Don't ask, don't tell was repealed in 2011. Federal marriage equality arrived in 2015. Trans figures like Laverne Cox and Elliot Page burst onto the national stage. But the 2020s have been painful for queer and trans Americans. Hearing a brass band belt out this optimistic refrain in the new, New Orleans-set seventh season, you might ask: All things just keep ... doing what now?
Such is the bittersweet experience of watching LGBTQ reality TV in 2023. It's heartening to see evidence of people with diverse sexual orientations and gender identities thriving. Yet there's something surreal about Queer Eye doing cheerful makeovers in a state with a Don't say gay bill and RuPaul sending queens down the runway amid a flurry of antidrag legislation. After decades as small-screen vanguards of a movement that used pop culture as a soapbox, these shows are scrambling to meet the moment.
QUEER EYE AND RUPAUL'S DRAG RACE deserve a lot of credit for bringing LGBTQ culture into the mainstream. But they were hardly the first in their genre to do so. The Real World made Pedro Zamora, a gay AIDS activist who died in 1994, a secular saint. A generation earlier, the PBS documentary and reality-TV template An American Family took viewers into New York's queer demimonde with the family's son, Lance Loud. Both men made a profound impact as the first real, out gay people many viewers got to know.
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Denne historien er fra June 12, 2023-utgaven av Time.
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How Trump Won
THE FORMER PRESIDENT'S RE-ELECTION IS THE NEXT STEP IN A POLITICAL CAREER UNLIKE ANY OTHER IN AMERICAN HISTORY
Zak Brown The McLaren Racing CEO on Formula One in the U.S., his team's chase for a championship, and the future propulsion of the automobile
The McLaren F1 team is in the running for its first Formula One constructors' championship since 1998. What's that like? I'm kind of living on the edge of my seat. That's why sport is always going to be one of the most engaging forms of entertainment for people around the world.
Say Nothing speaks volumes
IN 1972, AT THE BLOODY HEIGHT OF the Troubles, home invaders abducted a widowed mother of 10 named Jean McConville from her Belfast apartment. Her children never saw her alive again.
Portrait of the artist in his ninth decade
AS A CURATOR AT THE PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART, Eleanor Nairne is very particular about how an artwork should be placed. \"I always say that you have to ask the work if it's sat comfortably,\" she says.
No rest for the songs of Wicked
THE WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST HAS BEEN A FIXTURE in American culture for nearly 125 years. After coming to life in 1900 with L. Frank Baum's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, she rose to prominence onscreen in 1939, portrayed by Margaret Hamilton as a sinister old lady intent on ruining an innocent girl's wish to go home.
SENTIMENTAL VALUE
With Here, Robert Zemeckis stays true to his unlikely blend of new technologies and old-fashioned storytelling
TIME 100 CLIMATE
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BABY TALK
UNSURE ABOUT HAVING KIDS? THERAPIST MERLE BOMBARDIERI CAN HELP YOU FIGURE IT OUT
The many horrors of the Pelicot rape trial
THE TRIAL OF DOMINIQUE PELICOT, THE MAN IN THE South of France who pleaded guilty in September to charges of secretly drugging his wife of 50 years, Gisele, and, over the course of about a decade, filming dozens of men as they had sex with her while she was sedated, would have been disturbing enough just as the story of an epically vile husband.
Health Matters
COVID-19 MAY NOT BE A PUBLIChealth emergency anymore, but you still need your yearly shot. In fact, it seems to peak about twice a year: once during the traditional respiratory-disease season in the fall and winter, and once during summer.
