In this presentation, I illustrate how various French expressions and images related to concealment and disclosure compete with Anglo-American images (i.e. “the closet” and “the desert”) for a place on the French cultural and linguistic landscape. I examine a series of coming-out narratives collected during my ethnographic work to show how Anglo-American terms and expressions do not consistently function as meaningful signifiers for many contemporary French gays and lesbians. Indeed, interview participants understand and can speak intelligently about such English-based expressions (or their translated equivalents) as “faire le coming out” [“to come out”], “sortir du placard” [“to come out of the closet”], and “le placard” [“the closet”]. Nonetheless, they rarely reference these terms in their own speech. Instead, they evoke a number of alternative French expressions and images related to concealment and disclosure when retelling their stories. These include the expressions “dire son homosexualité” [“to state” or “announce one’s homosexuality”], “assumer” or “accepter son homosexualité” [“to accept one’s own homosexuality”], “s’assumer” [“to take on one’s role”] as well as images of the “authentic” and “inauthentic self” first put forth in a French existentialist tradition inspired by Sartre. By offering a comparison of the use of various “English” and “French” expressions, I draw out larger issues concerning “Frenchness,” including universalistic discourses related to republican-based citizenship, and the persistence of canonical voices in popular cultural practices. Finally, time permitting, I briefly analyze Francis Veber’s film Le Placard [The Closet] (2000) to show how the notion of “the closet” does not successfully function in the larger contemporary French context (i.e. for mainstream French audiences) to communicate a gay-identified signifier or experience. Although the term “le placard” circulates on an increasingly wide scale in contemporary French popular cultural discourses, I argue that this image still does not hold consistent social or linguistic value associated exclusively with homosexuality for either heterosexual or homosexual French speakers.