Once we start
engaging in conversation and talking about business, it’s one more wall that
has come down…I think what this network and what Logo has been able to
do in the world of cable television is that there are all of these cable events
that happen, all year round, conventions and conferences, and up until a
couple of years ago, there was no “gay business” in the midst of all these
other businesses.
4

These channels, however, do not conform to several practices of the post-network
era, arguably threatening their sustainability as the industry continues to change.
More specifically, these networks seem to go against trends in advertising and
market research that determine financial viability in the modern niche cable
marketplace.
Logo and here! target a general LGBT audience. Built on structures of basic
narrowcasting, they seek to reach as many LGBT viewers as possible. Their
marketing strategies treat LGBT viewers as a monolithic audience demographic.
Logo brands itself as the only “ad-supported cable, satellite, online, mobile and
digital entertainment gay and lesbian-themed network.”
5
The channel describes the
name “Logo” as a fluid and malleable term, offering it up to viewers as applicable to
all LGBT citizens. The network’s website explains:

230
We chose to name the channel “Logo” because as the first and only 24/7
channel for the LGBT community, we wanted a name that people could make
their own and give it personal meaning. For us, the word “Logo” is about
identity, about being comfortable in your own skin. It's about being who you
are.
6

Writing about LGBT viewers as a singular community, and using language that is
often associated with coming out, Logo suggests its own identity is defined by a
universal appeal to anyone who might be part of the “LGBT community.”
Like Logo, here! “is a precedent-setting television destination dedicated to
serving the country's gay and lesbian audience.”
7
Using even narrower language,
here! promotes itself as “Gay Television On Demand.” In this way, both networks
reinstill notions of a unified, discrete LGBT community. They imply an authentic
way of life, characterized by same-sex desire, a shared history of self-discovery in
the process of coming out, and knowledge of a specific set of cultural values and
references. Despite substantial differences in race, class, age, gender, income, and
education, the concept of an “LGBT community” or “audience” means that diversity
among LGBT viewers gets reduced to a superficial value, entirely eclipsed by sexual
preference. As chapter two demonstrates, moreover, marketers and TV executives
increasingly seek smaller and smaller groups of consumers and audiences. LGBT
market research, for example, continues to break down the “LGBT market” into
multiple markets, insisting that
there is no singular gay market. However, there are gay markets – and many
of them. Today, gay marketing is about segmentation and stratification. Gays
and lesbians want to be reached on a personal level, according to individual
interests and preferences.
8

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Logo’s and here!’s promotions are disconnected from post-network branding
strategies. Consequently, neither network accounts for the myriad ways in which
small groups of viewers consume television. “Television in a post-network era,” Lotz
argues, “fragments beyond the narrowcasting of the multi-channel transition to
personcasting in terms of what is viewed, when, how, and even in how viewers pay
for it.”
9
Not accounting for the demands of “personcasting,” Logo’s and here’s!
limited and arguably dated methods of marketing might not be enough to draw and
retain audiences in the drastically altered TV industry.
In addition, television in the early 2000s relies on digital promotions to
generate interest in new shows and to draw more audiences to established shows.
Bravo, for example, uses its website to offer viewers “video extras,” blogs written by
show casts and network executives, and forums for viewers to “chat” about
programming, expanding the ways in which viewers engage with Bravo’s TV shows.
By contrast, Logo, which is also offered to consumers as part of a bundle of cable
channels, uses its website in different ways and to different ends. Logo launched in
2005 at the end of the multi-channel era, heavily relying on the internet to establish
its brand identity. Based on market research that found that LGBT people are “early
adopters” of new technologies, Logo built an extensive network of websites
dedicated to LGBT media consumers and communities. In 2006, a year after its
launch, Logo purchased several established LGBT websites including
AfterEllen.com, AfterElton.com, and 365gay.com. These websites do not advertise
Logo’s programming specifically but Logo’s name appears as part of the site’s name,

