page_title: Gay icon
section_title: Historical
hierarchical_section_title: Gay icon / Historical
context_page_description: A gay icon is a public figure who is highly regarded and beloved by the LGBT community. A gay icon can either be a part of the LGBT community or heterosexual, but heterosexual gay icons are often highly supportive of their fans within the community and the rights of LGBT people. Organizations such as GLAAD routinely recognize public figures for their contributions and support for the LGBT community. Gay icons exist across cultures, most prominently in North and South America, Europe, and Asia.
  Many gay icons are celebrities in the entertainment industry, but can also include figures in politics, history, sports, literature, and other mediums. Prominent entertainers considered to be gay icons often incorporate themes of acceptance, self-love, and sexuality in their work. Gay icons of all orientations have acknowledged the role that their gay fans have played in their success, including Lady Gaga, Bette Midler, Cher, Diana Ross, Madonna, Janet Jackson, Kylie Minogue, Mariah Carey, Spice Girls, Charli XCX, Britney Spears, Cheryl, Marina Diamandis, Christina Aguilera and Lana Del Rey.
context_section_description: The earliest gay icon may have been Saint Sebastian, a Christian saint and martyr, whose combination of strong and shirtless physique, symbolic arrow-pierced flesh and rapturous look of pain have intrigued artists, both gay and straight, for centuries and began the first explicitly gay cult in the nineteenth century. Journalist Richard A. Kaye wrote, "Contemporary gay men have seen in Sebastian at once a stunning advertisement for homosexual desire (indeed, a homoerotic ideal), and a prototypical portrait of a tortured closet case."
  Due to Saint Sebastian's status as a gay icon, Tennessee Williams chose to use the saint's name for the martyred character Sebastian in his play, Suddenly, Last Summer. The name was also used by Oscar Wilde—as Sebastian Melmoth—when in exile after his release from prison. Wilde, an Irish writer and poet, was about as "out of the closet" as was possible for the late 19th century, and is himself considered to be a gay icon.
  Marie Antoinette was an early lesbian icon. Rumors about her relationships with women circulated in pornographic detail by anti-royalist pamphlets before the French Revolution. In Victorian England, biographers who idealized the Ancien Régime made a point of denying the rumours, but at the same time romanticised Marie Antoinette's "sisterly" friendship with the Princesse de Lamballe as—in the words of an 1858 biography—one of the "rare and great loves that Providence unites in death." By the end of the 19th century, she was a cult icon of "sapphism." Her execution, seen as tragic martyrdom, may have added to her appeal.
  Allusions to her appearance were made in early 20th century lesbian literature—most notably Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness—where the gay playwright Jonathan Brockett describes Marie Antoinette and de Lamballe as "poor souls... sick to death of the subterfuge and pretenses." She had crossover appeal as a gay icon, as well, at least for French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist Jean Genet, who was fascinated by her story. He included a reenactment of her execution in his 1947 play The Maids.
caption: Saint Sebastian, history's first recorded gay icon
exif: {"Image Tag 0x0301": "20000/9091", "Image Tag 0x0303": "1", "Image Tag 0x5110": "1", "Image Tag 0x5111": "3780", "Image Tag 0x5112": "3780"}