Why Can't Oprah and Gayle Just Be Friends?

Dec. 9, 2010 — -- "Why can't we be friends? Why can't we be friends?"

It's tempting to think that Oprah Winfrey is playing War's 1975 hit on loop after making like one of her guests, breaking down in tears, and insisting to Barbara Walters that her relationship with Gayle King is strictly platonic.

So goes her now-famous quote: "I have said we are not gay enough times. I am not gay. I am not lesbian. I'm not even kind of a lesbian. And the reason why it irritates me is because somebody must think I'm lying. That's No. 1. No. 2, why would you want to hide it?"

Let us suggest No. 3: Why are we so eager to read into some female friendships more than others?

Winfrey and King, Courteney Cox and Jennifer Aniston, Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna -- at one point or another, all have been regarded as maybe just a little bit too close. Why are Winfrey and King always out and about, not Winfrey and her man, Stedman Graham? Did Aniston incite Cox's recent divorce? Are Madonna and Paltrow plotting some kind of macrobiotic, Tracy Anderson-engineered world take over?

Some of the gossip is facetious, to be sure. But it may stem from the thinking that these relationships would be more saucy, more scintillating, more sexy if they involved more than mere shopping sprees and mani-peddis.

Case in point: When Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson were clubbing buddies, they blended into the pack. But when Lohan revealed they were more than just friends (with a kiss onboard a yacht in the south of France, no less), they turned into media darlings, the hot new Hollywood couple no one could stop talking about.

"As lesbian relationships and bisexual relationships among women have become more accepted, people have tried to put two and two together," said psychologist Wendy Lee Walsh. "We see two women who are close friends it's like, 'Oh, well! Maybe there's more to it!'"