‘Girl-on-girl confessions!’ Changing representations of female–female sexuality in two Australian women’s magazines

Abstract

This article undertakes a feminist discourse analysis of references to female–female sexuality in selected editions of two Australian women’s magazines published in 1993, 2003 and 2013. It identifies three distinct phases in the discursive evolution of female–female sexuality: the lesbian chic era of the 1990s, the rise of heteroflexibility at the turn of the century and the advent of the girl crush discourse in the 21st-century. The article examines each phase chronologically, showing that despite seemingly offering acceptance, in reality these discourses portray female–female sexuality as an adjunct to heterosexuality. In this way, they fail to disrupt heteropatriarchal sexual norms, instead privileging male desire and presenting lesbian sexuality as both a performance and a vehicle of self-objectification designed to garner male attention, or as a heterosexual flirtation that is easily discarded.

Keywords

Female–female girl crush heteroflexibility lesbian chic sexuality women’s magazines

Introduction

Women’s magazines and the construction of sexuality conveyed within their pages have long been a significant area of feminist inquiry (McRobbie, 2000). Feminist analyses have frequently underscored the problematic nature of the presentation of heterosexuality in women’s magazines, often asserting that the content is riddled with stereotyped sexual scripts and gendered assumptions that work to subordinate women’s interests to those of their male partners (Farvid and Braun, 2006; Kim and Ward, 2012; Ménard and Kleinplatz, 2008). Although the literature has also at times touched on the heterocentric nature of both women’s and girls’ magazines and the concomitant exclusion of female–female sexuality from their pages (Carpenter, 1998; Farvid and Braun, 2006; Jackson, 1996, 2005; Kim and Ward, 2004; McRobbie, 1996, 1997; Moran and Lee, 2011; Ward, 2003), there is a dearth of research that empirically investigates the changing representation of female–female sexuality in women’s magazines over time.

This article reports on the evolving portrayal of female–female sexuality in two Australian women’s magazines, Cleo and Cosmopolitan, analysing a snapshot of magazine content once each decade between 1973 and 2013. It argues that from the 1990s onwards, female–female sexuality is increasingly eroticised for heterosexual consumption with headlines such as ‘Girl-on-girl confessions!’ reconfiguring female–female desire as titillation for the male gaze, before the advent of the ‘girl crush’ discourse in 2013 signals a shift to a less raunchy yet more pervasive appropriation of lesbianism. Three months of each of the magazines was examined from the years 1973, 1983, 1993, 2003 and 2013, providing a window into their content once a decade. This article will focus on the data from 1993 onwards, when a distinct shift occurred from discussion of female–female sexuality within a context of social commentary and educative content, to a more playful, eroticised representation. A feminist discourse analysis is employed to illuminate ways in which representations of women’s same-sex sexuality serve to support or challenge existing heteropatriarchal power systems. A discourse analytical approach examines ‘the relationship between representation, meaning and power, and the construction of identities’ (Meyers, 2004: 101) and thus is beneficial to a study seeking to analyse the representation of a minority group in a mainstream media form.

By tracking changes in the portrayal of women’s same-sex sexuality each decade from 1973 to 2013, this study identifies a move towards a more eroticised and playful representation of female–female sexuality that increasingly serves to invisibilise genuine same-sex desire. Although the findings on the surface support Angela McRobbie’s (1996: 183) assertion that gay and lesbian sexualities increasingly ‘move more freely across the field of women’s and girls’ magazines’, the current research questions whether such ‘sexual possibilities’ might be examined more critically in terms of their relationship to dominant heteropatriarchal forms of sexuality.

Overall, this article contends that references to women’s same-sex sexuality in the magazines are increasingly predicated on ongoing male access to women’s sexuality and a disavowal of lesbian identity, and thus that they fail to challenge the prevailing heterosexual script within popular media (Kim et al., 2007). From the 1993 editions onwards, lesbian desire becomes co-opted by heterosexuality, disavowing the existence of ‘actual lesbians, of lesbianism as self-contained, stable, steadily lived and culturally incorporate’ (Cottingham, 1996: 3). Sexual identity is framed as idiosyncratic and subject to individual choice, rather than acknowledged as political, thus naturalising the dominance of heterosexuality and masking its compulsory nature. The end result of this is that the magazines, particularly those from 1993 onwards, which are the focus of this article, serve to reinscribe heterosexuality, even as they appear to give space to alternatives, thus reasserting the primacy of men’s sexual access to women.

Finding Mr Right: Sexuality, women’s magazines and youth culture

Since the 1970s when Angela McRobbie (1978: 2) noted the lack of ‘rigorous critical analysis’ of girls’ and women’s magazines, feminist research in the field has proliferated. Farvid and Braun (2006: 295) describe women’s magazines as a ‘popular site’ for the study of ‘socio-cultural messages about gender, sex, and sexuality’. Such magazines abound with sexual references, information and tips (Garner et al., 1998; Kim and Ward, 2004; Moran and Lee, 2011; Walsh-Childers et al., 2002) and much of their content revolves around how to capture and keep a man, often through providing ‘great sex’ (Moran and Lee, 2011: 168), thus providing fertile ground for the study of sexuality.

Gill (2007, 2009a) has identified key tensions within the academic debate surrounding women’s magazines. The extent to which such magazines present a coherent or contradictory ideological message has been a central topic of discussion (Gill, 2007, 2009a). Yet recent work has moved beyond analyses of incoherence and fragmentation to suggest that despite the appearance of surface level contradictions in messaging, the underlying tenets of the women’s magazine genre remain consistent (Gill, 2007, 2009a; Machin and Thornborrow, 2003); despite the application of feminist window dressing, the core elements of pleasing your man, bodily discipline, individualism and empowerment persist (Machin and Thornborrow, 2003). The relation between text and audience is another key area of debate within magazine scholarship, with important research interrogating the relationship between girls’ and women’s magazines and their readers (Ballaster et al., 1991; Currie, 1999; Frazer, 1987; Hermes, 1995). More recently, experimental research has begun to emerge which attempts to further illuminate the ways in which women’s magazines may affect those who consume them (Kim and Ward, 2004, 2012). The extent to which women and girls implicitly accept or critique the messages purveyed by magazines is a central element in feminist understandings of their role.

