Written by:
Julia Bloch, Katie Liederman, and Catherine Plato
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this Issue of Curve:
Vol. 15#3
What a long, strange trip it’s been. Lesbian chic. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Lesbian Avengers. The Dyke March. Anne Heche. Sakia Gunn. Same-sex marriage bonanzas. And who could forget that high-larious time Newsweek published our editor in chief’s home number? Yep, the last 15 years have been big for Curve and for our community. Our anniversary issue rounds up a decade and a half of history, culture and gossip from the country’s favorite lesbian magazine.
We scoured 15 years of Curve and tried our very best to pinpoint the biggest highlights. From celebrity outings to political milestones, Curve has kept you abreast of the times and had more than our fair share of fun along the way. Don’t ever say we told you any different.
May 1991
Volume 1, Issue 1, of Deneuve hits the newsstands (and sells out in six days). It includes Val Phoenix’s exclusive interview with Phranc, Rachel Pepper’s girl’s guide to San Francisco, Michele Fisher’s debut article (on dating uppity feminist lesbians), and Katie Brown’s guide to gay and lesbian taxes (which we’re pretty sure was the first and last time we ran a feature on taxes). The front cover sports managing editor Katie Brown; the back, publisher/editor in chief Frances Stevens. Among our very first advertisers is the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. The year 1991 sees two big milestones in lesbian life and politics: L.A. Law airs the first lesbian kiss on U.S. television, and three same-sex couples in Hawaii sue for marriage licenses (10 years later, Hawaii will offer same-sex couples some of the benefits of marriage). Also, Silence of the Lambs, a film beloved by Jodie Foster fans and decried by queer activists (some of whom are the same people) wins top Oscar honors, including Best Actress for Foster, and Martina Navratilova comes out as lesbian (she’d come out as bisexual in 1981).
September 1991
Our often titillating, always juicy gossip column, “Lesbofile: News, Rumors and Tidbits From the Lesbian Nation,” is born. Among the first to be mentioned are Madonna, Roseanne Barr, Jodie Foster and the not-yet-out Melissa Etheridge. Over the years, Lesbofile will include gossip on pretty much anyone we can think of, including Neve Campbell, Britney Spears, Beyoncé, Milla Jovovich, Naomi Campbell and Calista Flockhart.
November 1991
Diane Anderson-Minshall, our current executive editor, writes one of her first articles for Deneuve, covering anti-porn censorship and feminism. We hold a contest in a San Francisco nightclub to choose our next cover girls. The first Damron Women’s Traveller is published; it will become one of CURVE’s most loyal advertisers and the bible for our cross-country tours.
December 1991
We also remember this as the year that Lotus becomes the first major U.S. publicly held company to extend domestic partner benefits to its employees and Anita Hill must say “pubic hair” to a congressional panel at Justice Clarence Thomas’ confirmation hearings. High school student Jenna Jameson uses a fake ID to apply for a job as a stripper but is told to reapply after having her braces removed. That night, she removes her braces with needle-nose pliers and returns to the club, and the future bisexual porn goddess enters the adult entertainment industry.
April 1992
CURVE moves from Frances’ living room into a real office in San Francisco’s South of Market District and hires Zélie Pollon, who later becomes managing editor, as the magazine’s first paid employee.
June 1992
Managing editor Katie Brown reports on “the greatest lesbian movie never made”: the film version of Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle, first lesbian read of dykes everywhere. We’re still waiting. (Angelica Huston, you have a penchant for turning lesbian books into movies; are you listening?)
August 1992
Dorothy Allison’s heartbreaking novel Bastard out of Carolina hits bookstores, the Lesbian Avengers are founded in New York, and k.d. lang comes out and leaves country music behind (coincidentally, just as Billy Ray Cyrus shows up).
April 1993
The 1993 March on Washington and the first Dyke March take Washington, D.C., by storm. More than 3,000 women flood the Fifth Column dance club for our AfterShock party following the march. Our back cover sports an ad for Bud Light, signaling the beginning of the beer company’s support of the lesbian community. The military institutes “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
June 1993
We print an ad for Olivia Cruises, one of the first for the lesbian-owned cruise company. “Hey! Baby” debuts, a forum for young dykes, and Linda Villarosa, the senior editor of Essence, takes the cover.