232
for example, “AfterEllen on Logonline.com.” Benefiting from industry deregulation
and common ownership practices, Logo also partnered with CBS News to provide
“up-to-the-minute” news on TV, online, and in podcasts (both CBS and Logo are
owned by Viacom).
The variety and volume of Logo’s online acquisitions suggests that the
channel caters to a wired LGBT demographic interested in a range of news and
entertainment networks. Logo’s website has helped to sustain the network up to this
point. Merging with and buying other LGBT media outlets provides the channel with
increased and more diverse sources of revenue, as well as a wider range of potential
viewers who were already loyal to the network’s acquired properties. Yet this kind of
media consolidation often results in what Lotz describes as “reproducing particular
silos of specific worldviews.”
10
By consolidating LGBT media, Logo skews toward
LGBT consumers with access to technologies, who already purchase LGBT-
dedicated publications, and who can personally and financially afford to be out. In
this way, Logo’s acquisition of online media tends to privilege those who are already
disproportionately out, affluent, and educated.
While other niche cable channels like Bravo, Lifetime, and BET utilize
online marketing and distribution strategies to expand their array of offerings,
Logo’s website is a portal to learning about “LGBT life,” including entertainment,
history, news, where to travel, what music to buy, and what books to read. Its
website boasts an LGBT world “all its own.” This promotional image, however, is
disconnected from the realities of its programming line-up. Logo’s films and original

233
series feature topics often considered taboo in network television: LGBT coming out
stories, dating shows, adoption stories, and transgender experiences of dating,
transitioning, and sex reassignment surgery. These programs tend to have small-
budgets, though, lacking the stunning and high-quality aesthetics that dominate
modern television programming.
The structure of Logo’s online presence, then, suggests that the channel is
less a home base for LGBT television audiences a more of a springboard for
becoming acquainted with a particular LGBT “lifestyle.” This “lifestyle” acquaints
users with distinct sets of values, beliefs, needs, and preferences that the network
defines as “LGBT.” As Michael Featherstone writes, “lifestyle pursuits…are used as
‘bridges and doors’ to unite and exclude.”
11
Logo’s website positions “lifestyle” as
an on-going project, wherein users constantly display their particular tastes and
preferences in the news they read, entertainment they consume, clothes they buy,
places they travel, self-presentation, and daily practices. In this way, Logo’s website
does not meet the demands of post-network era digital promotions, which do more
than draw audiences; they prepare viewers, as Lotz says, “to have certain
expectations of the show and thus contribute to how they understand it.”
12
Because it
does not use digital promotions in the same way as other channels, Logo serves
neither to draw audiences nor to generate ideas and expectations about the channel’s
TV programming. The website is what Joseph Turow calls a “lifestyle parade,” that
invites “target audiences…into a sense of belonging that goes far beyond the coaxial
wire into books, magazines, videotapes, and outdoor events.”
13
Turow defines TV

234
channels like MTV and Nickelodeon as “lifestyle parades,” but in this case, Log’s
website, not its TV channel, is the force that creates a sense of communal
“belonging.” While this dynamic suits a “wired” audience demographic, Logo
remains plagued by low viewership, lack of competitive funds for program
production, and consequently, poor production values and limited marketing
budgets. The emergence of the post-network era thus poses fundamental difficulties
for LGBT-dedicated TV channels.
Lesbianism, Cosmopolitanism, and Los Angeles
While I am unsure that LGBT-dedicated channels will remain part of post-
network TV’s future, I do think lesbian representations on broadcast and other niche
cable channels will continue to be part of the television landscape. Looking at
lesbian representations of the early 2000s, moreover, I note another theme emerging
from this project: despite the significant differences in form, style, and content,
lesbian-themed shows consistently feature a cosmopolitan sensibility, defined by
characters’ and personalities’ investments in certain consumer and lifestyle practices.
Here, cosmopolitanism signifies the qualities of characters and personalities with
economic and cultural capital. TV shows like Work Out, The L Word, and South of
Nowhere center their narratives within discourses of consumption, urban living, and
self-transformation. In many ways, these serialized shows all use soap opera
conventions to structure their narratives, making it particularly easy to define lesbian
sexuality through discourses of consumption (of the self, of products, and of others).
Work Out privileges a world in which Jackie Warner, her trainers, and their clients