These central debates within the scholarship on women’s magazines inform the current study. This article does not assume that content is interpreted by readers in a consistent fashion, as this question is beyond the scope of this research, but rather identifies shifting discourses surrounding female–female sexuality within the magazines, critiquing the nature of these shifts and tying them to broader feminist research.

Women’s magazines and female–female sexuality

Feminist scholars have frequently noted that women’s magazines are overwhelmingly heterosexual in their content. Angela McRobbie (1997: 202) asserts that ‘the whole cultural field of the magazines takes heterosexual desire as constituting a framework of normality’, thereby demarcating ‘the limits of permissible sexualities within the field of the magazines’. Hetero monogamy is championed; how to get and keep a man has frequently been identified as the central premise of women’s magazines, which position these achievements as key to women’s happiness (Farvid and Braun, 2006; Kim and Ward, 2004; Moran and Lee, 2011; Ward, 2003).

These constant messages dictating the importance of attracting men leads to the exclusion of female–female sexuality, alongside an emphasis on pleasing male partners, particularly through sex. Brown, drawing on Rich (1984), argues that within the mass media, including in women’s magazines, ‘compulsory heterosexuality prevails’ (2002: 42, emphasis in original). Female–female sexuality in women’s magazines is either absent (Batchelor et al., 2004; Moran and Lee, 2011; Ward, 2003) or ‘portrayed as something that straight girls might do to experiment … or to “be sexy” for the benefit of men’ (Moran and Lee, 2011: 166). Moran and Lee argue that ‘through the discourse of hetero monogamy’ women’s magazines serve to ‘regulate and measure women and their sexual identities against … the male gaze’ (Moran and Lee, 2011: 166).

However, despite the fact that multiple studies recognise the primacy of heterosexuality in girls’ and women’s magazines (Farvid and Braun, 2006; Kim and Ward, 2004; McRobbie, 1996, 1997; Moran and Lee, 2011; Ward, 2003) and a few studies of teen magazines address shifting approaches to homosexuality across time (Carpenter, 1998; Jackson, 1996; Jackson, 2005), contemporary research into women’s magazines is lacking in comprehensive empirical studies primarily examining the presentation of female–female sexuality. The current article addresses this gap in the research by drawing on feminist theory to focus specifically on the representation of female–female sexuality within women’s magazines. It also serves to highlight the way in which the data converge with, or diverge from, existing research into media representations of female–female sexuality.

Lesbian chic and heteroflexibility

In the mid-1990s, feminist theorists began to note a change in mainstream representations of sexual minority women; bisexuality was being ‘marketed’ to women as the latest ‘fashion trend’ (Wilkinson, 1996: 293). Lesbians were increasingly presented in popular culture as ‘a novelty, a fad, something to be consumed and played with’ (Ciasullo, 2001: 577). At the same time, however, feminist theorist Ann Ciasullo explains that ‘mainstream representations of lesbianism are normalized – heterosexualized or “straightened out” – via the femme body’, thus presenting a version of lesbianism that embodies ‘a hegemonic femininity’ more palatable to, and thus easily consumable by, a heterosexual audience (Ciasullo, 2001: 578). One result of this is arguably to invisibilise alternative representations of lesbianism, whereby lesbians who do not conform to feminised, heterosexualised ideals of beauty are further marginalised, whilst the femme lesbian comes to signify lesbianism in its entirety (Ciasullo, 2001: 578). In this way, lesbian chic can be seen as assimilationist rather than radical and arguably serves to reinforce gender normative behaviour and presentation; lesbians are acceptable provided that they look straight.

Contemporary feminist researchers continue to note this marketing of bisexuality a la mode or lesbian chic across various media forms in the 21st century. Feminist psychologist Lisa Diamond (2005: 104) critiques television and film portrayals of ‘heteroflexibility’, the representation of ‘presumably heterosexual women … experimenting with same-sex sexuality’, arguing that it may actually serve to reinforce the dominance of heterosexuality.¹ Diamond contends that on screen, female–female sexuality is often packaged ‘for the heterosexual male consumer’, drawing on pornographic themes and ‘tak[ing] pains to clarify that the participants are not, in fact, lesbians’, thus preserving ‘the “interloper fantasy” of the male viewer’, whereby the women involved remain ‘available in the heterosexual marketplace’ (2005: 105). This analysis is reflected in Gill’s discussion of the hot lesbian as a key female figure in contemporary advertising. Drawing on the ‘cultural coolness’ of lesbian sexuality, Gill argues that advertisers employ the ‘hot lesbian’ as a device to add ‘desirable edginess to a product’s image’ (Gill, 2008: 49–50). By continually presenting white, ‘conventionally feminine’ women as lesbians, the hot lesbian trope is simultaneously exclusionary and constructed for a ‘straight, male gaze’ (Gill, 2008: 50). Indeed, as Frohard-Dourlent (2012: 723) notes, ‘by appropriating rather than rejecting non-normative sexualities, heteroflexibility neutralizes their power of disruption and maintains heterosexual hegemony’.

