LoRo are “in a relationship” surfuckingprise…

I’m still waiting for Lindsay and Sam to start power dykin it up at East West, but for now we are finally safe to say that they are actually gay. In the past week, some of the celebrity news magazines who follow Lohan so closely have begun reporting such. I know, I know, i know, it’s been obvious. But the news mags have gone terribly far up until recently to maintain they are probably just “really close friends”.

Pictures of Sam and Lindsay have been running for months now with captions full of phrases like “best friends” “gal pals” “companions” and “inseparable twosome”. It wasn’t until last week when Ronson changed her Facebook status to “in a relationship” that the weekly mags began to describe their relationship as “rumored to be more than just gal pals.” So far, Life & Style Weekly is the only source using the words “gay” or “girlfriend” in describing the relationship.

Recently an LA Times reporter asked if this lack of outing was coming from a place of respect. As if maybe US Weekly and People Magazine’s refusal to acknowledge that Lindsay and Samantha are actually in a fully committed, high functioning lesbian relationship is more about concern for the celebs themselves rather than a calculated means of maintaining their sale value.

The idea that this lack of identification on the part of the mainstream press has anything to do with respect for their closet status is rather naive. It has everything to do with the fact that having a gay relationship, a stable one at that, does not sell. The tabloids are selling image, lifestyle, stereotypes we can all subscribe to. “Gay” does not sell in the Bible belt, it barely sells in LA.

The author of the times article inquired as to why the tabloids weren’t just ignoring this obviously gay relationship as they do with other out couples. Well, this is Lindsay effin Lohan we are talking about. The celebrity news machine as we know it today has been built upon the backs of paparazzi favorites like Lindsay and Britney. . These gossip outlets have been covering Lindsay since her days on Disney. She is still massive. She is selling and the goal has always been to keep her selling. The tabloids have been happy to run the pictures of Lohan in obvious close proximity to Ronson as long as they could use euphemisms to play dumb. Tabloid readers, or the majority of Americans, very much want to gobble up images of LoRo’s fantastical hipster celebrity life but they don’t want to have to admit that they are really gay.

Speculative gayness sells much better. Once a person or couple has been outed, they instantly become the “other”. There is no longer any hope that their questionable actions haven’t been just “celebrity fun” or “lifestyles of the rich and coked up”. Actual, real life queer relationships are a big fat affront to the conservative hetero-cultural norms that permeate this country. The truth is that most Americans are really not ready to consume queerness with the same fervor with which they consume Lindsay’s very public drug problems.

This model usually serves to keep the gay celebrity themselves quiet as well. The mags don’t ask too much, the celebs don’t tell too much, they both make a mint and everyone’s happy. But then Samantha had to go and change her Facebook profile, an action that leads to quite a few problems within the lesbian community anyway, and now the tabloids have no choice in the matter anymore. If they still want to run the sought after pics of Lindsay and Sam barely brushing hands outside The Ivy, the mags have to report it for what it actually is, a lesbian relationship.