Closing Thoughts:
The changing face of NLGJA

By Emily Alpert
NLGJA Reporter Staff Writer

People often call Pamela Strother “the face of NLGJA.” As she steps down, one question might be, “What is the face of NLGJA, and what could it be?” Yet another could be, “Can we talk about ‘the face’ of NLGJA at all?”

Journalists are in the business of representation. We supply images to our audiences, literal and figurative: the photo of the hurricane victim, the narrative of the frustrated soldier.

As LGBT journalists, we bear an additional awareness of representation, its perils, and its promise. How many of us have searched newsprint and glossy, must-see TV and the wide, wide Web for our LGBT selves, only to find tinny stereotypes or slander? That is, if we’re represented at all?

Today, LGBT faces increasingly populate the media. That’s a powerful thing. It introduces readers and viewers to LGBT people, their stories and their struggles.

It was, I think, largely due to ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’ that my grandmother’s response, when I came out, was, “You know, I should have known, because you’re so smart. And all the gay people are so smart.”

Yet too often, “the face” of LGBT people is that of an affluent white gay man. In an attempt to put our best face forward, some LGBT publications and organizations have sidelined LGBT people of color, women, transgender people and the poor. It’s an implicitly racist, classist, sexist and gender-normative choice.

At this year’s convention, panels on race and diversity, on disadvantage, and on “the B & T” in LGBT, show we’re aware of the problem. But the pressure to represent ourselves as ‘positively’ as possible will continue – and so should our vigilance against reductive images that exclude everyone but Carson Kressley.

I never knew Roy Aarons. That might stun some members, for whom he was “the face” of this organization. Today, with the departure of Pam, another face of NLGJA, the organization is entering a new era, with few of our founders at the helm.

What happens when we lose “the face of NLGJA?” Wrong question. Rather, how do we portray our many faces, and move beyond the illusion of a single, iconic LGBT face?