Janelle Monae appeared on Saturday Night Live this weekend, reflecting the avant garde musician's increasingly heightened profile in the popular zeitgeist. However Joe.My.God describes her answers to questions about her sexuality as "Latifah-esque" (referring to Queen Latifah who has moved from being only known as rap musician to appearing in Oscar award-winning movies to hosting her own daily daytime television talk show). Latifah, who is also now know by her name Dana Owens is widely believed to be a closeted lesbian.
This is what Monae said recently in response to "The Question":
“Women are amazing€ and so are guys. There’™s nothing wrong with being bisexual, there’s nothing wrong with being lesbian or gay. I am an advocate. I have friends who are in same sex relationships and I feel love has no sexual orientation. Love has no religious belief. Love is the purest and most important thing we can possess for ourselves and for others. €œI keep my personal life very much to myself. I want everybody to focus on my music. I also don’t want to let anybody down. I want women to still be attracted to me. Go get my album! I want men to still be attracted to me so I have to be political in this. So I can’€™t really tell y'all.”If someone has an example of a straight celebrity who went through a stage of refusing to define their sexuality in public and then was revealed to actually be completely heterosexual, I would be happy to hear that. It just seems like there are numerous examples of celebrities who claimed they did not want to reveal their sexuality and when it eventually is revealed (celebrities really just need to acknowledge that the price of fame is their loss of privacy in this area) it has always been because they are a member of the LGBT community. Names like Sean Hayes, George Michael, and Ricky Martin all come to mind immediately.
We'll see if Monae follows that trajectory or if she follows Latifah's cowardly path.
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