August 1993
New York magazine announces that the country has entered an age of “lesbian chic,” sporting k.d. lang on its cover, and Kate Brandt writes in Deneuve, “The only way that we lesbians — all of us — are going to remain visible and avoid being the media’s flavor of the month is, in Trish McDermott’s words, ‘if we continue to fight for our right to be heard and recognized.’” Meanwhile, Kelly Lynch becomes the first A-list actress at the time to appear on our cover. She tells us, “By the end of this 10-year span, hopefully a gay actress will be able to play a character who’s a lesbian like herself in a movie.” Eleven years later, Lynch will play the transgendered love interest of Pam Grier on The L Word. Meanwhile, the first Camp Trans is pitched outside the entrance gate to the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival to protest the festival’s newly publicized “womyn-born-womyn only” anti-transsexual policy.
October 1993
Deneuve interviews former San Francisco supervisor and National Center for Lesbian Rights executive director Roberta Achtenberg, who endured Senate confirmation proceedings to be named assistant secretary for fair housing and equal opportunity. She is the highest-ranking lesbian in a government position. “No one … thought it would be as personal, distorted, inflammatory and indecent as it turned out to be,” she tells Katie Brown.
December 1993
Arts editor Val Phoenix scores an exclusive interview with recently out Melissa Etheridge. The issue sells out completely. Deneuve publishes its own report on Northampton, Mass., after 20/20 airs a 12-minute segment on the small down, dubbed “Lesbianville, U.S.A.” On New Year’s Eve, Brandon Teena, a transgendered youth in Nebraska, is brutally murdered. His death later inspires a movie (Boys Don’t Cry) by lesbian director Kimberly Peirce, who tells CURVE her story in February 2000.
February 1994
Award-winning poet, novelist, essayist and political activist June Jordan tells Deneuve’s Zélie Pollon, “In my own romantic life, I find myself attracted to men as well as women.” Madonna appears on our back cover in an ad for Erotica with the tag line, “Don’t stay home without it.”
April 1994
Deneuve enjoys Southern hospitality on our “Hot Southern Tour” through Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama and Louisiana. We meet approximately 16,000 women and burst three radiator hoses along the way. In her uncensored interview for Deneuve, Meshell Ndegeocello says, “I’d fuck your brother but I’d marry your sister.”
June 1994
Deneuve staff flies to New York for Gay Games IV and the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. Our “Stonewall 25” cover, created by art director Gia Giasullo, is noted in a subsequent issue of Print, the prestigious graphic design magazine. “Out in Front,” a column that profiles up-and-comers who deserve special recognition, is launched, with comedian Suzy Berger in the spotlight. Over the years, the column will feature queer women and allies who are making a difference, such as Project 10 founder Virginia Uribe, Audre Lorde Project director Joo-Hyun Kang, bi activist Lani Ka’ahumanu, San Francisco treasurer Susan Leal, rapper DeSheila “Nikki” Mixon and theater diva Sonya M. Hemphill.
August 1994
The gals of Go Fish, the first lesbian film to be released by Samuel Goldwyn Co. since Desert Hearts nearly a decade earlier, land on our cover. Yvonne Welbon writes, “Go Fish picks up where just about every other coming-out film leaves off: It shows lesbians living emotionally rich and fulfilling lives in a lesbian community.”
October 1994
In the South, our distributor decides that Marga Gomez’s half-naked torso on the cover is much too sexy, and insists the magazines designated for newsstands be placed in cobalt-blue plastic wrappers. The cover, a sexy spoof on the famous bedroom image of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, earns cheers from readers.
December 1994
After their publicist tells Victoria A. Brownworth they won’t do an interview with “a lesbian paper” earlier that year, Indigo Girls say “yes” to Deneuve and grace our cover. (Amy Ray tells us, “I understand the need for role models, but my music comes first.”) Deborah Batts becomes the first openly gay person to be appointed a federal judge.
February 1995
Rachel Pepper interviews openly bi musician Ani DiFranco for our cover; at the time, DiFranco’s career is still taking off (current managing editor Julia Bloch can remember picking up DiFranco and her DIY cassette tapes at the bus station and ferrying her to her free concert in the Carleton College student union).
April 1995
“When I think about the impact that we can have, we have no other choice but to become ‘gay,’” says Seattle city councilwoman Sherry Harris, the first African-American lesbian elected official in the United States, in Deneuve. “The closet isn’t there anymore. It’s a facade; it’s gone. … I’m here to say that the movement has changed.”
May 1995
NBC’s Friends airs television’s most famous same-sex marriage, officiated by real-life dyke Candace Gingrich.
June 1995
Proving yet again that the lesbian universe is 3 inches wide, our fifth anniversary cover sports a photo of current editorial assistant Katie Lieberman’s girlfriend’s ex-girlfriend.
