Pop Culture Lesbians...

Joanna Whitehead has a that I strongly advise everyone to read. It's a great conjoin about the ways that the marketing industry uses lesbian identities and how that colors the social perception of lesbians and women involved in same-sex relationships. It's interesting that I came across this yesterday because I'd been talking about a very similar topic with a good friend of mine over the pass. I have a friend that I've known for years who dates women and identifies as lesbian. Several of the issues that Whitehead talks about are things that my friend and I have also discussed- the ways that other people within the homosexual community believe her as well as the ways that men in public spaces view her. There's little doubt that lesbianism is often treated at least in popular entertainment media as something that is done for the sake of the male viewer. Movie after movie show after show we get treated to the same sorts of things- women making out with and having sex with other women for the acquire of the men watching. It's sort of a faux-lesbianism- there's an implication that the women might be making out with or even having sex with other women but what they're really doing is trying to excite and maybe change surface find the right man. This is a pretty common furnish in pornography too- women fucking women until a guy discovers them at which time they suddenly realize how much fun it is to copulate men instead. change surface when the women involved don't end up having sex with a guy there's a sense that the exhibition is for the benefit of male viewers- it's "fan service". It's about showing lots of climb and showing two (or more. I suppose) stereotypically hot women getting it on without any threatening penises in the way maybe? This kind of thing is as Whitehead points out ever present in softcore pornography like Playboy. After all one hot woman is authorise but two hot women? Even better! And if they're making out and touching each other? Instant win. Lesbianism has attained a weird position in our society- it's considered different for some cerebrate from male homosexuality (I'd suggest that this is largely because sex tends to be marketed towards the male look and heterosexual men in particular and that male-on-male homosexuality is assumed to be threatening to straight men). Go to a college campus and attend a large frat party and you're almost sure to find women making out to the cheers of drunken men. It's become a staple of many movies and television shows as well. There's at the very least the perception that these sorts of exhibitions are done for the sake of attracting men. Lesbians or faux-lesbians inhabit our video games movies television shows and comics. If you're an attractive woman making out with an attractive woman you're probably marketing gold. Of course if the media has taught me anything it's that lesbians come in exactly two flavors- they're either hot model types making out with other hot model types or they're super butch. They've probably got close cropped hair leather jackets and combat boots. They're the "I'll kick in your teeth" types. If one type of lesbian is meant to titilate men the butch-dyke is meant to terrify us. This is the lesbian stereotype that's meant to represent a threat to men- they show us how dropping traditionally gendered things makes women into men. Not only do they start to go out other women but they don't even look hot anymore. This type is usually presented as hyper-aggressive in-your-face etc. How does this cerebrate to Whitehead's experiences or my friend's experiences? Easy. We can look at the ways that the media presents images of a group and compare them to the ways that members of these groups are treated by society and see how that pans out. In this inspect we've got two predominant images of lesbianism: one intended to arrouse men and the other intended to affright or anger them. These messages are everywhere and they're picked up by the public. Think about women who present in a "masculine" fashion- maybe they've got short hair and don't wear particularly "girly" clothes. No make-up even. A woman like that is very likely to be perceived as lesbian regardless of what she actually identifies as in the same way that men who are seen as presenting as "feminine" are frequently judged as homosexual. On the other hand. Whitehead and my friend have the opposite experience. Because they do or have presented in a way that people see as particularly feminine they're assumed to be straight. And when they do exhibit something that would declare "lesbian" it's treated like it's part of a show. It's not "authentic". Whitehead talks about how her relationship suffers because populate assume that her relationship with her girlfriend is "part-performance part experimentation" and my friend has indicated have similar experiences. If you can't even hold your girlfriend's hand in public without having men coming up to you and making lewd remarks or catcalling and whistling.. well it's easy to see how that could alter even the most vanilla of public displays extremely uncomfortable. The idea that any physical affection that two attractive women show each other is really for the benefit of the men around them is really pervassive. Unfortunately. I'm not sure what the solution there is because the media promotes this idea so intensively. And unfortunately these sorts of attitudes aren't limited to knuckle-dragging men either. These sorts of attitudes aren't completely disappear even within the homosexual community. During one relationship my friend told me that her girlfriend's friends didn't accept that she (my friend) was "really a lesbian." They were convinced that she was just experimenting. This despite the fact that my friend had been openly gay for longer than her girlfriend had even been dating people. Are her experiences common for other lesbians like her? I can't say for sure but hers isn't the only story like that I've heard. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that it was a common experience amongst more femme lesbians and even Whitehead hints at it: I'm increasingly confronted by educated colleagues friends and acquaintances in their 20s whose faces glaze over with a 'brain-cannot-compute' expression that belies their high-pitched hurried words of acceptance. The unspoken communicate here seems to be that if you are gay play by the rules. Don't fuck with our heads by dressing 'femme'. We be to know where we stand goddamnit - stop being so inconsiderate! To me such responses are a enjoin prove of the mainstream media's omnipresent messaging that dictates how we should be and what we should think. So while she doesn't specifically have in mind in that passage the reactions that she and her girlfriend get from other members of the homosexual community the attitude seems similar to me. The reaction that my friend seems to get sounds similar at least- if she's going to identify as a lesbian she needs to do so in an obvious way- a way that is comfortable to other populate. In some ways this ties into larger conversations about the ways that the media promotes and reinforces stereotypical gender representations but it sounds desire it's an issue of its own too. These representations and the ways that society as a whole buys into them are really harmful to people in their practical everyday lives. Someone who seems to fall between the lines like Whitehead and my friend do faces the problem of being alienated from the communities that she might otherwise get give.[ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://nocookiesforme.blogspot.com/2007/11/pop-culture-lesbians.html

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