235
commodify the fit body, showing it as something that can be bought with enough
money and discipline. The trainers also teach the clients how to consume – food and
exercise – tastefully and with proper restraint to improve the physical self. In this
way, class is marked on the body. As television studies scholar John Fiske notes,
“The metaphor of ‘taste’ works…by displacing class differences onto the physical,
and therefore natural, senses of the body.”
14
The show thus produces linkages
among class, refined tastes, and the fit, worked out body.
The L Word creates a televisual space where lesbian characters embody
distinct types of cosmopolitanism; Bette Porter, played by Jennifer Beals, for
example, is an art curator and dean of a fine arts college. Her elegant home, with a
swimming pool surrounded by a lush garden, her expensive and well-known works
of art, and her numerous luxury goods reflect an educated, upper-class lifestyle.
Helena Peabody, played by Rachel Shelley, is an English heiress from a family who
spends its fortune supporting artistic and educational causes. Peabody spends much
of her time buying expensive, designer clothing, and attending charity events.
Following the lives of characters like these, The L Word functions as a mediated
point of entrance into certain types of cosmopolitan living. Drawing on a different
form of capital, the teen drama South of Nowhere features a lesbian character who is
the daughter of a famous rock musician. She therefore has access to wealth, certain
cultural knowledge, social norms, and specific experiences of urban life; she drives a
bright red sports car, has quit school to pursue her own music career, and lives in a
palatial home paid for by her absentee, rock star father.

236
While scholars such as Ron Becker, Kellie Burns, and Cristyn Davis have
detailed the ways in which cosmopolitanism operates in an array of lesbian and gay
programming, I argue that lesbian cosmopolitanism is also specific to the city of Los
Angeles. In shows like The L Word, Nip/Tuck, The O.C., Work Out, and South of
Nowhere, and for lesbian celebrities such as Ellen Degeneres and Wanda Sykes, L.A.
plays a key role in the construction and representation of lesbianism. Los Angeles
cosmopolitanism constitutes a framework through which lesbian identities are
constructed, maintained, and sometimes contested. These shows are also set in well-
known, distinct neighborhoods of Los Angeles: The L Word in West Hollywood,
known as an upscale, LGBT area of town, Work Out and Nip/Tuck in the elite
beauty, fitness, and shopping culture of Beverly Hills, and South of Nowhere in
L.A.’s hip, youthful, and celebrity-laden Sunset Strip. Los Angeles’ elite, exclusive,
and often excessive consumptive practices tend to include fitness, chic shopping
cultures, luxury cars and homes, and extensive beauty rituals. In these shows, the
narrative is mediated within a setting that idealizes and normalizes the specific
consumptive behaviors and practices of the city. Often a character itself, L.A.
presents a context for each shows’ version of lesbian sexuality. In this way,
consumption is a marker of the city’s particular cultural, economic, and aesthetic
norms.
Los Angeles’ public, classy, and well-established lesbian culture has often
been overlooked by historians who describe gay men as party-going, sex-crazed, big
spenders, and lesbian women as domestic, rural, and financially marginal. According

237
to historians Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons, lesbian bars and clubs began to
spring up all over L.A. in the late 1970s and 1980s. “By 1983,” they write, “there
were more than forty lesbian bars in Los Angeles…that aimed to be much more
upscale.
15
Accounts by club-goers report that blonde Farrah Fawcett-types were
commonplace.
16
The women who frequented clubs such as The Palms, Cinema
Lady, and Executive Suite, styled themselves after Hollywood stars of the time. In
this context, contemporary lesbian TV programming offers a form of
cosmopolitanism that is enmeshed in L.A.’s traditional culture of conspicuous
consumption. Classy, wealthy, glamorous lesbian images thus exist in almost every
television market, not just on niche cable channels. This form of cosmopolitanism
suggests that TV is deeply invested in connecting consumerism with lesbian identity.
The Many Functions of Lesbian “Femininity” on Television
Fans and critics often associate the cosmopolitanism of lesbian characters and
personalities with stereotypical femininity. The issue of “lesbian femininity” has
indeed been the most common critique of lesbian-themed shows. Assessments of
lesbian “femininity” examine the substance of these images, asking what they are or
are not. These critiques emphasize evaluating the effectiveness of lesbian
representations against a series of stock binaries such as good/bad,
realistic/unrealistic, and political/apolitical. Critics of lesbian “femininity” argue that
these images sanitize lesbian characters, rendering them effectively apolitical.
Consequently, increased representation does not signify progress or indicate cultural
and political shifts in public opinion about lesbian women. Rather, critics see these

