. . .Which isn’t to say there haven’t been noticeable changes, beginning in the late ’80s, when k.d. lang became an icon of lesbian chic. Nor is it to minimize the impact of ‘‘The L Word,’’ a tribute to the high testosterone level of gay babes, or to ignore hip same-sex Hollywood couples, like Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson. It is to say rather that Sapphic archetypes tend to raise questions more than answer them, since both categories (butch and femme) borrow from gender-influenced dichotomies of beauty. There have, that is, always been women known for a sort of arrant handsomeness — like Gertrude Stein, who always struck me as resembling no one so much as Hadrian VII— or for their arresting exoticism, like the painter Romaine Brooks. And then there are the gay women, known as ‘‘lipstick lesbians,’’ who look like any other pretty young thing. Indeed, the power of lipstick lesbians relies precisely on the fact that theirs is an exclusively inner ‘‘outing’’; outside they are all mascara, blush and, yes, lipstick. Their allure is in their ability to mimic the normative language of sexual discourse while at the same time poking it in the eye.
Well, look again. Lesbianism has finally come into a glamour of its own, an appeal that goes beyond butch and femme archetypes into a more universal seduction. Her name is Rachel Maddow, the polished-looking, self-declared gay newscaster who stares out from the MSNBC studio every weekday night and makes love to her audience.
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Ever heard of something called Dada?â€
Rachel Maddow is trying to make an analogy. It’s mid-October, two weeks before the election, and the MSNBC host is comparing the McCain campaign’s recent fixation on “Joe the Plumber†to the anti-bourgeois cultural movement of the early-twentieth century. But this is prime time, and Maddow first has to define Dadaism in as colloquial a way as possible. This is something of a challenge considering she only has about twelve seconds.
“Deliberately being irrational, rejecting standard assumptions about beauty or organization or logic,†she begins. “It’s an anti-aesthetic statement about the lameness of the status quo … kind of?†She twists her face into a cartoon grimace that morphs into a wide smile. “Why am I trying to explain Dadaism on a cable news show thirteen days from this big, giant, historic, crazy, important election that we’re about to have?†she asks with a self-deprecating laugh, as she recognizes the Dadaishness of her own quest. “Because that’s what I found myself Googling today, in search of a way to make sense of the latest McCain-Palin campaign ad!â€
It’s hard to imagine many other cable news hosts going down that particular rabbit hole. (Can you picture Glenn Beck referring to the existentialists to make a point?) But then again, Rachel Maddow is not like other cable news hosts. A self-described butch lesbian with short hair and black-rimmed glasses, off-camera she resembles a young Ira Glass more than the helmet-headed anchoresses and Fox fembots who populate television news. Doing the press rounds when MSNBC first announced her show in August, she’d show up to interviews looking like, she says, “a 14-year-old boy†in puffy Samantha Ronson sneakers with iPod headphones dangling from her ears—but then she’d easily segue into an informed foreign- policy or economic discussion that ended with a Daily Show–worthy punch line. Her résumé is similarly unexpected: A Rhodes scholar and an Oxford Ph.D., she’s done stints as an AIDS activist, barista, landscaper, Air America host, and mascot in an inflatable calculator suit. She’s a civics geek who reads comic books, goes to monster-truck rallies, likes to fish, calls herself an “amateur mixologist†of classic cocktails, and even Twitters.
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