Not Lebanese, Blanche. Lesbian!
Revisiting a famous episode of The Golden Girls, and the evolution of an enduring gay joke.
The year was 1986. Ronald Reagan was president, shoulder pads graced the runways and the workplace, and every Saturday at 9 pm, millions of Americans would gather on living rooms sofas to tune into the lives of four senior women living together in Miami.
They were The Golden Girls — Dorothy, Rose, Sophia and Blanche — and the show documented their adventures in love, life, friendships and sex, which Blanche in particular had a lot of.
That in and of itself was radical for the time; these were women over 50, after all. But the show also pushed boundaries in more subtle ways.
Like when a friend of Dorothy, Jean, came to visit the girls. And they find out she’s … a lesbian.
But there was some… confusion.
Yes, Blanched had confused lesbian for “Lebanese.”
It was a classic sitcom joke — a silly play on words — and one that might have been retired to television history. Except that that joke, that punchline, would keep popping up, for nearly 40 years.
Like when Ellen DeGeneres, then not yet out, came out as “Lebanese” on the Rosie O’Donnell Show in the mid-90s — to which Rosie looked back and Ellen and joked, “Maybe I, too, am ‘Lebanese???’”
Or in Mean Girls — the original! — when beloved goth sidekick Janis Ian, whose sexuality is lesbian-coded throughout the film, reveals, in a kind of wink-nod at the end, that she is “Lebanese.”
Or in Glee.
Or even RuPaul’s Drag Race.
But, OK, why Lebanese and lesbian? Is it really just that these two words sound… similar?
I got a little bit obsessed with this question, and where that joke originated, which led me down a rabbit hole for the latest episode of my podcast, In Retrospect. (ICYMI: I host this podcast with my pal Susie Banikarim, and we revisit defining pop culture and tabloid moments from the 80s and 90s, through the lens of today.)
I ended up speaking to the cohost of the Gayest Episode Ever podcast, Drew Mackie, who introduced me to the original writer of that joke, and who compared the humor of that phrase to why we still laugh at, say, “Lake Titicaca” just because of how it sounds.
(Drew, by the way, also explained that he first learned the word “slut” from Sophia — and promptly using it on the playground at school. “I just thought it was, like, a generic insult for someone you didn’t like,” Drew said of calling a girl a “slut.” If Sophia could say it, why couldn’t he?)
I also geeked out with my friend Maya Salam, a culture editor at The New York Times who happens to be… a Lebanese lesbian. (Maya has written on lesbian representation on screen, and also happens to be the proud owner of lebaneselesbian.com, where you can read some of those articles.)
This was really a delight to report out, and I hope you’ll listen to the full episode below. We also talk about the lasting legacy of The Golden Girls, and the ways Hollywood has written, and sometimes hidden, queer characters for decades.
Enjoy! 🇱🇧 🌈