You've Come A Long Way, Jodie

If you’ve been around Ye Olde Blogge for any length of time you’ll know Jodie Foster has always been a favorite of mine. She was, after all, my very first My Weekend Crush. I believe her to be one of my very first real-world crushes too, definitely the first after I realized and accepted that these crushes were that kind of crushes. But then Jodie has always been a major dyke magnet. So many queer girls have seen something in her that we saw – or wanted to see – in ourselves. The tough tomboy. The smartest student in the room. Beautiful but different. Glamorous, but with grit. She set off our gaydar before some of us even knew it was gaydar.

To anyone who has closely followed the arc of Jodie’s career, her Golden Globes moment this past weekend – where she casually accepting a surprise Best Supporting Actress trophy while lounging in pajamas with her wife Alexandra Hedison and their dog Izzy (in a matching bandana to Jodie’s PJs) at home – was extraordinary in its ordinariness. Over the years Jodie has maintained a fierce, almost fanatical, protection of her privacy. I mean, you can’t blame her. She’s been famous since she could walk, pretty much. But one can’t help but realize the convenience of demanding total privacy while also staying firmly closeted.

In those early days, back with her first and at the time unacknowledged publicly partner Cydney Bernard, any cloaked mention of her personal life was major. Like when her sons sorta-kind out them as a couple. Like her calling her longtime partner “my beautiful Cydney” in a public speech where other people could hear. Like when Parade magazine, of all places, acknowledging she was quite probably The Gay. And then, finally in 2013, when she came out at the Golden Globes while swearing this wasn’t her coming out because she had come out “a thousand years ago, back in the stone age.” And then a year later she married Alexandra, a.k.a. Ellen’s ex/Dylan from TLW.

And, now seven years later, they’re just like any other couple of bored lesbians attending a Zoom cocktail hour in their PJs while cuddling their dog amid a global pandemic. Granted, bored lesbians who wear Prada pajamas. But still, to watch Jodie’s genuine surprise and joy as won and then reached over to grab Alexandra’s face and kiss her without hesitation on a live video call broadcast to the entire world – well, who says people can’t change? Who says what our lives will end up looking like once we truly embrace ourselves, or how great they might be once we get there.

You’ve come a long way, Jodie. Truly, we all have.

p.s. Expect more Golden Globe talk tomorrow, with as SGLAGG as we can get during an ongoing global pandemic.