October 1995
Deneuve publishes the winners of our first annual Lesbian Life Photo Contest. Our first contest brings in over 1,000 entries.
February 1996
After a trademark dispute with French actress Catherine Deneuve, who charged that a lesbian magazine called Deneuve would be a wrongful use of her name, we change our name to CURVE. In her editor’s letter, Frances Stevens writes, “Curve is not straight. Curve is elegant. Curve is exciting. Curve is feminine. Curve implies fullness. Curve is the perfect name. Not only are the curves of all women’s bodies beautiful and diverse, but it’s time the world realized that not all roads are straight.” The first issue of CURVE sports Martina Navratilova, the world’s most famous lesbian, on the cover. That same year, President Clinton signs the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which allows states not to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.
March 1996
Ever ahead of the trends, CURVE reports on growing numbers of custody battles between lesbian moms. After five years of our calls to her publicist, k.d. lang graces our cover.
September 1996
The “Jenni/Jenny” issue features lesbian supermodel Jenny Shimizu on the cover (“Oh, man. There are so many girls,” she sighs to Zélie Pollon) and includes a profile of up-and-coming lesbian filmmaker Jenni Olson, who has just launched PopcornQ.
December 1996
CURVE pleads with Ellen DeGeneres with a provocative cover story, “Will the Real Ellen Please Stand Up,” urging the funny lady to find the courage to be herself. (She does finally talk to CURVE’s Laurie K. Schenden in 2001.) Women earn 74 cents for every dollar earned by men (the all-time high).
February–May 1997
Melissa Etheridge and Julie Cypher give birth to their first child, and the “gayby” boom makes the cover of CURVE. Frances Stevens reports that the average coming-out age for lesbians has dropped from 28 to 18 in the last six years. Ellen DeGeneres makes us proud by finally coming out on her ABC sitcom Ellen, but not everyone is happy to hear it: Wendy’s, General Motors, Chrysler and Johnson and Johnson pull advertising from the show; ABC rejects advertising from lesbian-owned Olivia Cruises and Resorts; and Birmingham, Ala., ABC affiliate BWMA flatly refuses to air the coming-out episode. (Seven years later, SC Johnson and Son will make good by earning a spot our Top 15 Companies for Lesbians list.) Meanwhile, Vermont quietly stages a revolution when three same-sex couples sue for marriage licenses. Their case will go to the state Supreme Court, and in 2001, the state legislature will civil-union law that grants same-sex couples all the benefits and responsibilities of marriage under Vermont law. Also this year, Bill Clinton becomes the first U.S. president to address a gay organization by talking to the Human Rights Campaign.
January 1998
Indigo Girls grace our cover — again. This time, our interview with Amy Ray is so meaty it takes two magazines to print. She answers the perennial question “Were you and Emily ever involved?” She tells editor Shirley Liu, “You think we would have stayed together this long if we’d ever been involved in a relationship? No way. … She’s not my type, and I’m not hers.”
March 1998
Longtime contributor Rachel Pepper writes about the challenges lesbians face when trying to conceive. Her first-person writings in CURVE on the subject will later become The Ultimate Guide to Pregnancy for Lesbians: Tips and Techniques from Conception to Birth; How to Stay Sane and Care for Yourself (Cleis Press), the first pregnancy book for lesbians ever published.
May 1998
Madonna’s former gal pal Sandra Bernhard (the woman who once said the word “lesbian” is “a nasty, dirty, fucked-up word. Come up with a new word and maybe I’ll use it”) takes the cover.
July 1998
Our ground-breaking cover story on the 15 most influential members of our community puts the spotlight on Dorothy Allison, Susie Bright, Rita Mae Brown, Col. Margarethe Cammermeyer, Ellen DeGeneres, Melissa Etheridge, Leslie Feinberg, Barbara Grier and Donna McBride, k.d. lang, Audre Lorde, Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, Cherríe Moraga, Martina Navratilova, Adrienne Rich, and Urvashi Vaid.
November 1998
Kirsten Cummings, a professional women's basketball player with the now-defunct American Basketball League, becomes the first pro ball player to come out as lesbian. She tells her story in an exclusive to CURVE.
July 1999
French tennis sensation Amélie Mauresmo takes the cover after coming out almost nonchalantly to sports journalists only a few months earlier. That same year, California becomes the first state in the nation to establish a statewide domestic-partnership registry.
