Finally, it’s happened. The people of France have begun a love affair with Breeder’s Digest. And we, in turn, have fallen back in love with France—as we remember it from our high school textbooks. Frankly, we’d forgotten how much we have in common with one another. Thanks, France, for reminding us once again that gays and the French share a mutual admiration for the finer things in life…
Midday drinking.
Decorative plant life that may/may not be fake.
Fur collars that may/may not be fake.
Impossibly uncomfortable wrought-iron chairs.
Plexiglass windows.
Giant pant legs, tiny shoes.
Things that spurt.
Street signs that get blurry after lunch.
Dogs who are just as snobby as we are.
Pink triangles.
Bald painters who feel entitled to paint just because they’re gay/French.
Men who take up too much space.
Unrealistic hair colors on women.
Waiters in mom jeans.
Leather bags with handles.
Faceless straight couples who read in silence.
Nothing goes with heather gray cotton and denim quite like an outdoor walk with dogs! Talk about a walking cliché… This metrosexual family really knows how to stroll! Looks like they got their J.Crew delivery in the mail and decided to make use of it the only way anybody knows how: pair it with a black shoe, take it out to the woods, and enjoy how casual life can be. But the looks on the kids’ faces show that they’ve had it with Mom and Dad’s catalog lifestyle. They’re looking forward to an adolescence filled to the brim with rebellion, quitting things, and possible homosexuality. Cerberus, the family’s two-sometimes-three-headed dog, will be a trusty companion during those years of lackluster efforts and pointed avoidance of overpriced wash n’ wear.
Children have an inherent ability to sense danger from miles away. Scientists theorize it’s because they’re so much closer to the ground. I theorize it’s because they haven’t yet learned to deaden their feelings, to bury their emotions deep inside and then smother them with chicken casserole. Bob shouldn’t have had that second helping at dinner. And Marcia shouldn’t have served it up so readily. The children were fussy. They wouldn’t finish their meals, and all but refused to leave the house for the family’s customary after-dinner walkabout. “But kids,” Marcia had pleaded, “You love looking at the changing leaves. It’s—educational.” That was when disaster struck, hurtling toward them like a bolt from the blue. Another innocent family had fallen prey to…suburban wolf attack! The neighbors might have been able to hear their screams, if only everything in this picture wasn’t so muted.
Gee whiz, it’s hard out there for a straight. How can you possibly be innovative, when gays have already thought of everything? I mean, we give and give, and you just sit there twiddling your wife’s thumbs. To date, the only things you’ve managed to contribute to lesbian culture are khaki Dockers and Point Break. As usual, Dear Breeder, your best just isn’t good enough. We’ve taken a vote, and we want our stuff back now!
That’s why we’re officially instituting a TOTAL LESBIAN RECALL of all the things you’ve stolen from us over the years.
SERIAL MONOGAMY
You’ve really made a mess of this whole marriage thing, haven’t you? Haven’t you?! After all your self-righteous moralizing, it turns out you’re not even all that devoted to the institution you continue to clench in your cold, dead fists. Unlike you, however, our fists are alive and fisting! That’s because we prefer girlfriends to come in multiples, just like our orgasms. Our relationships are monogamous (like yours are supposed to be) because we don’t take part in your once-in-a-lifetime woman-trading ceremonies. By involving ourselves instead in a series of committed relationships, we know we’ve always got a replacement wife waiting in the wings. That’s right, we’ll be in charge of the woman-trading around here!
Dear Breeder: 1990 called, and a bunch of angry, militant, yet deeply-fulfilled lesbians want our serial monogamy back. Make up something on your own for once!
SHAVED HEADS
A shaved head never goes out of style if you’re one of the following: an aging NBA star looking to showcase elaborate, meaningless tattoos; a stepdad with something to prove; or, a man whose receding hairline can no longer be considered “intellectual.” Like most things, though, the shaved head started with lesbians. You see, shaved heads make for the clearest indication that a woman is gay, and therefore uninterested in male attention. It can be momentarily empowering to shave your head in this tried-and-true lesbian rite of passage (right, Natalie Portman?), but the real display of audacity comes when you look your withered grandparent in the eye and defiantly say, “The all-women’s college you broke your back to send me to isn’t what made me gay. I can’t help who I love!” Good thing every detail of your facial expression and scalp is unobstructed so Nana and Granddad can see that you didn’t just shave your head in a desperate effort to prove something to yourself. Something that you still haven’t quite figured out…
Dear Breeder: The suburbs called, and they say you’re shearing everything a little too obsessively—even the shrubs, who don’t give a flying fuck about your fading masculinity.
