Out100 Cover Star Brandi Carlile Wants a Lesbian ‘Golden Girls’
The singer-songwriter took to the stage to accept her award and talk about why she’s always assumed she’d die young.
by Ariel Messman-Rucker for OUT –
While accepting the award for Icon of the Year at the Out100 party in Los Angeles on Thursday night, Brandi Carlile opened up about feeling like she never expected to live to old age because of her queer identity.
The singer-songwriter started her acceptance speech — at a ceremony for the influential LGBTQ+ stars who helped make the world more inclusive and representative — by reminiscing about being a young closeted lesbian. “This is utterly surreal to me,” she said. “It’s amazing standing here and thinking about being a teenager, coming out of the closet around 14 years old and cutting out pictures of lesbians in suits and hanging them on my wall.”
Carlile said she was recently reminded of the importance of seeing yourself and your identity represented in media — even if it’s just photos cut out of magazines. “We use the term representation matters so often that it’s become a buzzword,” the “Right On Time” singer said. “It’s our battle cry. We cry it all the time, at every corner of pop culture in the west, to try and justify the fact that so much of what we believe we are, so much of what we know we are comes from pop culture.”
