Bitch Please
What's gayer than Jeffree Star turning up at the Abbey on Friday with a Tarina Tarantino haircut and Perez Hilton on his arm? Or gayer than the parents of Mormon teenager Rebeka Rice, who are suing her school because she used the phrase "that's so gay"?
I'll tell you - it's when Curve magazine , the biggest-selling lesbian consumer mag in America, runs a double-page spread entitled "10 Women in Film and TV" and 'forgets' to mention Ilene Chaiken.
Chaiken, for those living under a very straight rock, created this little thing called The L Word. You know, the first show in the history of television about lesbians. It stars Jennifer Beals, Pam Grier, Cybill Shepherd and a few other actresses you may have heard of.
Could the omission have been pure oversight? Not sure about that - I mean, they did remember to mention Clara Kim, who is of course famous for her work as Senior Vice President of Business Affairs at Spike TV. And Monica Chuo, Vice Prez of Acquisitions at Paramount, who can't walk down Santa Monica Blvd. without having to autograph someone's tits.
It's not like the story focused solely on lesser-known power lesbians - Christine Vachon (one of the biggest indie producers in the business) and her haircut were definitely up there on the list. Which all makes the Chaiken bitch-slap seem all the more...calculated.
Look at the evidence - Curve mag was dissed on The L Word not so long ago when one of the characters, a journalist named Alice, snidely referred to it as a little magazine that 'no-one even reads'. Then they picked Heather Matarazzo - the dorkiest, least attractive human being on the planet - to play the role of a Curve magazine writer (Matarazzo played the uber-loser central character in Welcome to the Dollhouse).
I can understand why Curve might be a little pissed at Chaiken - but I wish they could have kept the drama off their pages. As a reader, how can I trust a publication which seems so obviously subjective in its coverage? Does this mean that, if I happened to be a famous lesbian writer, musician or producer, I would have to kiss some big Curvy ass just to stay in the editors' good books?
As they say in Weho - bitch please...
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