Research shows that such media representations of heteroflexibility also play out in young women’s sexual behaviours and attitudes (Alarie and Gaudet, 2013; Fahs, 2009; Hamilton, 2007; Lannutti and Denes, 2012; Rupp and Taylor, 2010; Yost and McCarthy, 2012). Feminist psychologists Yost and McCarthy (2012) examine heteroflexibility through the phenomenon of young, heterosexual women kissing each other at college parties. Their research emphasises the external nature of many of the factors that contribute to young women’s decisions to participate in such behaviour. Many participants in the study who identified as heterosexual but reported kissing another woman at a party cited male attention, alcohol, manipulation of male peers or the shock value of the act as motivations for participating in a same-sex kiss (Yost and McCarthy, 2012: 12).

Yost and McCarthy (2012) highlight the irony underlying women’s participation in a sexual act, which is designed to look ‘sexy’, for reasons which are for the most part unrelated to sexual desire. One participant reported that she ‘wasn’t aroused by’ her kiss with another woman and that she ‘didn’t think it was very sexual really’ (Yost and McCarthy, 2012: 16). The authors suggest that such performances of heteroflexibility might be interpreted as a new form of self-objectification for women, with the behaviour ‘not reflect[ing] their own desire, but instead … the desire to do something that is perceived to be attractive to male observers’ (Yost and McCarthy, 2012: 8). Participants in the study overwhelmingly did not see their participation in such behaviour as in conflict with their heterosexual identity, for the most part because they did not see their actions as sexual. In this context, lesbian desire has been replaced by the performance of lesbian sexuality as a form of self-objectification designed primarily to garner male attention. This body of literature that investigates evolving presentations, experiences and interpretations of female–female sexuality informs the following analysis of the magazine content.

Tracking discursive shifts in the representation of female–female sexuality in women’s magazines

Primary sources

The examination of the data from Cleo and Cosmopolitan focuses on content within the magazines that directly addresses non-heterosexual expressions of female sexuality, referred to as female–female sexuality. Cleo and Cosmopolitan represent the most popular magazines of their genre in Australia (Moran and Lee, 2011). Cosmopolitan Australia is one of 64 international editions in the brand’s stable that in total reach an estimated 100 million young women and girls globally, making it the most successful international women’s magazine (Zimmerman, 2012). The Australian edition of Cosmopolitan was launched in May 1973, several months after Cleo debuted in November 1972. Bauer Media, which currently publishes both magazines in Australia, brands Cosmopolitan as a ‘personal stylist’ for young women aged 18–34, whilst Cleo is billed as ‘a bible of all things fashion, beauty and celebrity’ for 18–24 year olds (Bauer Media, 2014a, 2014b).

The 2014 media kits for each magazine underscore their intimate tone, with Cosmopolitan Australia being described as a ‘best friend’ and Cleo as ‘the friend who will hit the dance floor with you one night and have a D&M the next’ (Bauer Media, 2014a, 2014b). Sex and relationship content is prominent in both magazines, is consistently featured on the front cover and is frequently framed in terms of providing tips or advice. Whilst Cosmopolitan boasts a monthly readership of 469, 000, Cleo draws 280, 000 readers, but both magazines stress their growing online and digital reach, with the publisher boasting that ‘one in ten Australian women’ are ‘reached’ by Cosmopolitan (Bauer Media, 2014a, 2014b). Given that women’s magazines are designed to produce content attractive to their target demographic of young women, particularly via tuning into trends and fashions that are pertinent to their cultural world, these magazines potentially operate both as a pop culture litmus test and a vehicle through which particular viewpoints may be disseminated. Although its publisher, Bauer Media, announced Cleo's closure in January 2016, its relevance for this project rests on its dominance within the Australian media landscape as both a competitive product and an Australian cultural icon for much of its lifetime (Le Masurier 2011; Moran & Lee 2011).

The data corpus consists of 15 editions each of Cosmopolitan and Cleo; three months of each magazine from 1973, 1983, 1993, 2003 and 2013. This decennial snapshot approach was designed to track significant changes in the representation of female–female sexuality across the lifetime of the magazines. The choice of which months to use was based on information gleaned from previous research and attention to key methodological concerns, in conjunction with the practicalities of availability. It was decided that, when available, the March, July and November issues of the magazines would be used. The use of these specific months mirrors the sampling used in a 1999 study of advertising in commercial magazines (Reichert et al., 1999). The rationale behind choosing these months was based on the desire to include an even spread of magazines throughout the year to incorporate seasonal variations and avoid the skewed impact that the use of only a particular portion of the year may have on the results. Reichert and his colleagues argue that this sort of systematic, balanced sampling of magazines throughout the year allows for a valid sample, providing a high level of generalisability (1999: 10).

Approach

The methodological approach employed here is a feminist discourse analysis. This is designed to reveal gendered relations and systems of power, as well as track changes within the construction of female–female sexuality across the different snapshots of the time period studied. Discourse analysis is particularly suited to combining with a feminist approach due to its focus on social questions and power relations. As Punch (1998: 227) argues, ‘the concept of power is vital to discourse analysis by way of the theoretical connection between the production of discourses and the exercise of power’. Because of its focus on the production of meaning within a particular socio-cultural context, a discourse analytic approach is particularly suited to the pursuit of ‘answers to social or sociological questions’ (Potter and Wetherell, 2002: 48).

Fairclough (1995) specifically identifies discourse analysis as concerned with ‘power relations within the social system’ and how such power is stratified along lines of difference such as sex, class and ethnicity. As such, this approach is eminently compatible with a feminist approach that emphasises structural inequality on the basis of sex and a project designed to interrogate representations of sexual minorities. Fairclough (1995) also notes that discourse analysis is particularly useful for identifying shifts in cultural values, making it particularly relevant to the longitudinal nature of the current study. The media present especially fertile ground for the application of discourse analysis, given that by their very nature they frequently provide a selective representation of the world and in so doing socially sanction certain identities whilst stigmatising others (Fairclough, 1995). Thus, as Bell (1998: 64–65) contends:

The media are important social institutions. They are crucial presenters of culture, politics and social life, shaping as well as reflecting how these are formed and expressed. Media ‘discourse’ is important both for what it reveals about a society and because it also itself contributes to the character of society.