238
depictions as a dangerous sign of assimilation to heteronormativity, which in essence
serves to depoliticize lesbian visibility.
I propose, however, that these representations are more than mainstreamed,
assimilationist images; rather, they are shaped by consumer culture and its particular
construction of identities and lifestyles. TV producers and networks usually frame
“lesbian femininity” as a mere reflection of reality. The preview for Showtime’s
series The Real L Word: Los Angeles, for example, describes the show as “real life,
real drama, real lesbians.” The three-minute preview concludes with interviews with
each cast member about the show’s genuine authenticity. Making the same claim in
different words they say: “I have faith that the show is really accurately going to
portray who we are”; “Here we are. This is real”; “It couldn’t be more real”; “It’s
100% fucking real.” In the preview, as well as in the casting call for the show, the
network reveals a strong desire to “prove” that feminine lesbian women exist in
visible and quantifiable ways. This impulse to “prove” was also evident during the
Prop 8 campaign. While the “No on Prop” and “Get to Know Us First” campaigns
were less explicit about the goal to show that certain types of lesbian women exist,
the few images that appeared in both campaigns featured lesbian women with make-
up, long hair, and “appropriately” feminine clothing and mannerisms.
Efforts to show that stereotypically feminine women exist in the “real world,”
on television, and in the consumer marketplace are often articulated as attempts to
disprove inaccurate and dated stereotypes of lesbian women. Simply put, these
depictions are seen as corrective measures. TV industry workers, advertisers, market

239
researchers, and organizations like GLAAD acknowledge that they try to “correct”
misleading stereotypes. What they do not concede, however, is the ways in which
these efforts are aimed at disproving inconvenient images. Representations of anti-
feminine, anti-cosmetic lesbian women offer little opportunity for the kinds of
commodification that make TV shows marketable and profitable. As chapter two
attests, stereotypically feminine, glamorous, and classy images make lesbianism a
viable commodity to cable TV producers and advertisers.
Marketers, TV industry workers, and media-watch dog activists, however,
tend to ignore the ties between femininity and practices of consumption. As
Katherine Sender’s and Jeffrey Escoffier’s research shows, LGBT communities have
never been separate from the consumer marketplace. As Sender says, “the business
opportunities that gay politics offers have structured the gay market just as much as
the politics of gay-targeted business practices have.”
17
In fact, rather than being
imposed on LGBT citizens, the “gay market” itself was produced partly by members
of the LGBT community who saw access to and representation in the consumer
marketplace as a means to gain financially, and as a vehicle for public visibility,
recognition, and cultural influence. In American Homo: Community and Perversity,
Escoffier examines how an urban subculture created by stigmatized and invisible
lesbians and gays evolved into a public community with a clear political agenda and
an influential position in American consumer culture. Detailing what he calls the
“political economy of the closet,” Escoffier argues that the market often plays a
crucial role in the emergence of lesbian and gay communities, and conversely, that

240
these communities significantly impact the American marketplace. “Lesbian
femininity,” then, is embedded in the interrelated contexts of identity, consumption,
and politics.
These stereotypically feminine images are also connected to the “post-gay”
rhetoric articulated by industry workers, members of civil rights organizations, and
LGBT television viewers. Chapter two discusses this term in relation to industry
discourses about fictional characters and storylines, but “post-gay” rhetoric is also a
central feature of celebrity discourse. Chapter one discusses Ellen Degeneres’ so-
called “comeback” in relation to the press’ response to her hosting of the 2001
Emmy Awards after the September 11
th
terrorist attacks. The other reason for her
“comeback” that circulated in the press and, which Degeneres herself articulated,
however, was that her talk show downplays her sexuality. Between the show’s 2003
debut and her seemingly sudden openness about LGBT civil rights beginning in
2007, Degeneres, TV producers, and the popular press emphatically employed “post-
gay” language to define and describe her image. In interviews about the show in
2003, Degeneres asked viewers to “forget about the whole gay thing…I’m funny,”
18

insisting “people know I’m gay now, and that’s it…that’s where it ends.”
19
Press
coverage of the show initially emphasized its light and inoffensive content and tone,
reporting that Degeneres’ sexuality “was not even an issue,” and adding that, “Ellen
succeeds without using the L word.” In this way, reviewers claimed she “isn’t a
lesbian comic, she’s simply Ellen.”
20

