100 WOMEN WE LOVE 2008
Lily Tomlin’s extraordinary career as a funny lady bloomed on the TV show Laugh-In in 1969, the year of the Stonewall rebellion. Fittingly, she has woven feminism and LGBT life into her characters—the not-so-hardworking phone operator Ernestine, Violet Newstead in 9 to 5 and the numerous personas populating The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, the one-woman play written by Tomlin’s partner Jane Wagner, for which Tomlin won a Tony Award. She was also nominated for an Academy Award for her turn as Linnea Reese in Robert Altman’s Nashville, played recurring roles on TV shows from Murphy Brown to The West Wing, and has won six Emmys, a Grammy, and a Lifetime Achievement Tony Award in 1977. Tomlin, who has called Wagner the most influential person in her life and career, narrated 1995’s landmark LGBT documentary The Celluloid Closet. –KL
In no particular order…
Hats off to the 100 Women We Love, class of 2008 (in no particular order, ’cause we love ’em all!).
Michelle Tea
If you’ve heard of Sister Spit, you’ve probably heard of Michelle Tea, the woman who noticed the popularity of spoken word poetry in the ‘90s and decided to gather a group of traveling storytellers “to build upon the national enthusiasm…carving out a space for female-centric voices that were often queer and working-class to participate.” Since then, she’s written books, toured with the Sex Workers’ Art Show, started Sister Spit: The Next Generation, and is now running a literary non-profit in San Francisco. Not only has she instigated an artistic movement and succeeded at her mission of “creating space for queer, feminist, working-class or otherwise marginalized writers, artists and performers to do their thing since 1993,” Tea also manages the most difficult feat many of us can face: maintaining “a good attitude in the face of a truly heartbreaking world.” –MF
In no particular order…