A number of prior studies that take a feminist approach to media analysis, including the analysis of women’s magazines, also incorporate a discourse analytical approach (see, for example, Gill, 2009a; Meyers, 2004; Midden, 2012). Gill (2009a) argues that the focus within discourse analysis on the ways in which the worldview produced within a text can reinforce domination and oppression renders it compatible with a feminist perspective. In this case, the oppression of women, in particular same-sex attracted women, is the focus of the analysis.

For reasons of scope, this article will focus its analysis primarily on the data from 1993, 2003 and 2013. This is due to the fact that the 1993 magazines represent a significant shift in the portrayal of female–female sexuality towards the increasing eroticisation of the performance of lesbian desire, which requires critical feminist analysis.

Female–female sexuality as a heterosexual adjunct: From ‘lesbian chic’ to ‘heteroflexibility’ to the ‘girl crush’

A significant shift can be seen in the representation of female–female sexuality between the earlier magazines from 1973 and 1983 and the editions from 1993 onward. In the 1973 and 1983 magazines, references to female–female sexuality were frequently located within social commentary or educative pieces, with an identifiable tension between a broad support for gay liberation and enduring assumptions or prejudices surrounding women’s same-sex sexuality. A marked transformation can be seen in the 1993 editions with the advent of a new lesbian chic discourse identifiable. In the 2003 issues of Cleo and Cosmopolitan, the lesbian chic discourse identified in 1993 is reconfigured into a form of heteroflexibility before finally, in 2013, the concept of the asexual girl crush is employed as a way for heterosexual women to simultaneously allude to and dissociate from female–female desire. Each of these phases is examined chronologically in the following sections.

The emergence of lesbian chic in the 1990s

The emergence of a new lesbian chic discourse, whereby a heterosexually sanctioned version of lesbian desire becomes a form of fashion statement, is apparent in the 1993 issues of Cleo and Cosmopolitan. The most prominent example of this trend is a lengthy article entitled ‘The new lesbians’, located in the October 1993 edition of Cleo. Advertised in large letters on the front of the magazine as ‘The growing list of Hollywood’s famous lesbians’, the article opens with the line ‘lesbian chic is the new sexual revolution’. Including a reprint of the August 1993 cover of Vanity Fair, which displayed a photo of ‘scantily-dressed supermodel Cindy Crawford “shaving” masculine-attired singer k.d. lang’ (Wilkinson, 1996: 295), the article goes on to describe lesbianism as the latest ‘fashion statement’; ‘if babies were the designer accessories of the early 1990s’, the author explains, ‘now it’s a gorgeous pouting gal-pal’. This celebratory language and emphasis on lesbianism as trendy typifies the style of content associated with the lesbian chic phenomenon.

A central element of the ‘new lesbians’ article is the way in which the celebration of lesbian chic is contingent upon a hyperfeminine version of lesbianism. The author of the piece, Maggie Alderson, argues that ‘what has made the difference’ in the explosion of lesbian chic has been the advent of ‘glamorous role models’ such as Madonna,² clearing the way for ‘ostensibly heterosexual’ women to be open about their attraction to other women. These new ‘lipstick lesbians’ (Wilkinson, 1996: 293) are explicitly placed in opposition to the overtly political, less conventionally attractive lesbians of preceding decades, and Alderson laments the fact that ‘for so long lesbianism has come with a compulsory side-order of left-wing politics, underarm hair and vegetarianism, with a nasty crew cut and pierced nipples thrown in’. Instead, Alderson celebrates the idea that ‘now you can like girls and lipstick too’. This iteration of lesbianism gains power directly via being ‘straightened out’ (Ciasullo, 2001: 578) and stripped of its politics, as well as by distinguishing itself from, and thus marginalising, non-heterosexually palatable expressions of lesbian desire.

Alongside applauding femininity as the cornerstone of the success of lesbian chic, heterosexuality also remains prominent. Men’s attraction to the idea of conventionally feminine women enacting lesbian sexuality is explored at some length, with lesbianism becoming seamlessly intertwined with heterosexuality, despite any assumptions that lesbian sexuality by definition excludes men. ‘Fact’, writes Alderson, ‘two women together is the number one male sexual fantasy, something many of us have been happy to play up to in private’. The erotic value of lesbian sexuality to heterosexual men is thus openly acknowledged, whilst heterosexual women’s participation in men’s lesbian fantasies is presented as cheeky, enjoyable and quite common. Lesbianism in this configuration can be interpreted as another avenue for male pleasure, one which women may happily pursue in order to fulfil their partner’s ‘number one sexual fantasy’.

