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The Simple Answer to Why Robin Roberts Waited to Come Out About Female Partner
Good Morning America anchor Robin Roberts is Good Housekeeping’s cover woman this month. Her interview with the magazine touches on several issues close to Roberts, including her early days as a woman of color in the boys club of television journalism, her struggle with myleodysplastic syndrome a few years ago, and her decision to disclose her 10-year relationship with girlfriend Amber Laign this past December, a move for which she tells GH she caught some flack.
Roberts tells Good Housekeepingthat following her niece’s wedding last year, where she and Laign were photographed in a happy family photo, some people pressed her for reasons as to why she never mentioned her partner of a decade. And Roberts answer to those people is to the point. “News flash: Some people like their anonymity,” she tells GH.
She discusses her relationship and decision to come out on Facebook last year further saying:
“This is what's right for me. Love is love, and I'm grateful to have that. Sometimes there's a stigma attached to how people view you if you're living a certain way. But I don't care — you gotta live your life. You gotta find what happiness is and what it means for you, and you can't get caught up in what someone is saying about you on Twitter.”
“You don't go through a year like I did to not be happy and not make your own choices,” Roberts adds about having beaten breast cancer and having undergone a bone marrow transplant.
Regarding working in the male-dominated field of television journalism Roberts told GH that she had to prove herself to her colleagues in ways they didn’t have to prove anything to one another.
“When I was at ESPN, it was almost a prerequisite that if you were a woman, you had to have participated in sports at least through high school,” Roberts says. “Though my male colleagues hadn't played since Little League, it was assumed they knew more than I did. It was frustrating to always feel like you had to prove that you deserved to be there.”
Tracy E. Gilchrist is the VP, Executive Producer of Entertainment for the Advocate Channel. A media veteran, she writes about the intersections of LGBTQ+ equality and pop culture. Previously, she was the editor-in-chief of The Advocate and the first feminism editor for the 55-year-old brand. In 2017, she launched the company's first podcast, The Advocates. She is an experienced broadcast interviewer, panel moderator, and public speaker who has delivered her talk, "Pandora's Box to Pose: Game-changing Visibility in Film and TV," at universities throughout the country.
Tracy E. Gilchrist is the VP, Executive Producer of Entertainment for the Advocate Channel. A media veteran, she writes about the intersections of LGBTQ+ equality and pop culture. Previously, she was the editor-in-chief of The Advocate and the first feminism editor for the 55-year-old brand. In 2017, she launched the company's first podcast, The Advocates. She is an experienced broadcast interviewer, panel moderator, and public speaker who has delivered her talk, "Pandora's Box to Pose: Game-changing Visibility in Film and TV," at universities throughout the country.
