Leave Jodie Foster Alone

The Golden Globe Awards on Sunday made way for another coming out, and — to my dismay — it ended up being one of the evening’s bigger events.

While accepting her Cecille B. Demille award, actress Jodie Foster stepped out of her glass closet and thanked her long-time ex-partner, talking about coming out “a thousand years ago” to those who knew her personally — an approach similarly used by journalist Anderson Cooper in his coming out this summer.

This approach was not so much a coming out as it was “coming forward,” as gay civil rights during the course of the past decade are more important now than ever.

At the pivotal moment of her speech, she said, “If you had to fight for a life that felt real and honest and normal against all odds, then maybe you, too, would value privacy above all else.”

Privacy was the ringing virtue, and in that aspect of it, she wagged her finger and gave a subtle “how dare you” before she gracefully left the stage.

In her defensiveness, a surge of media responses screamed “how dare you” right back at her, claiming that her statement was euphemistic, evasive and too little, too late.

In parsing one of the most notable facets of Foster’s speech, she never said the big ol’ L word. But I’d like to see you say something a fraction as elegant as she did with about 20 million people watching.

Though her coming out was not so matter-of-fact, the fact of the matter is that this long-time private lesbian just didn’t come out the dramatic, over-politicized way you wanted her to.

To hold a celebrity accountable to a perfectly orchestrating, highly confessional disclosure about someone’s private life is as silly as expecting that of anyone else. She came out in her own way, at her own pace, and what’s more is that these criticisms geared at her were often coming from her own team.

I do believe, in the words of Anderson Cooper, that “the tide of history only advances when people make themselves fully visible,” but in instances like this, where a celebrity comes out as LGBTQ, turning on each other in the heat of what truly is a political battle is purely negative. And what’s more is that to create so much negative buzz around a natural stepping stone in one’s life only further stigmatizes an identity we’re trying to make natural.

Don’t take this opportunity to criticize someone who did something most cannot do. Instead, see it as one more example that could allow the next celebrity, public figure, human being, etc., to work up the courage.

And those of you who have already come out know that Jodie did it the most intuitive way: casually mentioning that you’re in love.

­— ftirado@indiana.edu