Sex, Feminism and Lesbian Desire in Women's Magazines by Kate Farhall

Author:Kate Farhall [Farhall, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781000169737
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 52647040
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-09-14T00:00:00+00:00

Heteroflexibility and the performance of lesbian sexuality at the turn of the century

Feminist theorists have identified the continued promotion of lesbian chic across various media forms into the 21st century. Feminist psychologist Lisa Diamond (2005, 104) critiques television and film representations of what she dubs “heteroflexibility”,10 the representation of “presumably heterosexual women … experimenting with same-sex sexuality”, arguing that it in fact serves to reinforce heterosexual dominance by presenting heterosexuality as a personal choice, made outside of any socio-political context. At the same time, Gill (2008, 2009a) notes that the “hot lesbian” trope has become a popular contemporary advertising tool designed to market lesbian sexuality to a male gaze. Moreover, this marketing of a particular construction of lesbian sexuality for heterosexual male consumption is not confined to popular media, but is also becoming an increasingly common form of sexual practice. Ethnographic and participant-based research suggests that heteroflexibility is common among young women, many of whom perform same-sex eroticism primarily for the benefit of male peers11 (Alarie and Gaudet 2013; Fahs 2009; Hamilton 2007; Jackson and Gilbertson 2009; Lannutti and Denes 2012; Morgan and Thompson 2011; Rupp and Taylor 2010; Yost and McCarthy 2012). Importantly, such performances are also structured through race and class inequalities; in the US college party scene, for example, spaces in which heteroflexibility occurs are often “controlled by white men” and marked by wealth, with strict demarcations around who should participate (primarily white, feminine, conventionally attractive women) (Rupp et al. 2020, 344). In the examples of heteroflexibility within the magazines explored next, the accompanying images similarly mark heteroflexibility as predominantly white and “hot”. As in the dataset more broadly, women of colour are invisibilised.

This section explores several articles from the 2003 editions of Cleo and Cosmopolitan that either epitomise the trend towards heteroflexibility or provide an important counterpoint. Ultimately, this section argues that articles pertaining to women’s same-sex sexuality present a performance of lesbianism centred on heterosexuality and male desire, even as it often (ostensibly) excludes them. This re-inscription of heterosexuality onto female–female sexuality is achieved in several ways. At times, explicit links are made between lesbian desire and male arousal. Yet, even when men’s desire is not explicitly invoked, the framing of articles presents women’s same-sex sexuality for the male gaze. Heterosexuality is made prominent through emphasising women’s ongoing heterosexual availability, thus ensuring men’s continued sexual access to women, while heterosexual dominance is further reiterated through the rejection of a lesbian identity by women portrayed as participating in heteroflexibility. Each of these elements of heteroflexibility within the magazines is explored in turn.

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