Entertaining Lesbians: Celebrity, Sexuality, and Self-Invention

By Martha Gever

Before the rise of celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres and k.d. lang, lesbians were rarely in the limelight and the few that were often did not fare well. Times have changed and today's famous lesbians are popular icons.

Entertaining Lesbians charts the rise of lesbians in the public eye, proposing that celebrity has never been a simple matter of opening closet doors, portraying "positive images," or becoming "role models."

Gever traces the history of lesbians in popular culture during the twentieth century, from Radclyffe Hall and Greta Garbo to Martina Navratilova and Rosie O'Donnell, to explore the paradoxes inherent in lesbian celebrity.