claiming a hero

I have been house bound for a few days with flu or something that has knocked any kind of strength out of me and as such I have been spending quality time with search engines and the like. I decided to type in 'famous lesbians' into google to see what was bought up. (no porn on the first page as normally happens when you type in 'lesbian [anything]' into a search engine). 

Every community has it's heros and whilst homosexuality is marginalised by 'mainstream culture' it will of course have it's own 'community'. 

I came across a list of 'famous lesbians' with links to pages about each person on said list. It really wasn't terribly long, but it was very wide in it's scope. The list being alphabetical was not obvious in it's preferred type of 'famous lesbian'. However, I did find that, whilst it was celebrating some pioneering women who indeed were or are lesbians, it also was desperately trying to take women from popular culture who'd kissed a woman on screen or 'dabbled in is for a bit' as lesbians. 

As you can see I titled this entry 'claiming a hero'. Within the space of a blog entry, or indeed within my understanding of the history of lesbianism I cannot fully explain my point, but here goes. 

It is my understanding of 'communities' that depending on times and aspirations, they use icons of the community to help 'mainstream culture' to discover things about said community. Amongst the names were women such as Barbara Jordan, an extraordinary woman working in the American political system in the 1970s and Frida Khalo who I hope needs no introduction as a fantastic bisexual painter born in Mexico. I also found in the list and another list a couple of items down in google, people such as Paris Hilton, practically the whole cast of the L-word, whether they've ever slept with a woman or not and Nelly Furtado, to name but a few.

Whilst I understand intellectually that a young girl trying to come out may find it comforting that some of their much admired celebrities 'kissed a girl and liked it'. (I say intellectually as I was one of those rare young lesbian girls that never really had to come out, and I understand my privilege in this situation). I wonder at this incessant claiming of each woman as a hero for the lesbian community. I wonder if someone could shed light on how claiming Paris Hilton as a lesbian, or at least a woman attracted to other women, will help any of us or our community at all.