241
My experiences as a member of the GLAAD Television Jury also exposed
me to deep-seated support for “post-gay” representations. For many jurors, the best
images were those in which a character’s sexual orientation was peripheral to the
character’s identity and motivations, and irrelevant to the show’s narrative. In
addition, the “No on Prop 8” and “Get to Know Us First” campaigns’ commercials
embody a “post-gay” rhetoric, signified by claims that lesbian and gay families are
just like straight couples. As Gina and Sonia explain in their PSA, “We worry about
the same things.” For the lesbian women depicted in these commercials, sexual
orientation does not define them, their children, or their lifestyles.
Popular and academic discourses, however, use the term “post-gay” freely,
without much attention to its meaning. Discussions about the phrase only tend to
focus on its implications; in the epilogue to Tinker Belles and Evil Queens: The Walt
Disney Company From the Inside Out Sean Griffin writes, “‘Post-gay’ diverges from
‘queer’ in its often apolitical attitude.”
21
Taking an opposing stance in her review of
several “queer” novels, writer Irene Keliher says, ‘“post-gay’ sensibility doesn’t
simply minimize sexuality and claim that we’ve moved on. Rather, it recognizes
sexuality as a part of a matrix of individual identity that informs our larger culture.”
22

Exploring the range of ways this concept operates in discourse, however, I think that
the more accurate term is “post-closet.” This term signifies the specific ways that
lesbian identity functions in TV narratives. Few lesbian characters and personalities
in contemporary TV programs come out in the course of a show. As here!’s Meredith
Kadlec put it:

242
I’m not opposed to coming out stories, I would say that I’m not doing them
because I feel like there’s so much other stuff to be done...Anything that I do
with a coming out element is going to have other layers of stuff going on
because that’s what to me is missing. It’s not enough for me it to be like,
“now know I’m gay.”
23

Arguably, this sentiment evinces the primary distinction between lesbian
representations of the 1990s and the 2000s. Making the case for “post-closet
television,” Ron Becker says, “In recent years…gay men (and to a much lesser
extent lesbians) have been seemingly (and at times seamlessly) integrated into the
landscape of U.S. television…with little to no fanfare.”
24
Where shows like E.R. and
Roseanne broke new ground with regular lesbian characters in the 1990s, the
storylines revolved around a character coming out. Because lesbian coming out
stories involve a self-identified woman “outing” herself to others, they often become
about the lesbian character asking for acceptance and love from family and friends.
They turn into stories about heterosexual struggles to come to terms with lesbian
identities, preventing the story from moving beyond this “single cataclysmic
moment.”
25
Heterosexuality remains central to the narrative while lesbian sexuality
is peripheral. In narratives where a character or personality comes to the text already
out, however, lesbian identity plays a central role in the story. In programs like The
L Word, Work Out, The Ellen Degeneres Show, The Wanda Sykes Show, and The
Wire, coming out is rarely part of the narrative dilemma. In this way, lesbian
identity is still central to a character’s or personality’s narrative, but the coming out
story is not.

243
I offer the term “post-closet” because it signifies an important discursive
difference from “post-gay.” As this project demonstrates, lesbianism is still central to
television characters’ and personalities’ identities. Nowhere is this fact more evident
than in the Prop 8 campaigns’ careful structuring of lesbian invisibility. The ways
that the “No on Prop 8” and “Get to Know Us First” campaigns limited and
strategically contained images of lesbian women suggests the extent to which lesbian
identity is ever-present and significant. The campaigns’ messages and tactics reflect
that lesbian identity exists in concrete ways and that it is indeed political, for it posed
such a threat to heteronormative society throughout the campaign. Renaming and
defining this concept is crucial because I think the praise and criticism of “post-gay”
representations oversimplify the implications of modern TV images. “Post-gay”
arguments tend to conceive of lesbian images as either all good or all bad. In this
mode, lesbian TV programming is politically progressive, completely apolitical, or
even politically regressive. As such, these discussions overlook the areas of nuance
and negotiation in lesbian representations. Seeing these images and the discourses
surrounding them as “post-closet” rather than as “post-gay” sustains their cultural
and political complexity. In this way, they remain significant sites of televised queer
communication, offering new ways to investigate the cultural and political nature of
lesbian programming in the new millennium.
The topic of “femininity” also looms large in discussions about lesbian
celebrities. In this case, the focus is on their lack of stereotypical femininity. In a
June 24
th
, 2009 cover story, The Village Voice claimed, “Butch is Back.” In the