This mirrors Diamond’s (2005: 105) findings, which suggest that screen media examples of lesbian chic are frequently packaged to appeal to the ‘heterosexual male consumer’. Diamond (2005) argues that female characters who engage in lesbian sexuality for the most part remain heterosexually available, allowing men the fantasy of joining in and women the safety of a return to heteronormativity after their erotic foray into lesbianism. This return to the safety of the heterosexual realm is reflected in the Cleo article’s treatment of Cindy Crawford’s involvement in the Vanity Fair cover. While the article draws on Crawford’s celebrity to highlight the trendiness of lesbian chic, stating, ‘with images like this in mainstream magazines, it’s hardly surprising more and more women are thinking, “if it’s good enough for Cindy Crawford, it’s good enough for me”’, it also underlines her heterosexuality, adding ‘and don’t forget she’s got Richard Gere at home’. In this way, Crawford’s performance of a hyperfeminine version of lesbianism is marketed as fashionable, yet simultaneously grounded in the continuing safety of heterosexuality. This presentation of lesbianism is consistent with feminist understandings of lesbian chic as something heterosexual women may dabble in to add spice to their sexual repertoire and dovetails with existing feminist research into the explosion of lesbian chic in the 1990s (Ciasullo, 2001; Cottingham, 1996; Garrity, 2000; Wilkinson, 1996).³

The exclusionary nature of the lesbian chic discourse is underscored by responses to letters in the agony aunt columns of both Cleo and Cosmopolitan from 1993. A letter from a 17-year-old girl in the Cleo October ‘Q&A Personal’ section describes her attraction to other women and details her confusion and inner turmoil, highlighting the stigma associated with lesbian identity as she worries what she thinks and feels is ‘dirty’. The response, although providing some useful advice, such as contact numbers for lesbian support lines, notably fails to refute the young woman’s fear that she is unclean. This sort of problematic understanding of lesbianism can also be identified in the reply to a letter in the ‘Cosmo Counsel’ section of the November 1993 edition of Cosmopolitan, which frames a young woman’s lesbian desire as the result of ‘trouble’ in her heterosexual relationship.

These contrasting examples of the treatment of lesbianism serve to demonstrate the strict parameters within which lesbian sexuality is fashionable, or even acceptable. The disparity between the treatment of celebrity lesbian chic and the possibility of a lesbian or bisexual identity solidifies Ciasullo’s (2001: 578) argument that women’s same-sex desire is ‘de-homosexualized’ by the marketing of lesbian chic and thus made safe for heterosexual consumption. Indeed, the disjuncture between these two portrayals of lesbianism mirrors Garrity’s (2000: 196) assertion that the fever surrounding lesbian chic in the 1990s belied ‘a larger cultural anxiety about the dangers of the lesbian body, exemplified by the simultaneous embrace of the “new femme” as cutting edge and the denunciation of real-life lesbians as perverse and depraved’. Despite providing visibility to women’s same-sex attraction, arguably lesbian chic undercuts ‘real-life lesbians’ (Garrity, 2000: 196) by further isolating those who do not conform to the feminised ideal and by appropriating lesbian desire for heterosexual (male) consumption. The coexistence of the lukewarm responses from agony aunts towards the possibility of lesbian/bisexual identity alongside the glorification of lesbian chic suggests that the latter fails to destabilise heteronormative assumptions and prejudices, instead presenting female–female sexuality as acceptable only as an adjunct to heterosexuality. This elation surrounding the emergence of a fashionable, heterosexualised, chic version of lesbianism in the 1990s’ magazines is extended in the 2003 magazines, with the performance of same-sex eroticism for the benefit of men becoming seemingly a more central part of all women’s sexual repertoire and not just the purview of celebrities. This evolution of lesbian chic into heteroflexibility is explored in the next section.

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

The heteroflexibility identified by feminists in both media and practice since the early 2000s is mirrored in several articles from the 2003 editions of Cleo and Cosmopolitan. Both March and November issues of Cleo feature articles detailing titillating stories of lesbian encounters entitled ‘Girl-on-girl confessions’ (March) and ‘Girl-on-girl sex-fessions’ (November). Although other examples of heteroflexibility can be identified in the editions of both Cleo and Cosmopolitan from 2003, for the purposes of this article this section will focus primarily on these two articles, as they epitomise the heteroflexibility phenomenon in the magazines.

Despite the overt focus on lesbian sexuality evident in the presentation of both ‘confessions’ articles, heterosexuality and male pleasure remain a notable aspect of the articles’ content and framing. A link between lesbian desire and male arousal is made explicit in four of the confessional stories across the two articles in the March and November 2003 editions of Cleo. Three stories told by women relate their sexual experience with a woman as part of, or stemming from, a threesome situation with a man, whilst one young woman describes how the unexpected voyeurism of a man interrupted her outdoor lesbian encounter.

In the November 2003 ‘Girl-on-girl sex-fessions’ article, ‘Carly, 22’ tells how she and a female friend were at a bar ‘feeling naughty’ and planning to pick up men, but instead ended up having a threesome with each other and one man. The sexual acts Carly describes appear very much oriented towards the man’s pleasure. Carly describes how she ‘helped him to enter [her friend] while he and I kissed’ before she and her female friend ‘both decided to give him a bit of oral fun’. Carly’s admission that she and her friend were feeling ‘naughty’ reflects Wilkinson’s (1996) idea that participation in lesbian sex by heterosexually identified women is dubbed erotic because of the supposedly transgressive nature of stepping outside one’s ‘natural’ sexuality. The emphasis on male sexual desire in the threesome situation related by Carly also mirrors the idea that female–female sex acts are often performed to titillate men as part of a broader selection of skills that women may develop to ensure men’s arousal.

Although only four of the 22 confessional stories across the two articles include direct reference to male arousal, the performance of lesbianism for a straight, male gaze remains integral to their framing. This echoes feminist analyses that highlight male desire as central to the presentation of the ‘hot lesbian’ and heteroflexibility (Fahs, 2009; Gill, 2008, 2009b; Hamilton, 2007; Jackson and Gilbertson, 2009; Yost and McCarthy, 2012). The ‘Girl-on-girl sex-fessions’ article bills itself as ‘everything you ever wanted to know about girls who love girls’, but retains a commitment to heterosexuality by adding the coda ‘plus girlie tricks to try at home with him!’ The reader here is assumed to be heterosexual and is being invited into the erotic world of ‘girls who love girls’ in order to be able to take her newfound knowledge back to tantalise her male partner. The article, located in the sealed section of the magazine to highlight the edginess of its content, concludes with a space where readers can ‘write your own sexy story (for him!)’, with suggested characters including ‘you, the fantasy girl of your choice and your boyfriend’. The preceding lesbian confessional stories are thus reconfigured as fodder for men’s sexual arousal.

