Elizabeth Taylor has been a trusted friend to the gays, and the gays a loyal fan base for her—even when we’re both so doped up we hardly recognize one another. We love Elizabeth Taylor because, like all gays, she’s a woman of contradictions: truly classy yet perfectly campy, deeply kind yet shamelessly embarrassing, perennially lonely yet serially monogamous. And the greatest contradiction of all: she is not gay. We’ve been with her through the teen flicks, the perfume commercials, and the mascara—gobs and gobs of it. And now, Dear Breeder, we want to tell the world why.
“Mind if I slip into a glass of gin?”
Elizabeth Taylor is Hollywood glamour defined, but she–as do most gays–had to start somewhere. And why shouldn’t that somewhere be “eyebrows”? Thanks to her well-connected parents, Elizabeth began acting at a young age. These early experiences (see films: Lassie Come Home I & II and National Velvet) allowed her to perfect cross-species method acting, while pretending to be well-read (see films: Jane Eyre and Little Women). After teaching the world the true meaning of doggie-stylin’, falling from a horse, and having her first period drama, Taylor’s acting chops were officially fierce: it was time for her to become the most glamorous celebrity-in-crisis in the world.
Film still of the epic ping pong scene from Cleopatra.
Against her will, Taylor was consistently cast in the kind of boring romantic melodramas that only we gays can truly appreciate. Thanks to these films, Elizabeth Taylor helps us realize just how ridiculous heterosexuality truly is (see film: Father of the Bride). Another important Liz Lesson comes from her first adult roles, where we learned that implied abortions and veiled sexual storylines can be occasions for impromptu gay holidays. We just eat that stuff up!
Indeed, Elizabeth’s superstardom and all that it entails reads like a gay wish list:
1. Star turns in numerous film adaptations of such gay plays as Tennessee Williams’s Suddenly Last Summer and Edward Albee’s soul-doucheing Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? √
2. Soap opera cameos on All My Children and General Hospital. √
3. A taste for expensive pharmaceuticals, rich fabrics, and even richer men. √
4. Eight tumultuous marriages, leading to a public denunciation issued by The Vatican because of her home-wrecking ways. √√√√√√√√
5. A dramatic tracheotomy scar, of which she is unashamed. √
6. A love affair with jewelry that inspired her 2002 book My Love Affair with Jewelry. √
7. A wardrobe of no fewer than 65 extravagant costumes in the blockbuster bomb Cleopatra. √
8. A brief turn as both EMT and nursemaid, when she discovered gay heartthrob Montgomery Clift’s broken body after he wrecked his car, leaving a dinner party at her house. √
9. Unswerving gay activism in her attention to HIV/AIDS. √
10. And, most recently, a legacy of YouTube clips, replete with slurred speech, inelegant gestures of elegance, and displays of dignity in the face of devastation and ruin. √
Elizabeth Taylor, in her latest roll.
It’s as plain as the nostrils on your face, Elizabeth Taylor, that you have stolen the hearts of gays everywhere with your lifelong commitment to opulence, strife, and perseverance. And, because your white diamonds always bring people luck, Liz, be a lady tonight and accept our offer to serve as Head Roulette Mistress at the Breeder’s Digest Resort, Casino & Outpatient Celebrity Rehabilitation Center.
We’re going all in!
The Birkenstock is classic granola lesbian footwear at its finest—and most time-tested. For eons, these warm leatherettes, wholly lacking in personality, have been a staple in the lesbian shoe department. A pair of Birkenstocks represents an easy, slip-on lesbian identity that all but guarantees an adventurous camping trip, a ride share to Lilith Fair, and a 30-year relationship with a female Unitarian minister named Chris who loves earth tones just as much as you do.
On the opposite end of the shoe spectrum, we have another lesbian mainstay: the black boot. This boot means business—lesbian business. If you see a woman wearing this boot, Dear Breeder, you would do well to cast a downward glance at your comparatively wimpy footwear in order to avoid eye contact with someone who is just as likely to kick your husband’s ass as give you one of the flannel shirts off her back. Black boots are the symbol of butch gravitas, and represent roughly 75% of her effort to seduce you. The other 25% of her effort to seduce you consists of her eyebrow piercing, husky intonations, and the oddly placed digression about the horsepower bridled beneath the hood of her muscle car.
Femmes, we need you to get behind a trashy polka-dot, peep-toe, cork heel for next spring. We want Jane Fonda and Minnie Mouse to do a double-take when you walk by at the Piggly Wiggly, and then we want you to put out your Virginia Slim in a huff when the bag boy tells you, “No, ma’am, I’m not authorized to carry your excess cleavage to the car.” Point is: this combo look, like many femme shoes, causes a scene even in the most pedestrian of environs. The femme lesbian simply refuses to wear anything that does not produce instant theater and can make even the tackiest shoe ooze with glamour (and cheap Chardonnay).
Reminiscent of the dolphin (a favorite lesbian saltwater sister spirit), this Reebok Pump interlocks the lesbian color purple with a heavy-handed reference to the mystical lesbian dirt rock, turquoise. With a pump conveniently located on the shoe’s attentive tongue, the lesbian wearer can simultaneously inflate her ankle support, her sense of detached irony, and her status in the hierarchy of cut-throat lesbian hipster legitimacy.
One cannot discuss lesbian footwear without paying homage to the chunky heel, and the proud bisexuals who wear them. In an odd contradiction, this style screams both “conformity” and “non-conformity” with its ambiguous identity as either corporate sell-out or lesbian bookworm chic. In the Marc Jacobs design shown here, we see an extreme example of the kind of paradox the chunky heel represents: business up front, sarcophagus of Tutankhamun in the back. With its flirtatious mimicry of men’s business attire, and its desperate attempt at clinging to some prepackaged vision of femininity, this sturdy shoe transmits the wearer’s passion for more interesting versions of herself, her willingness to switch between white wine and mixed drinks depending on who’s buying, and her utter dearth of personal conviction.
Breeder's Digest 