7 out and proud lesbian celebrities you need to know about
2024 has been the year of the ‘lesbian renaissance’, with a wave of young queer stars proudly identifying with the term and ushering in a new era of loud and proud lesbianism.
Many queer women have different feelings and opinions about the word lesbian but, nevertheless, the lesbian renaissance is rolling in with increasingly powerful force in a way that embraces and fully reclaims the term.
Here are just a handful of the lesbian celebrities you need to know about, whose public pride in their sexuality is helping to blow away closet doors for queer women around the world.
Reneé Rapp
Singer-songwriter Reneé Rapp has been open about her sexuality, including the moments where things haven’t felt so clear for her.
After identifying as bisexual for a brief stint, Rapp began to embrace the word lesbian and eventually drew a line in the sand in a post on X/Twitter in March.
“If I say I’m a lesbian, I am a lesbian, and if someone says they’re bi, they are bi,” she wrote. “I’ve had enough of you witches.”
Raven-Symoné
Raven’s House star Raven-Symoné knew she was gay at the age of 12. But that was the easy part. Coming out in the public eye was a different story.
The star, now 38, told E! News last year that there were “a lot of challenges” to coming out publicly, adding that she felt “very vulnerable.” She took the step in 2013, and married Miranda Maday in 2020.
JoJo Siwa
Love her or hate her, there’s no denying JoJo Siwa’s popularity among the gays. The former Dancing Moms star has been open about her sexuality throughout her career, from her bright and colourful pop star era to her controversial “bad girl” phase.
She told People magazine that she first realised she was gay at Disney World and “went through stages of heart-break” at the Florida theme park.
“I was here for 14 days with a girl [who] was my really good friend and I realised: ‘Oh, I like her’,” Siwa said. “Having all those feelings while being in the most magical place in the world and the happiest place on Earth was so cool. We’re not together any more but we did have some fun, happy memories.”
Chappell Roan
If you didn’t know Chappell Roan was a lesbian, then you’ve not been listening to Chappell Roan. The new pop sensation is practically drenched in sapphic energy from head to toe.
She opened up about her coming out story in an interview with Rolling Stone, where she said she confirmed it to an Ohio audience on tour last year.
Although she initially thought something was “wrong” with her, she worked out that, “I just wasn’t supposed to be sleeping with men.”
Lena Waithe
Sometimes fact and fiction overlap. And that was true for actor and film producer Lena Waithe.
The Emmy-nominated Master of None episode, “Thanksgiving,” features Waithe’s character, Denise, grappling with telling her friends and conservative family her true sexuality over the course of five holiday periods, spread over 22 years, and features a poster of Friends star Jennifer Aniston on the ceiling of Denise’s bedroom. That poster was on Laithe’s bedroom wall.
She told the LA Times, she’d approached the episode and her own coming out from a hero’s perspective, which helped her understand what she went through.
“I had survived that thing I was so afraid of,” she said.
Kate McKinnon
Former Saturday Night Live star Kate McKinno, is a joy to watch not just because of her hilariously captivating energy on screen, but also for how she manages to weave progressive activism and feminism into her work.
The Barbie star said she first realised she was a lesbian after watching The X-Files. “I thought at first my physiological reaction was a product of David Duchovny’s face,” she revealed, “but no, it was Gillian Anderson, who still is the queen of my heart. I knew then.”
Wanda Sykes
Wanda Sykes’ coming out story is a little bit different to many, but no less spectacular for that.
The Emmy-Award-winning star of The Upshaws came out at an equality rally in 2008, at the age of 44. She had already been out in private and married to French former interior designer Alex Niedbalski.
During the rally, she made an impromptu speech about LGBTQ+ equality, which “was not planned at all.“
The couple have fraternal twins, a girl and a boy, who were born in 2009.
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