GOING GREEN, OR (RED)
This new hobby you’ve picked up of “considering” soy products and “recycling” your trashy straight trash is really over the top. Lesbians have been “deeply troubled” by Birkenstock—I mean, carbon—footprints since way before you were born. We cook our food and light our lights by the inexhaustible energy of lesbian drama, and then go to advanced spin cycle classes to relax. Next time you want to “go green,” Dear Breeder, why don’t you just go home and turn off eleven of your twelve TVs? And while you’re thinking about what a success you’ve become—what with all of your flat screens—why not stop and consider the thousands of lesbians who are making them, in sweatshops and sweat lodges across the globe?
Incidentally, Dear Breeder, this entire (RED) thing has got to go. It’s making me bo(RED). Lesbians have taken care of people with HIV forever, and even though their efforts have largely gone unnoticed, we’ve never demanded that our human kindness be enclosed in gratuitous parentheses and sold in high-end boutique malls. Frankly, I’m offended by this greedy, exploitative, and trendy appropriation of (AIDS). Though I will acknowledge that The Gap has served my people well in their consistent production of rugged quality plaids.
Dear Breeder: Bono just twittered @you to say that even a piece of toilet paper can be recycled for the Sudanese/Irish/Palestinian people, but it’s thanks to the foresight and earth-friendly ways of lesbians that you’re even facebook friends with him in the first place.
The list of things you’ve stolen from us could go on and on. The more I think about your relentless lesbian identity theft, the more it makes my head want to explode!
Listen to me when I tell you this, Dear Breeder: Lesbians are cooler than everybody else.
Let that sink in for a moment, while you rearrange your throw pillows and consider building a rec room. The only reason you never heard of us before is because we’re so cutting edge. In fact, you’ll just start getting into us five years from now, when your kids are starting high school and they all want to grow up to be lesbians.
“Sure,” you say, “You lesbians have been cool before, but nothing ever comes of it.” Well you know what, Dear Breeder? Nothing ever came of your career in online gambling either. And you know why? Because of lesbians.
EXHIBIT A: Paul Revere
Paul Revere kicked it all off with his shiny black boots, blousy shirts, and three-quarter length pants—a truly organic look, native to the Northeast, that he ripped off from early lesbian settlers, who never died and in fact still live in Northampton today. Revere loved horses, had a popular daytime talk show way before Rosie, and was voted “Founding Father Most Likely to Process His Feelings in a Supportive Group Setting.” To this day, we marvel at those lesbian hands! Raise your silver teapot high in a tea party toast to this classic icon of Lesbian Chic!
EXHIBIT B: Vanity Fair Was Simple Then, Too
You’ve seen it before and you’ll see it again: This magazine cover poster is the poster child for Lesbian Chic! k.d. lang is so cool that her beard is practically shaving itself with those razor-sharp cheekbones! Watch out, Cindy, this lower-case lesbian is hot for you. After all, why would you capitalize your name when you already have an international supermodel capitalizing on your lesbianism? Mad props to Cindy and her pet monster hair for coming along on this wild ride of momentary mainstream interest in a lesbian.
EXHIBIT C: DJ Sapphic Fever
Totally cool. We just love you guys. Here especially. Doing lines off a fudge pop again, Lilo? Come on, girl, you know that leaves a trail! Sam, I always think you look soooo cute trying to look soooo cute. Awwwwww, kittens.
There’s just no way to get around it, Dear Breeder. Lesbians rule no matter what we’re doing. Whether we’re saving the world practically every day or just mostly being interesting people who are self-aware and awesome, it’s obvious enough why mainstream culture wants so little to do with us: You are jealous, and I don’t think you’re ready for this jealousy.
Ain’t no party like a lesbian party cause a lesbian party don’t stop.