244
article, journalist Winnie McCroy says that a more “fashion-conscious” butch
woman has emerged that “differs markedly from her mullet-coiffed, man-hating
predecessor.”
26
Among these “fashion-conscious” butch women are Ellen
Degeneres, Rachel Maddow, and Top Chef’s Josie Smith-Malave. While this article
and others in the popular press marvel at the public support for these women, who
are out, visibly “lesbian,” and even butch, I see their self-presentations operating in a
different way. Rather than see them as “butch” because they have short hair, use
minimal amounts of make-up, and wear “masculine” clothing and footwear, I argue
their physical appearances desexualize them. Scholars such as Patricia Turner, Katie
Hogan, and Tarshia Stanley have made a similar argument about Oprah Winfrey.
Positioning Winfrey’s unmatched popularity and success in the context of the
traditional “mammy” figure, they argue Winfrey’s image relies on asexuality. As
Hogan says, the mammy figure reassures “white spectators that black women's
sexuality is under wraps and that the racial boundaries between ‘white’ and ‘black’
are firmly intact.”
27
In this way, other women do not have to compete with Winfrey
for sexual attention because she is cast as already lacking sexuality. For Winfrey, in
particular, her very public battles with weight preclude her from the category of
sexual temptation and threat.
The self-presentation of openly lesbian celebrities such as Degeneres and
Maddow, as well as Suze Orman and Wanda Sykes, performs the function of
desexualizing their lesbianism. As such, their ideological and financial success
indicates the way mainstream society engages with lesbian iconography; they, like

245
the mammy figure, cater to the needs of audiences, endlessly entertaining and
informing them. For some, these lesbian celebrities offer provocative and
transgressive representations. However, these celebrities, like cable TV’s
overwhelmingly feminine characters, are commodified and constructed for the
consumer marketplace. Degeneres is after all, a national spokesperson for Cover
Girl makeup, part of a line that includes legendary supermodels like Christie
Brinkley, Cheryl Tiegs, and Tyra Banks. I am, thus, less inclined to see lesbian TV
celebrities as embodying transgressive butch identities. Instead, I am more convinced
that they offer a desexualized lesbian identity. In this way, the fictional, feminine
representations on shows like Nip/Tuck and The L Word are hypersexualized as part
of their images. In other words, their stereotypical femininity does not only serve
class-based market interests; it sexualizes the characters in ways that further
commodify their lesbianism for the cable and consumer marketplaces. For TV’s
fictional lesbian characters, then, hypersexuality is integral to their femininity, while,
for lesbian celebrities, their self-presentation desexualizes them as part of their
commodification.
State of Ambivalence
What I hope this dissertation emphasizes is that future work must treat
television, politics, and consumer culture as interconnected forces in the construction
of lesbian TV images. The stories that emerge from this research illuminate the
powerful ties among advertisers, market researchers, and TV executives. The
relationships among them produce a particular set of ideas about what makes

246
representations of lesbian women appealing to advertisers and to sizable television
audiences. This dynamic is especially significant because television is a “dual
product marketplace.” As Philip Napoli explains, “Media industries (ad-supported
industries, in particular) are unlike most other industries in that they operate in what
is perhaps best described as a ‘dual product marketplace.’”
28
This dynamic makes the
economics of the television industry unique compared to traditional economic
approaches because it makes and sells two things at the same time: It sells content to
audiences and it sells audiences to advertisers. In this context, the construction of
lesbian representations is a matter of negotiation based on multiple, and often
contradictory, cultural and economic forces.
Dependent upon a range of factors at different levels of production, the
elaborate interweaving of institutional and consumer practices makes the
construction of lesbian TV representations a process of constant debate, compromise,
and dispute. While there are sites of subversion and resistance among lesbian
images, one must bear in mind the ways in which TV, especially in its deregulated
and consolidated form, is a discursive system operating in a hegemonic society. At
the same time, one must remember that industry changes do not mean that power and
control only move from the top down. Rather, as D’Acci reminds us, “power
comes…from throughout the entire social formation.”
29
Negotiations and
renegotiations occur at every level of TV production and involve workers, practices,
and theories both within and outside of the traditional boundaries of the television
industry. Studying lesbian representations reveals the complexity that characterizes

247
the modern TV industry and its shifting definitions and cultural functions. Such
analysis also enables us to better comprehend the numerous ways in which
individuals and institutions define, redefine, and challenge lesbian characters and
personalities.
Fans, critics, and scholars are apt to feud over TV’s lesbian representations
for years to come. As Lotz says in the conclusion to The Television Will Be
Revolutionized, “Television remains very much alive and an important part of
culture.”
30
Given its status as a cultural medium that offers consumer-citizens ways
of forging identities and constructing notions about class, race, gender, sexuality, and
nation, television is likely to remain a hotbed of debate about how it represents
lesbian women and what those images mean. In the emerging post-network era, how
the ever-expanding, personalized, and intricate nature of TV will impact the
medium’s future lesbian representations remains to be seen. It is at once worrisome
and exciting to see more and more images of lesbian women on television. While I
share Turow’s concern about the effects of a “fractured society,” an undeniable
pleasure exists in seeing likenesses of myself, my relationship, and my friends on
TV. These two emotions are not necessarily paradoxical or incongruous; it is this
state of ambivalence that defines lesbian representation on television in the early 21
st

century.

