If you’ve been on the internet in the past several hours, you may be aware that Ricky Martin has officially come out as gay. As with many official coming outs of the past few years, the vast majority of the reaction has been made up of “duh” and “who cares? His career is already over,” with a decent amount of support and congratulations mixed in.

But dismissing this moment as insignificant or as a desperate ploy for relevance, or even as merely a personal achievement deserving of praise is missing the point. Ricky Martin came out because he felt he needed to, but why? Why is the coming out story so important for our culture to tell?

ABC currently has a sitcom called Cougar Town, about a recently divorced woman who finds herself dating younger men. TV Land had a reality competition called The Cougar, in which a group of 20-something men fought for the affections of a beautiful woman in her 40s. 30 Rock had a second season episode called “Cougars,” which followed Liz’s relationship with a man 17 years her junior. As these examples indicate, “cougar,” a slang term which has gained enormous popularity in recent years, is generally defined as an older woman who is attracted to younger, handsome men.  The concept of a woman being interested in a gorgeous man who is in his sexual prime is apparently so surprising to the culture at large that we needed a special name for it.

Lady Gaga certainly isn’t the first female pop star to get experimental with her fashion choices. Madonna had her cone-shaped bras, Cher her feathered headdresses, Cyndi her neon hairdos. Right now, we’re definitely at a high point in the history of female singers’ creative sartorial decisions, with Rihanna going military-bondage chic, Katy Perry aiming for 1950s pin-up girl, Ke$ha choosing to bathe with glitter instead of soap, and Beyoncé wearing whatever she pleases.

But even amongst this wide array of exciting fashion, Gaga stands out. Unlike her contemporaries, Gaga isn’t trying to be pretty.

The Twilight series gets a lot of criticism for giving teenage girls an unrealistic idea of what teenage boys are like. As the average seventeen-year-old neither lives off of animal blood or has a century’s worth of experience holding back all sexual urges, this is a pretty fair critique. Edward Cullen is a terrible representation of young male desire.

But what so many miss in their rejection of Edward is that Bella Swan, the Twilight heroine and narrator, is actually a pretty remarkable thing in pop culture: an openly and unashamedly desirous teenage girl.

Last night, Kathryn Bigelow won the Academy Award for Best Director for her Iraq war film, The Hurt Locker. The Hurt Locker also won Best Picture, beating out the newly crowned highest grossing film of all time, Avatar (whose director, interestingly enough, is James Cameron, Bigelow’s ex-husband).

By winning these awards, Bigelow became the first woman to win an Oscar for directing and the first woman to direct a Best Picture. If you look at the media write-ups of the Oscars, these achievements appear to be a very big deal.