Out Mag Outs Gay Celebs

TOPICS: Gay market. Jodie Foster. Gay marketing. CNN. Anderson Cooper. Gay celebrities. Lesbian and gay PR. US gay and lesbian community. Gay rights. Gay acceptance, gay tolerance. Lesbian and gay civil rights. New York. New York magazine. CNN. Anderson Cooper. Gay entertainment and media identities. Jodie Foster. Out magazine cover story identifies Anderson Cooper and Jodie Foster as gay entertainment and media power people.

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Leading US gay lifestyle magazine - Out - has a cover story in their new issue that outs Jodie Foster and CNN's Anderson Cooper as gay media and entertainment power figures.

The issue of outing has long been contentious and it seems indicative of growing impatience amongst lesbians and gays themselves for openness and honesty.

At Out Now we have been advising client brands for years that when they choose to be seen by gays and lesbians as wanting their business they had best not risk being perceived as hedging their bets.

Brands that seem too timid often turn gay consumers off their brands.

We have never really been big fans of so-called "gay vague" advertising, where brands target gay and lesbian customers but use advertising creative that could conceivably be gay but is not certainly so.

Sexual ambiguity can work at times, but the gay consumer market has been telling us for several years now that they are sick of companies that want to 'have their gay market cake and eat it too' - meaning they want the gay market but are not willing to create specific targeted gay communications strategy to do it.

Some brands, such as Orbitz, have done extremely well with gay customers by not being timid in that way and being willing to create dedicated gay communications. So too has Subaru.

It seems telling that one of America's most important gay magazines now sees it as acceptable to openly 'out' two gay identities such as Anderson Cooper and Jodie Foster on the cover of their magazine.

In the UK as well as the US, celebrities such as Graham Norton and Sir Ian McKellen have long ago shown that being out as gay and being successful are no longer mutually exclusive.

Here is an extract from New York magazine's media coverage of the Out gay celebs story:

‘Out’ Ranks the Top Power Gays; Anderson Cooper Is No. 2

When New York did a "Gay Life Now" issue in 2001, only seven of the forty prominent New York gays asked to pose for the cover were willing. Those big shots may have been gay, and they may have been out, but it just wouldn't do for them to be gay and out on the cover of a magazine.

"There was a time when the closet was a necessary safe haven," our pal Maer Roshan, who edited the issue, wrote in an angry 2,000-word essay. "But now, it exists as an anachronistic monument to shame. It's time for our public figures to stop hiding in there — and for journalists to stop helping them."

Six years and a month later, maybe at least that second part has come true. Here's a first glimpse at the cover of Out magazine's "Most Powerful Gay Men and Women in America" issue.

Those are models holding Jodie Foster and Anderson Cooper masks on the cover. Neither, of course, would appear themselves.

1. David Geffen
2. Anderson Cooper
3. Ellen DeGeneres
4. Tim Gill
5. Barney Frank
6. Rosie O’Donnell
7. The New York Times Gay Mafia: Richard Berke, Ben Brantley, Frank Bruni, Stuart Elliott, Adam Nagourney, Stefano Tonchi, and Eric Wilson
8. Marc Jacobs
9. Andrew Tobias
10. Brian Graden
11. Jann Wenner
12. Andrew Sullivan
13. Suze Orman
14. Joe Solmonese
15. Fred Hochberg
16. Christine Quinn
17. Perez Hilton
18. Scott Rudin
19. John Aravosis
20. Sheila Kuehl
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