Even more clearly oriented towards heterosexual male needs is a subsection of the ‘Girl-on-girl confessions’ article that asks ‘why is the idea of watching two women having sex such a turn-on for men?’, before proceeding to quote several young men’s answers. The men who respond cite reasons such as ‘four breasts two vaginas, twice the lingerie and so on’, the links to porn and voyeurism, the idea that lesbian sexuality is ‘taboo’ or has an ‘air of “naughtiness” ’ or the lack of competition from other males. Given that studies show that young, heterosexual women’s motivations for kissing other women at parties are often bound up in pursuing attention from men (Alarie and Gaudet, 2013; Fahs, 2009; Hamilton, 2007; Rupp and Taylor, 2010; Yost and McCarthy, 2012), the prominence of male desires in an article about female–female sexuality can be read as validating women’s participation in heteroflexibility in order to garner male attention.

Such emphases on male arousal and titillation within two articles seemingly about female–female sexuality arguably serve to reinforce heterosexual dominance by configuring female–female sexuality as situated within, or derivative of, heterosexuality. In discussing the figure of the hot lesbian in contemporary advertising, Gill explains that she ‘is invariably constructed in relation to heterosexuality – not as an autonomous or independent sexual identity’ (2008: 51, emphasis in original). Jenefsky and Miller (1998: 383) argue in their analysis of lesbian pictorial spreads in the pornographic magazine Penthouse that the appropriation of lesbian sexuality by a staunchly heterosexual publication for the pleasure of a straight male audience merely serves to ‘reassert male mastery, reinscribing heterosexual dominance more broadly’. Their study found that the visual and narrative content in Penthouse’s lesbian pictorials worked in concert to provide ‘reassurance that not only are “lesbians” eventually sexually accessible to men, they always sexually desire the phallus; girl–girl sex does not threaten the phallus’ indispensability to the sexual narrative’ (Jenefsky and Miller, 1998: 383).

Cleo is not a pornographic publication directed towards a heterosexual male audience and as such both the content and context are clearly distinct. Yet despite the clear contrasts between the two publications, Jenefsky and Miller’s argument remains pertinent. In consistently reminding readers that lesbian sexuality is erotic for men, lesbianism becomes colonised by heterosexuality and presented as ‘merely another commodity for sale in the (hetero)sexual supermarket’ (Jenefsky and Miller, 1998: 381). In a society (and a publication) where the visibility of female–female sexuality is severely constricted (Hamilton, 2007; Jenefsky and Miller, 1998; Moran and Lee, 2011), the foregrounding of male pleasure derived from the performance of lesbianism potentially further restricts lesbians’ ability to etch out a comfortable social space.

The choice of celebrity women who provide confessional quotations in both articles also highlights feminists’ conception of heteroflexibility as a part-time sexuality (Diamond, 2005; Wilkinson, 1996), once again reinforcing men’s ongoing sexual access. Of the 12 stars mentioned in the articles, less than half are identified as lesbian and the majority conform to feminine beauty norms.⁴ Lucy Liu is listed as one of the ‘muff divas’⁵ in the March 2003 ‘Girl-on-girl confessions’ article, but the quotation provided suggests she has merely thought about having relationships with women, especially when heterosexual encounters founder; ‘when relationships don’t work out with guys you think, “God, this woman friend is so wonderful”’. The presentation of Liu as a ‘muff diva’, despite the lack of serious lesbian interest or experience displayed in her confession, alongside several other primarily heterosexual women who may have experimented with women, reinforces the idea that lesbianism is something that straight women may choose to dabble in for its transgressive potential, whilst remaining heterosexually available.

Heterosexual dominance is further reinscribed in the Cleo articles through the explicit rejection of a lesbian/bisexual identity by participants in favour of a safe return to the heterosexual realm. In the November article, half of the women who share their confessions explicitly state that they are not same-sex attracted, or would not repeat the experience. ‘Colleen, 20’ states that although her lesbian encounter was ‘heaven’ and she would ‘definitely do it again’, she’s ‘not gay’, she had simply ‘always wondered what it would be like to taste pussy’. Similarly, ‘Jemma, 22’ reasserts her heterosexuality and that of the friend she kissed by stating ‘we both have boyfriends now, but I’ll never forget that afternoon’.

Lesbianism within the 2003 magazines is often presented as a raunchy sexual add-on that does not have to compromise women’s heterosexual identities.⁶ Feminist theorists have argued that the results of this may be to invisibilise those lesbians who do not conform to traditional heterosexual beauty norms and depoliticise questions of sexual identity by excising social context (Ciasullo, 2001; Diamond, 2005; Wilkinson, 1996). As Kitzinger and Wilkinson (1995: 98) note, the social context of compulsory heterosexuality (Rich, 1984) is a significant factor in women’s sexual self-identification, given that ‘in becoming lesbians, women are assuming an identity that they were taught to avoid’. They go on to explain that ‘most women, as girls, are encouraged to conform to norms of femininity and heterosexuality’ and that consequently, ‘the fear and horror invested in the single word lesbian is such that women who are passionately involved with other women sometimes continue to construct accounts that maintain their heterosexual identity’ (Kitzinger and Wilkinson, 1995: 98, 100).