248

Chapter Five Endnotes
1
“The Decade’s 10 Most Lesbilicious TV Moments,” Lesbilicious, December 14, 2009,
http://www.lesbilicious.co.uk/tv-film/the-decades-10-most-lesbilicious-tv-
moments/#ixzz0mW0q2k2Q.

2
Amanda Lotz, The Television Will Be Revolutionized (New York: NYU Press, 2007), 256.

3
Douglas Kellner, “Media Industries, Political Economy, and Media/Cultural Studies: An
Articulation,” in Media Industries: History, Theory, and Method, ed. Jennifer Holt and Alisa Perren
(Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 95.

4
Stephen Macias, interview by author, February 21, 2008.

5
“Frequently Asked Questions,” Logo, http://www.logotv.com/about/faq.jhtml.

6
Ibid.

7
“FAQ,” here!, http://www.heretv.com/AFaqPage.php. My Emphasis.

8
Community Marketing Inc. Gay and Lesbian Market Research,
http://www.communitymarketinginc.com/.

9
Lotz, The Television Will Be Revolutionized, 244. My emphasis.

10
Ibid., 43.

11
Michael Featherstone, Consumer Culture and Postmodernism (London: Sage, 1991), 110-111.

12
Lotz, The Television Will Be Revolutionized, 113.

13
Joseph Turow, Breaking Up America: Advertisers and the New Media World (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1997), 5.

14
John Fiske, Television Culture (New York: Routledge, 1987), 14.

15
Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons, Gay L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and
Lipstick Lesbians (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 245.

16
Ibid., 250.

17
Katherine Sender, Business, Not Politics: The Making of the Gay Market (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2004), 2.

18
Barrett Hooper, “With a new tour, and a talk show in the works, funny Ellen is making a
comeback,” National Post, May 2, 2004, Arts & Life, AL3.

19
Christian Toto, “DeGeneres: The apolitical wit of a political symbol,” The Washington Times, April
21, 2003, LIFE, B05.

249

20
Jason Chow, “Ellen succeeds without using the L word: DeGeneres plays up her personality, not
her sexuality,” National Post, Arts & Life, May 20, 2004.

21
Sean Griffin, Tinker Belles and Evil Queens: The Walt Disney Company From the Inside Out (New
York: NYU Press, 2000), 226.

22
Irene Keliher, “Looking for the Post-Gay: The New Frontiers of Queer Fiction,” Gulf Coast: A
Journal of Literature and Fine Arts, Spring 2010,
http://www.gulfcoastmag.org/index.php?n=2&si=14&s=935.

23
Meredith Kadlec, interview by author, January 22, 2008.

24
Ron Becker, “Post-Closet Television,” Flow, November 16, 2007, http://flowtv.org/2007/11/post-
closet-television/.

25
Suzanna Danuta Walters, All the Rage: The Story of Gay Visibility in America (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2003), 105.

26
Winnie McCroy, “The Queer Issue: Rachel Maddow, the New Sexy; The Butch is Back, with a
Poster Girl,” The Village Voice, June 24, 2009.

27
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Asset Metadata

Creator Himberg, Julia B. (author)

Core Title Producing lesbianism: television, niche marketing, and sexuality in the 21st century

School School of Cinematic Arts

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Cinema-Television (Critical Studies)

Publication Date 06/29/2010

Defense Date 05/07/2010

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag celebrity,Gender Studies,lesbian studies,Marketing,OAI-PMH Harvest,sexuality,television studies

Place Name California (states)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Seiter, Ellen (committee chair), Gross, Larry (committee member), Imre, Anikó (committee member)

Creator Email himberg@usc.edu,julia.himberg@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m3163

Unique identifier UC1160133

Identifier etd-Himberg-3821 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-361036 (legacy record id),usctheses-m3163 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Himberg-3821.pdf

Dmrecord 361036

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Himberg, Julia B.

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu