15 Years Of Post-Closet Ellen: Worth Celebrating?
by Allison Hope
When Ellen DeGeneres came out of the closet on her sitcom in 1997, no one threw her a party. The million moms still had braces and acne and teenage angst, but there were tens of millions all over the country who had never knowingly met a gay person, let alone seen a confident, self-proclaimed one on TV. There was no LOGO, no Will & Grace, no Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Ellen was it.
Ellen’s bravery was rewarded with a big fat pink slip — her show was cancelled not long after. As irony would have it, JCPenney also dropped its advertising after she came out. What a different 15 years makes!
After a few years in understandable hiding from mainstream criticism, and one short, failed stint at another sitcom, The Ellen Show, which didn’t have legs beyond its 2001-02 run on CBS (and which downplayed her sexuality), NBC offered her another cat life. On Sept. 8, 2003, Ellen got her own talk show.
To the surprise and delight of queers everywhere, Ellen’s show took off.
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