November 1999
CURVE launches our official site, Curvemag.com, featuring online subscriptions, videos, books and more at the Curvemag shop; original content and stories from our archives; discussion boards; and sneak peeks at upcoming issues. Today, Curvemag.com receives over 3 million hits a month. Anne Heche takes the print cover, talking about moving out of Hollywood, staying in love and living lesbian. (She’ll later split from Ellen DeGeneres and wind up in a heterosexual marriage.) Kathleen Wilkinson profiles 100-year-old African-American lesbian Ruth Ellis, who came out around 1915.
December 1999
Managing editor Gretchen Lee goes behind the scenes with Melissa Etheridge on her Breakdown tour, sneaking into the Green Room at The Rosie O'Donnell Show and hanging out backstage at the Hard Rock concert. Lee’s one-on-one with Etheridge will garner CURVE a Best Rock Reporting award from GLAMA.
February 2000
After years as a bimonthly, CURVE increases its frequency to eight times a year. We run our first wedding proposal in our letters to the editor pages. This same year, Buffy the Vampire Slayer launches what will become the longest-running lesbian relationship on U.S. television (two and a half years); Amber Benson, who plays Tara, will grace our November 2003 cover.
March 2000
CURVE co-sponsors the Millennium March on Washington, which draws more than 200,000 to D.C., and hosts 3,800 women at our AfterGroove dance party, the triumphant follow-up to the CURVE AfterShock party at the 1993 March on Washington.
May 2000
CURVE celebrates its 10th year in print with a beefy “best of” anniversary issue and a year’s worth of celebrations, including post-Pride parties in cities around the country.
August 2000
To everyone’s surprise, including ours, Sinéad O’Connor comes out on the cover of CURVE. She tells Diane Anderson-Minshall, “I’m much more at peace and much happier being myself.” One year later, she will marry British journalist Nick Sommerlad; in 2002, she will tell The Advocate that she doesn’t identify as a lesbian: “I don’t think there really is such a thing as gay or straight. That’s where I stand.”
November 2000
Some readers are offended when we publish Erika Lopez’s irreverent cartoon about cartoonist-writer-conspiracy theorist Kris Kovick’s struggle with breast cancer (“Putting the ‘Fun’ Back in ‘Funeral’”). Kovick, who contributed to the first issue of Deneuve and illustrated Michele Fisher’s column, Dyke Drama, for years, assures readers, “It made me laugh, and I think that’s all she intended to do — crack me up. It’s her wonderful way of dealing with losing her No. 1 fan.” Everyone at CURVE mourns Kovick when she passes away in 2001, and we remember her by publishing one of her signature irreverent cartoons, captioned, “When I die … have my tongue made into a girl’s bicycle seat.”
May 2001
Stephanie Brill, author of 2002’s The Essential Guide to Lesbian Conception, Pregnancy, and Birth, reports on the controversy surrounding overseas adoption by U.S. lesbians. At the time, there are so few laws in place protecting lesbian families that the people Brill speaks with say they are terrified their children will be taken from them. Brill also explores how queer white women who are adopting children of color can sensitively raise children of color from other countries.
June 2001
Karen Wolitzer interviews Eden Riegel, who plays daytime television’s first lesbian character, Bianca, on All My Children. The soap star tells CURVE that she expects a bright future for her character. (We wonder if later she’s disappointed when the show’s writers fail to give Bianca a relationship that lasts longer than one episode and embroil her in a stolen-baby-and-rape-and-murder plotline that drags on for the better part of a year.)
April 2002
Zak Szymanski’s provocative cover story on lesbian bed death debunks the myth that lesbians quit hitting the sheets together somewhere around the same time that they rent the U-Haul.
July 2002
African-America/Korean-American Sonja Sohn becomes the first recurring Asian-American lesbian character on TV in HBO’s The Wire. She later graces our cover June 2003 Pride cover.
December 2002
CURVE lands an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at a new cable show about lesbians. The show’s called Earthlings, it stars Flashdance star Jennifer Beals, and its launch is delayed a full year until hungry fans eat up The L Word when it finally debuts on Showtime. No matter how many stories we print on the wildly popular series, our readers demand more.
February 2003
Our cover features two girls kissing, and we wonder why it took us so long.
April 2003
The Independent Press Association’s George Washington Williams Fellowship for Journalists of Color helps us publish Diane Anderson-Minshall’s in-depth article on the challenges faced by Native American lesbians.