“The real motivation is to just turn the world gay. I very much want to inject gay culture into the mainstream. I committed myself to them and they committed themselves to me and because of the gay community I’m where I am today.”
– Lady Gaga
Hay. It’s not just for horses anymore!
We know it can be so frustrating, Dear Breeder, to parse the language of homosexuality, or even to listen to gay people talk. But there’s nothing more frustrating than listening to straight people talk about gay people as a way to emphasize how gay-straight they truly are.
So let me break this gaga down for you. First off, this Lady wants to turn the world gay and has chosen to employ a “gay infection” meth-aphor to describe the strategic process through which she will accomplish this feat. We likewise admire her repeated use of the alienating “they” to refer to a minority group (which conveniently doubles as her primary audience). Like so many art school drop-outs before her, Lady Gaga flashes that famous poker face and cashes in her gay chips to get famous, while still being clear about the boundary where she ends and “they” begin.
But wait! We hired a crack team of dishonorably discharged ex-military gay translators to tell us what Lady Gaga really means here. This is what they revealed!
“The real motivation [of my career] is to make a lot of money by smuggling gay taste into unsuspecting suburban households. I want to bareback my way into the mainstream on the heels of my ‘separate but equal’ commitment ceremony that I just had with the boys out back of the Eagle, where I was today for an important photo shoot.” –Lady Gaga
WASP: White Art School Piece-of-Shit
If you were a real friend to the gays, or even a real performance artist, you’d climb high up into a tree and vow never to take out your hair bow until everyone can legally tie the knot!
Thanks to our friends at girlfriend is a homo for bringing this urgent matter to our attention!
A week ago I alighted within the rural countryside of Hart, Michigan to attend my first Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. There, I promptly found my inner lesbian sister-spirit, and lost the following items: my wallet, my hand-woven goddess stick, and—on the last night—my “All who wander are not lost” girlfriend, who’s since been returned.
Anyone up for a game of “Where’s Carla”?
The MWMF was born in 1976 in the heyday of lesbian separatism, a reality born from the dream of an empowering womyn-only, womyn-built space packed with folk music, all-day consciousness-raising workshops, and tofu nutloaf for thousands. Today, not much has changed, making it one of few places in existence where we can actually experience (and in the case of the lentil stew, nearly taste) a part of our lesbian herstory.
Not much is lost on the land (which is how lesbians refer to the 650 acres that house the festival). When my “wallet” fell out of my “pants,” a sister (which is how lesbians refer to each other on the land) picked it up and visited surrounding campsites until she found a friend of mine who could return it to me. Isn’t sisterhood powerful?
National Womyn’s Wyg March and Sew-In
Not all of my sisters were as lucky as I. Or as quick to leave personal belongings on mulched pathways that would be compassionately trampled by hundreds of Tevas, Birkenstocks, and patent leather stiletto boots in a matter of days. In fact, the festival’s Lost & Found safe space tells a different story altogether, one in which numerous lesbian-feminist heirlooms were lost to the moonlit skies and absent-minded disposition that comes from living in a dream-world where neither shirts nor shoes are required for service.
Official MWMF Lost & Found Inventory, 2009
Cedar n’ Sage dog brush
Hemp afghan, for cool nights
A dusty copy of A Woman’s Guide to Animal-Whispering
Hand-blown glass bong (with “Our Bodies, Ourselves” inlay etching)
One mystical feather, one pot of gold
Satchels
Hers-and-hers rainbow muumuus with “dancing goddess” batik pattern
One sealed box of latex gloves
One empty box of latex gloves
A fleeting vision of dolphin equality
At least fifteen appropriations of Native American culture
Four unique “Pstyle” models
1,235 leathermans
A quiver of arrows
Melissa Ferrick
Don’t worry, my sisters. Your secrets are sacred with me.
Well, leaping lizards! Congratulations on the marriage of the Sorry sisters to an entire men’s bowling league. This sister act from Nebraska doesn’t lose a wink of sleep over such “societal norms” as “conventional beauty” or “taste in clothing,” and they’re all the more redundant for it! Meanwhile, back in Pennsylvania Dutch country, the backwoodz boyz are all fancied up and ready for a good old fashioned game of “snake in the outhouse.” And don’t forget, y’all—the reception’s being held on the scenic shores of Lake Sad Times Ahead!