This analysis would seem pertinent to the portrayal of female–female sexuality in the two confessional articles. Indeed, portrayals of women’s explicit rejection of a lesbian/bisexual⁷ label in magazines that are overwhelmingly heterosexual in content (Moran and Lee, 2011) potentially undermine lesbianism as a viable alternative to heterosexuality, thus reasserting the compulsory nature of heterosexuality. If lesbianism is presented as an adjunct to heterosexuality, the latter maintains its dominance by co-opting the alternatives. Thus, the primacy of male desire for, and sexual access to, women remains unchallenged.

Having a ‘girl crush’ and the simultaneous visibility and erasure of lesbianism in the 21st century

The use of the phrase ‘girl crush’ emerges as a key theme in the 2013 editions of the magazines. However, the phrase first appears in the data set in the July 2003 issue of Cosmopolitan, where an entire article is dedicated to the phenomenon of girl crushes, describing how they operate and giving pseudo-scientific explanations for why women (and not men) experience ‘innocent infatuations’ with members of their own sex. The non-sexual nature of such infatuations is made clear by the article, which states ‘it’s not like you want to have sex with her’ and ‘doesn’t mean you have lesbian longings’; rather, having a girl crush is understood as a ‘purely platonic’ form of admiration for another woman that manifests as more like a ‘crush’ than the way men look up to other men. It is interesting that an entire article in Cosmopolitan from 2003 is dedicated to unpacking ‘girl crush’ as a concept and reassuring women that it does not compromise their commitment to heterosexuality. The term is far more casually employed in the 2013 editions of both Cleo and Cosmopolitan, as outlined in the following paragraphs, suggesting that it has become increasingly commonplace during the intervening decade.

Although analysis of the 2013 magazines produced fewer examples of the eroticisation of lesbianism than the 2003 editions, a new trend was identified centred on the use of the phrase girl crush. Although this playful, light-hearted allusion to same-sex attraction potentially indicates a normalisation of alternative forms of sexuality, it also arguably serves to trivialise lesbianism as a functioning form of sexuality and legitimate identity. In the introduction to an interview with British musician Ellie Goulding in the March 2013 edition of Cleo, the author writes, ‘with her pink hair, crazy-beautiful voice and hot new album Halcyon, we feel a girl crush coming on …’. Although the playful use of the phrase girl crush implies a level of comfort with homosexual relations not evident in many of the earlier editions of the magazines – as it would seem to dissolve any stigma associated with same-sex attraction – the conflation of lesbian desire with platonic admiration of a celebrity potentially serves to make light of the emotions and challenges experienced by young women who encounter sincere same-sex attraction.⁸ In this way, lesbianism is arguably invalidated as a form of sexuality and instead equated with aesthetic value and appreciation, emotions which are often seen as less important or meaningful than sexual desire and romantic love. Thus, the use of the term girl crush in the 2013 magazines, unlike the raunchy heteroflexible content in 2003, hints at female–female sexuality at the same time as it disavows same-sex sexual attraction and reaffirms heterosexuality.

The girl crush discourse also appears to be more pervasive than the heteroflexibility of the 2003 editions. A profile of actress Zooey Deschanel in the July 2013 edition of Cosmopolitan includes a handwritten survey filled out by the actress that contains a multiple-choice question asking which of the four female celebrities listed Deschanel has ‘a total girl crush on’. That the girl crush has become a routine question to be asked of celebrities demonstrates its normalisation. As these examples show, the sentiment behind the girl crush is less erotically charged than the instances of lesbian chic and heteroflexibility identified in the 2003 editions of the magazines. Instead of eroticising lesbianism, the girl crush discourse gains edge by being suggestive of lesbianism, but in a way that is trivial and stripped of its sexuality.

This resonates with Yost and McCarthy’s (2012) finding that young women at college who kiss other women frequently described their actions as a non-sexual experience. Moreover, as many of the young women who participated in the study admitted to performing lesbian sexuality to garner male attention, Yost and McCarthy argue that the young women’s behaviour constitutes a form of heterosexism. Drawing on the work of Hamilton (2007) they explain, ‘when women display same-sex sexuality for a heterosexual male audience, the effect is a space in which lesbians would not feel comfortable’ (Yost and McCarthy, 2012: 14). Given that many of the young women labelled their participation in displays of same-sex sexuality as ‘funny’ and ‘something that men enjoy watching’, rather than as ‘indicative of lesbian desire or identity’ (Yost and McCarthy, 2012: 14), such performances of lesbian sexuality actually serve to foster a homophobic environment by reinforcing femininity, prioritising women’s ability to capture men’s attention and denigrating lesbian identified women.

Having a girl crush can be read as operating in a similar manner. A girl crush constructs a form of lesbian light, or a partial form of lesbianism, that is stripped of its sexual or emotional meaning; female–female sexuality is appropriated for heterosexual use by alluding to lesbianism in such a way as to actually strip it of its homosexuality. Through the repeated use of this language, female–female sexuality is at once made more prominent and normalised, yet it is simultaneously dispossessed of its sexuality, let alone any of its socio-political implications. The girl crush suggests that all women can cheekily flirt with bisexuality, but strongly emphasises a safe return to heterosexuality; its de-sexualised nature removes the threat of lesbianism and thus infuses the concept with the comfort of heteronormativity. As Long (2015: 151) explains, girl crushes present a non-threatening flirtation with female–female sexuality that neutralises the destabilising potential of lesbian politics, which poses a ‘serious threat’ to compulsory heterosexuality.

Ethnographic and interview-based research with young, heterosexually identified women who participate in displays of same-sex sexuality suggest that not only are such performances often designed to attract male attention, but they frequently coexist with actively homophobic sentiments. In Hamilton’s (2007) study of erotic hierarchies amongst young women at a Midwestern university in the USA, she found that ostensibly heterosexual young women who were most likely to participate in same-sex eroticism for the benefit of men were also those who maintained the most distance from out lesbians on campus and held more homophobic views. This seeming disjuncture between belief and practice is supported by Fahs’s (2009: 444) study of women’s performative bisexuality, in which she found that 69% of the heterosexually identified participants ‘reported same-sex attractions or experiences’, whilst ‘a full 37% of those women … reported homophobic views’.