June 2003
The Supreme Court astonishes the nation when it strikes down Texas’ “Homosexual Conduct” law, which criminalized oral and anal sex between consenting gay couples, and the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia, Canada, send shockwaves throughout North America when they grant full equal marriage rights to same-sex couples in June and July. The political landscape of queer civil rights will never be the same.
August 2003
Our annual music issue includes features on Annie Lennox, are-they-or-aren’t-they Russian pop duo Tatu, and our cover girls, the Donnas. Unfortunately, we go to press before Madonna and Britney Spears lock lips at the MTV Video Music Awards.
October 2003
President Bush declares October 12–18 Marriage Protection Week, inviting the American people to observe with “appropriate programs, activities, and ceremonies.” The LGBT community responds with “Marriage Equality Week” and CURVE publishes its sports issue, with a look at the tenuous status of Title IX, profiles of accomplished dyke athletes, and a guide to fun and low-cost exercise (did you know that you burn at least 50 calories during sex?). We devote a two-page spread to the gun-toting Pink Pistols of Philadelphia, who are out to defy the stereotype of the weak homosexual and prevent anti-gay hate crimes.
November 2003
“I just want to be a free sexual being with dignity,” proclaims Christine DeBenedetto, founder of the Rebelles. CURVE delivers a deliciously sexy spread on the North Carolina burlesque troupe that seeks to “reclaim the tease” in their quest for women’s sexual liberation.
December 2003
Meshell Ndegeocello talks to us about politics, motherhood, her new album, and her recent breakup. Inside the front cover is an ad for the series premiere of an intriguing new show called The L Word.
February 2004
Just weeks after the L Word premiere, Jennifer Beals and Laurel Hollomon grace our weddings and romance issue. We print a whopping 11-page wedding special, “Here Comes the Brides!” San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom unleashes the “winter of love” in San Francisco when he directs city employees to issue marriage licenses to any couple, regardless of gender, and over 4,000 couples from all over the world storm City Hall. The “civil disobedience” unleashes a wave of same-sex marriages around the country, along with a flurry of court actions and hastily introduced constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage.
April 2004
At 50, Cyndi Lauper tells us about her return to the public eye and new recording, At Last (“better than calling it About Fucking Time,” she jokes to CURVE).
May 2004
One of our favorite cover girls is back: Ani DiFranco has lots to say about her new album, recent divorce, and return to life as a solo artist. After discovering that 82 percent of our readers live with an animal of some sort, we give in and publish our first-ever pets issue.
June 2004
“Queer girls like me still sense a connection between sexuality and food, even if our reasons for a flesh-free diet have changed, mellowed, or practically faded into obscurity,” writes Julia Bloch in “Steakout,” a personal essay on vegetarianism, lesbianism, and identity politics. “Part of being queer now is relaxing the demands we put on ourselves to be rigid around our identities.” Evidently, not all readers agree; “Steakout” draws more letters to the editor than nearly any other piece in recent CURVE history.
August 2004
In July, a federal amendment to ban gay marriage is narrowly rejected (48 yeas, 50 nays, and two abstentions) by the Senate. CURVE spends the summer touring Pride festivals and watching beautiful lesbian athletes Amélie Mauresmo, Martina Navratilova and Judith Arndt compete in the 2004 Olympics.
October 2004
At the final presidential debate, President Bush states that it is important to “treat people with tolerance and dignity and respect. … [But] we shouldn’t have to change our basic views on the sanctity of marriage. … I was worried that activist judges are defining the definition of marriage.” Some of us would like the president to “define the definition” of respect. CURVE puts Karina Lombard, sultry star of The L Word (and first Native American lesbian character on television), on our cover, making her our first Native American cover girl.
November 2004
CURVE publishes our first-ever Top 15 Companies for Lesbians list, with IBM heading the pack. A record number of Fortune 500 companies earn a score of 100 on HRC’s Equality Index for being good places to work at for gays and lesbians.
February 2005
“What is lesbian sex, and how do you know when it’s begun?” muses Gina Daggett in our sex issue. (In case anyone was unsure, it’s the issue with the naked chicks and the words “Sex! Sex! Sex!” in bright red letters on the front cover.)
April 2005
Our cover features the lovely Leisha Hailey, The L Word’s only openly gay actress. In an exclusive, Leisha spills all concerning her celebrity crushes, career, and love life. Our guide “How to Survive Four More Years” strives to soothe our left-leaning readers still smarting after the November 2004 elections, in which 11 states passed anti-gay measures.
May 2005
Curve publishes our triumphant 15th anniversary issue, with a whopping 32 bonus pages making it our biggest issue ever.
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