Thank goodness the photographer had the good sense to turn down the gravity a little, so as to subtly draw the viewer’s eye away from the bride, and toward anything else.
I’ll just start off by saying that I wish all straight weddings floated quite like this one. But unfortunately we may never know what the gay wanna-be fashion photographer shouted at Troupe Boring to make them raise their hands and jump like the Pointer Sisters. In the meantime I’ll sit and marvel at the Groom’s enchantingly flat-footed Dick Van Dyke jump, which he must have self-consciously perfected on putting greens all over the country before his “big day.” Also, how convenient that these lovebirds got married in a generic urban industrial waste-dump, so that their clichéd personalities could shine like Penelope Cruz and Halle Berry in Gothika. I just love it when Bride & Groom decide on their wedding day to use the futuristic technology of Vague Metropolitan Snapshottery to pretend like they led exciting lives “downtown” before they got married.
Now we can all enjoy the vague, happy memories of jumping in place currently reserved for those who can legally wed.
Bea Arthur was known to legions of fans the world over for her deadpan portrayal of Golden Girl Dorothy Zbornak, and for the bird of prey-like strength of her feet. Her unapologetically flamboyant style of dress (at a time when living one’s life as an openly gay man was to flirt with personal ruin and career disaster) necessitated its very own fashion vocabulary, inspiring such timeless phrases as “cowl neck,” “slouch boot,” and “turkey necktie couture.”
Bea Arthur as Lurkey Brown in Bertolt Brecht’s The Hennypenny Opera.
Of course, Bea was best known for her star turn on The Golden Girls (1985-1992), but her achievements on the stage and on the small screen don’t stop there. Bea initially made her name in the classic Off-Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera (1954), and went on to star in the original Broadway productions of Fiddler on the Roof (1964) and Mame (1966). In the 70’s, Bea created a sensation on TV, playing the ultra-liberal title character on Maude (1972-1978), a sitcom which boldly tackled such tough, now-obsolete issues as racism and women’s rights. Little public recognition has been given, however, for Bea’s fearless stunt work in Cannonball Run, and for her stunning portrayal of Chewbacca in the original Star Wars trilogy. Additionally, Bea was the first to introduce a 26-year-old Kristy McNichol to the sex act known as the “Empty Nest,” leading both actresses to a successful and intensely satisfying spin-off.
The Empty Nest: Step One…
Unfortunately, the years took their toll on Bea’s health and wellbeing, and by the end of her life she was largely composed of donated plasma, gristle, and weave. Surrounded by friends and family, she finally lost her battle with cancer on Saturday, April 25, 2009. Bea’s body was instantly cremated by her own trademark slow burn.
In celebration of the life of this staunch supporter of animal rights, gay rights, and the rights of gay animals, Breeder’s Digest would like to offer you—the disembodied ghost of Bea Arthur—our highest honor: The Lifetime Achievement Award for Female Impersonation. You’ve more than earned it, with the legacy of overdone double-takes, superfluous musical numbers, asymmetrical blouses, and gravel-voiced laughter you leave behind.
You may have noticed when shopping at your local corporate megastore, Dear Breeder, that pocket handkerchiefs come in many assorted colors. Obviously, blue and red are used to indicate streetgang affiliations; but what are such nondescript colors as purple, yellow, and periwinkle good for? Once again, your well-meaning, albeit naive, curiosity has opened up a disgusting can of filthy, gay worms. For years, big city gays and lesbians have used multicolored handkerchiefs to indicate various sexual preferences and practices. Come slither in the dirt with us, Dear Breeder, as we explain the myriad, intricate meanings of our emblematic accessories with this easy-to-use reference guide.
Next time you blow your nose, Dear Breeder, we urge you to pay attention to what color hanky you use, and into which pocket you stuff it. As always, we’ve got our beady little eyes trained directly at your rear end, and are awaiting the slightest sign, suggestion, or color-coded invitation to strike! What color are we currently flagging? Why, sandalwood beige, as always…
Breeder's Digest 