Is Jodie Foster’s Golden Globes Moment Really a Coming Out?

2013 appears pretty poised to be the gayest year on record; gayer even than the year Johnny Weir was born (I’m told his afterbirth was mostly sequins). By now, I’m sure you’ve all heard about Jodie Foster’s speech at the Golden Globes. Equal parts heartwarming and weird, Jodie alludes to several things in her speech, including her sexuality, her long-term relationship with ex-partner Cydney Bernard, and her plans to retire from acting (which she now vehemently denies, by the way).

It feels difficult to talk about Jodie’s speech (we’re on a first name basis now) as a “coming out” moment because the word has been out about her and her relationship with Bernard for years. She’s even spoken about it publicly, just never with quite the fanfare that other celebrities have. Practically speaking, she’s been out for as long as I can remember. While I’m a firm believer in the idea that coming out is a continuous process rather than a singular event, this feels a little like that moment in high school when that skinny, limp-wristed kid who’s in all the musicals finally admits that he’s gay. Do you….do you act surprised?
Among other things, Foster’s “coming out” reveals the extent to which the media doesn’t quite know what to do with gay celebrities who have refused to make their sexualities an event. Mainstream media has a very specific narrative it attaches to gay celebrities, culminating in a public declaration: the coming out moment. Anything that balks at this narrative — say, for example, a woman who has been in the public eye for nearly 50 years and almost never pulled any punches about who she was dating — either gets shuffled aside or contorted to fit this very specific story. It’s time for us to admit that coming is often an inadequate model for sexuality.
One thing Foster did consistently in her speech is relate the act of coming out to pop culture. She’s since come under heat for comparing the act to phenomena like Honey Boo Boo, but it is interesting to think about the extent to which coming out has assumed a place in pop culture. If shows like Glee are any indication, we value the drama and the overt simplicity of the grand coming out moment much more highly than the individual actually making the statement.
This is not to say that coming out isn’t important. Coming out at any level creates visibility and forces us to reevaluate the way we relate ourselves to the public around us. But Jodie Foster leaves me wondering if we place too much importance on this singular moment. We are called to account for this moment over and over again, even if the event doesn’t actually say very much about us. If one more terrible first date asks me to talk about when I came out, I’m going to scream. Nonetheless, I still can’t quite put my finger on our obsession with the drama of coming out.
So perhaps Jodie Foster’s Golden Globes moment is an indication that we need to widen the scope of our thinking about coming out narratives. I’m left wondering if celebrities like Jodie Foster and Anderson Cooper, both of which we knew were gay long before their grandiose “coming out” moments, might recalibrate the way we publicly account for and relate to other people’s sexualities. At the very least, it should be an indication that the media needs to come up with alternate ways of reporting, especially when a celebrity has refused to make her coming out a proper “story.”