Girls Into Girls: Stars Like Cara Delevingne, Kristen Stewart, Miley Cyrus, Etc Are Leading...

Still on Hollywood Celebrity gossip, its been reported that at the recent 69th Annual Tony Awards, the composers Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron became the first female writing team in history to win a Tony for musical score. The duo took home the award for their contribution to Fun Home, the musical based on a 2006 coming-of-age memoir by lesbian cartoonist Alison Bechdel. In their acceptance speech, Tesori clarified the meaning behind “Ring of Keys,” an anthem about a young girl coming to terms with being gay performed by the 11-year-old Tony-nominee Sydney Lucas that evening on the telecast. The number is “not a song of love, it’s a song of identification,” she said. “Because for girls, you have to see it to be it.”

This new see-it-to-be-it visibility for lesbian and bisexual women, plus a new wave of women who adopt a more fluid label to their sexuality, is not limited to just the stage of Fun Home either. (Although winning the Tony has been an obvious boon: the show’s producers said that ticket sales had quadrupled by the next day.) Carol, a film directed by Todd Haynes based on the 1952 Patricia Highsmith lesbian romance novel The Price of Salt, had been in development for nearly 15 years before its Cannes debut this past May. The wait paid off: Rooney Mara, one of the film’s stars, won the Best Actress prize at the festival for her portrayal of Therese Belivet, a 19-year-old ingénue who falls in love with Carol Aird, a mysterious older blonde portrayed by Cate Blanchett. During an interview with Variety to promote the film, Blanchett was asked if her role in the movie was her first stab at being a lesbian. “On film — or in real life?” she quipped. Asked to clarify whether she’s had previous relationships with women, she responded: “Yes. Many times.” After a dispute with Variety over the context of her words, Blanchett summed up any confusion over whether or not she had previously been in a relationship with women with a sentiment perfect for today’s moment: “In 2015, the point should be: who cares?” she said during a press conference.

While Hollywood is still not always the most hospitable climate for gay women (or straight women, for that matter), Blanchett is not the only actress with a who-cares attitude. This new sense of comfortability is explored by the actress Maria Bello in her new book, Whatever….Love Is Love: Questioning the Labels We Give Ourselves, which came out in April. The memoir expands on a column Bellow wrote in 2013 for The New York Times that detailed how she unexpectedly fell in love with a female friend and the even more surprising support the relationship received from her 12-year-old son Jack. In a YouTube video titled “I’m a Whatever,” Bello said, “Labels should never make us feel judged or afraid.” In less than two months, the clip has amassed over 16,000 views. Just last week, Bello and her partner, Clare Munn, appeared arm-in-arm on the red carpet for the Sundance Institute Celebration in Culver City.

“This year seems to be a watershed year in lesbian representation, but it’s been on the boil for a little while,” said Merryn Johns, the editor of the lesbian magazine Curve. “With the rise of social media, not only does everyone have a platform, but celebrities and public individuals really have nowhere to hide or a way to stay in the closet by curating a certain kind of public image. This has led to a new openness and polymorphous visibility that has changed the culture permanently.”

In many ways, the current spotlight on lesbian and bisexual women owes a great deal to outspoken champions of underground culture that helped set the stage for today’s mainstream moment. Take the Berlin-based, Canada-born musician Merrill Nisker, better known as Peaches, for example, who has been subverting gender and sexuality norms for the past two decades. Her new book, What Else Is in the Teaches of Peaches, features snapshots with the likes of Iggy Pop and PJ Harvey and essays from Yoko Ono and Michael Stipe. A chapter from the actress Ellen Page, “She Offered Me Something I Could Not Find Elsewhere,” chronicles Peaches’ influence on Page’s own budding lesbian identity as a teenager.

“Peaches is ferocious, relentless, sexy, confident, and gives all of herself to her audience,” she said. “She is a person who inspires.”

Credit to Yahoo news.