‘This is why mainstream America votes against gays, Adam Lambert’: contemporary outness and gay celebrity

This article utilises Adam Lambert in an analysis of the politics of contemporary gay celebrity. It positions Lambert within a media context in which displays of same-sex attraction are increasing, even as the attachment of those displays to identity is rendered increasingly problematic. Through an analysis of two key media events – Lambert's appearance on the cover of Out magazine, and his performance at the 2009 American Music Awards – the article demonstrates that Lambert's troubling of the imperatives of identity that accompany ‘coming out’ is at odds with the way the contemporary conditions of visibility are repeatedly imagined. Within that context, it argues, Lambert is both an example of contemporary ‘outness’, and a celebrity figure who complicates the discursive imperatives of what that ‘outness’ means.