Dana's Reflections:

When Curve Foundation asked me to pick a piece from Curve’s history to write about, I didn’t realize what a rabbit hole of nostalgia I was about to tumble down. I have written for Curve myself over the years, but I wanted to look back at the articles and columns that inspired me as a young lesbian in the mid and late 90s. Back then, there were so few examples of what it meant to be a queer person in the world. Curve gave me an outlet and a way to connect with other queer women when I was 16 and realizing I was a lesbian myself.

There are so many pieces from the 90s that resonated me. Columns like Sapphic Screen and Hot Licks for Cool Chicks provided me with much needed film and music recommendations. I was obsessed with that Tuaca Liquer ad, I had it cut out and hung in my dorm room. Interviews with people like Patricia Schemel and Jenny Shimizu really exemplified the bravery it required to be out and queer in the 90s.

However, it’s the article titled “Saving Us From Sin” (Curve Vol.07 No.05 November 1997) by Shannon Turner and Surina Khan that I really want to talk about. In the late 90s, the ex-gay movement, bolstered by groups like Exodus International, started infiltrating college campuses and churches. Claiming that queer people could turn away from their queerness, their “sin,” these groups preyed on people who were desperate not to be LGBTQ+. The first sentence of the article hits you like a ton of bricks. “A handsome butch strolls onto the stage, wearing a baseball cap, sweats and sneakers. She immediately apologizes for the way she’s dressed. Assuring the audience that she normally dresses in a more feminine manner, she explains that she only wanted to give everyone a visual image of what she looked like before she found Jesus.”

My sophomore year of college, right around the same time this article, a Christian group on my campus invited a woman to speak about her experience as an “ex-gay” person. I remember getting special permission to be late to musical rehearsal so I could attend with some of my classmates. The room was filled with queer and trans people, there to protest this event. The energy in the room was palpable, as was this women’s discomfort. I recall her looking so nervous and sad. She spoke with a tremble and was ill-equip to handle the pointed (yet respectful) questions students asked of her. At the time, I joked about asking her out to my friends, but 20 years later, I still think about her with a heavy heart. I don’t recall her name (and a search through the Western Herald archives did not enlighten me) but I often wonder what became of her. Did she ever learn to love herself? Did she end up married to a man? Is she happy?

The Curve article tackles what happened to several lesbians and queer women who were approached by Exodus and clearly have trauma surrounding their experiences. At the time of the article, Exodus had hundreds of ministries around the world. Countless people were harmed by their conversion therapy rhetoric, which Exodus leader Alan Manning Chambers admitted in 2012. A year later, Chambers shuttered Exodus.

As painful as it was, this ex-gay movement happened and along its way to an inevitable conclusion, a generation of queer people were subjected to the fallacy that they could “pray the gay away.” The damage was done. The damage is still being done. Curve had the courage to tackle this in 1997 when we weren’t connected like we are now. I can’t help but wonder how many people were spared the harm of Exodus and other organizations like it thanks to this exposé.

Femi's Reflections:

I moved to New York City in 2006. I remember so many nights where I sat on the futon I purchased from Craigslist (which I later discovered had bed bugs), in the tiny bedroom I rented in someone's apartment (also found on Craigslist), and flipped through Curve Magazine. I would stare at the smiling faces of mostly white women and think of how one day I would be the one profiled in the magazine. While Curve certainly lacked representation of Black queer women in the aughts, seeing lesbian women out, proud, and successful provided a vision of what my life could be. It wasn't a complete representation, but it was one of the layers in the foundation.

Seeing a reflection of yourself in the media leaves an unforgettable mark. That is why I can still remember the cover photos of two of my favorite Curve articles: an interview with basketball star Sheryl Swoops from 2006 and another with actress Pam Grier from 2009.

To understand why these articles are still impactful today, you have to remember what media representation was like for Black women in the 2000s: full of the "welfare queen" tropes or the angry and aggressive Black woman stereotypes, which sent a message that Black women are undesirable and unworthy of love. But the articles with Swoops and Grier were reminders that despite living in a world that didn't affirm our beauty and femininity, we could still love, be loved, break barriers, and reach new heights.

In 2005, Sheryl Swoops came out of the closet. By this point, she was a WNBA legend and the first woman to have a pair of sneakers named after her. Despite having so much to lose, she lived her life on her terms in the most authentic way possible.

A year later, when she was on the cover of Curve sharing her journey and telling her love story, I had only been living in NYC for a few months. I was trying to find a job in my journalism career that would eventually lead to an on-air reporting job, find friends, and date. Balancing all that alone is tough in a new city but was made significantly more complicated when weighed down with a society that tells queer reporters we shouldn't be out of the closet because that might offend viewers. Add to that a persistent media narrative that Black women are unlovable.

But Swoops presented a different view. While there was undoubtedly a bias that all women in the WNBA were lesbians, she not only took a risk to come out of the closet but also affirmed her love for a Black woman in a way we didn't see in queer or straight media. This may seem insignificant but think of the LGBTQ+ couples we saw in the aughts. How many of them were Black?

In her interview, Swoops told Curve she had no regrets. And while I was still trying to figure out my life, I knew I didn't want regrets. She showed young Black women like me that not only was it possible to be successful and love publicly, but by risking it all, you could gain more than you could ever imagine.

This idea is why the cover story with Pam Grier also connected with me.

Grier is Black royalty. She is a feminist icon, Black icon, and sexual liberation icon all at once. She became what we call "Black famous" in the 1970s when she starred in films like Foxy Brown and Coffy. The actress built a career celebrating her curves, natural hair, and melanin when Hollywood was still not seeing Black women in their fullness and beauty, an issue that still existed when she later became one of the stars of The L Word in the 2000s.

When Curve interviewed Grier for a cover story, it connected with me for several reasons. She was our Black Barbie, the epitome of natural beauty. And despite sex so often being weaponized against Black women, she owned it with the same freedoms white women were allowed to own their sex appeal.

When the article came out, I was only a few years into my career but found Grier's story relatable: She had told a director she thought one script needed more substance, but he didn't listen. While I was still early in my career, I had already learned that my voice as a Black woman was often ignored. But the lesson was to keep pushing in the same way she did. 

Grier's cover story developed a new meaning to me in recent years after my wife and mother successfully fought cancer. Grier detailed what it was like to be diagnosed with cancer and the strength required to fight it. She thought she would go through treatment with the man she was in love with by her side, but instead, he left her without explanation. But Grier didn't give up; she fought cancer with a boldness and independence that cannot be denied. She is a reminder of the power of Black women