These studies suggest that, in the 21st century, lesbian sexuality is being increasingly co-opted into heterosexuality in a way that, despite making lesbianism more visible, may have the dual effect of failing to challenge homophobia and further marginalising lesbians. The girl crush potentially represents an even more stripped down, yet more accessible, version of this performance of lesbianism. Where the studies cited earlier detail performances of lesbian sexuality from which women’s sexual pleasure and desire have been excised, labelling appreciation for a female celebrity’s talent as having a girl crush further removes lesbian sexuality from the equation by not even including its performance. While in 2003 heteroflexibility appeared racy, the girl crush appears to invisibilise female–female sexuality, even as it seems to accept it. This perhaps underscores a lingering anxiety around women’s same-sex sexuality, even a form of veiled homophobia analogous to the use of the phrase ‘no homo’ amongst young men wishing to distance themselves from homosexuality (Brown, 2011), as the term girl crush simultaneously invokes and dissociates the user from female–female desire.

The use of the term girl crush in this manner reflects Australian academic Sharon Hayes and her colleagues’ assertion that there exists a persistent uneasiness surrounding homosexuality in supposedly progressive western societies. They explain that although it has ‘become almost de rigeur to be broad-minded about sex and sexuality’, such broad-mindedness merely involves the appropriation of non-normative sexualities ‘for the purposes of titillation and sexual provocation’ without ‘being open to real difference at all’ (Hayes et al., 2012: 69, emphasis in original). They argue that sexual difference – such as same-sex attraction – is only socially accepted when performed in a heterosexual context or combined with other forms of cultural capital such as celebrity, normative femininity or higher social class. Thus, they contend that this disjuncture between perceived liberal attitudes and ongoing discomfort with same-sex relations ‘demonstrates the continued fragility of public attitudes’ towards homosexuality and actually serves to re-regulate same-sex desire by presenting narrow pathways within which it becomes acceptable (Hayes et al., 2012: 75). The girl crush can be seen as emblematic of this disjuncture: the term adds value to the magazine content by playfully invoking female–female sexuality, yet simultaneously heterosexualises same-sex desire by negating genuine lesbian attraction. In this way, use of the term can be read as homophobic, as it explicitly rejects female–female sexuality as a sustainable sexual identity despite drawing on it to garner ‘edge’.

The configuration of women’s platonic admiration for other women in terms that allude to romantic or sexual attraction through the use of the term girl crush arguably serves to invisibilise lesbian desire by ‘simultaneously acknowledg[ing] and disacknowledg[ing] the actual material existence of lesbian lives and lesbianism’ (Cottingham, 1996: 3). As feminist artist and cultural commentator Laura Cottingham (1996: 3) argues regarding the lesbian chic era of the 1990s, ‘such representations [of lesbianism] literally act out a simple disappearance ritual whereby a “lesbian” is presented and then eliminated: that is, made into a heterosexual female and/or otherwise expunged’. The same can be said of the term girl crush; by reconfiguring having a crush on another woman as a platonic act of heterosexual women, lesbian sexuality is made invisible and lesbian desire is subsumed into heterosexuality.

It is important to note that both Cleo and Cosmopolitan in 2013 actively situate themselves within a progressive discourse of lesbian and gay rights and frequently position themselves as pro-marriage equality. Moreover, two separate articles in the July 2013 edition of Cosmopolitan use a lesbian couple as one of several example relationships through which a particular issue is examined. In ‘Meet, pray, love’, a lesbian couple is amongst several interracial pairs interviewed about the challenges faced by partners with different cultural backgrounds. The example is provided in a matter of fact way and the two women laugh about the fact that their distinct racial and cultural heritage was more confronting to their families than their lesbianism. The unceremonious presentation of a lesbian relationship as one example of many arguably serves to normalise lesbian partnerships and thus can be read as a positive step for the magazines. Both articles that address lesbian relationships in this way are located in the same edition of Cosmopolitan. As such, it is unclear whether this integration of lesbian stories into the editorial content marks a slight shift away from compulsory heterosexuality in the magazines, or whether it is merely an anomaly; further study is necessary to confirm this.

Conclusion

A marked shift occurs in the way women’s same-sex sexuality is discussed in Cleo and Cosmopolitan across the four-decade period analysed. The most notable change is evident between 1983 and 1993, where a factual, analytical perspective gave way to the more sensationalised presentation of lesbian chic. The evolution of the more celebrity-based lesbian chic of the 1990s into the performance of same-sex eroticism in 2003, followed by the advent of the playful yet sexless girl crush of 2013 shows the way in which women’s same-sex desire has been increasingly appropriated by heterosexuality. Although through this evolution, allusions to female–female sexuality may have become increasingly commonplace, lesbian identity has been increasingly invisibilised, thereby reasserting heterosexual dominance. Ultimately, such configurations of women’s same-sex sexuality merely serve to evacuate a structural critique of heterosexuality, invisibilise those who do not conform to hegemonic femininity, de-politicise and trivialise female–female sexuality and essentially shore up patriarchal forms of heterosexuality through the performance of lesbian sexuality as a type of self-objectification designed to garner male attention, or as a heterosexual flirtation that is easily discarded.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr Caroline Norma and Professor Sheila Jeffreys for their comments on previous drafts.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

Kate Farhall recently completed her PhD in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne, examining the evolving representation of sex and relationships in Australian women’s magazines since the 1970s. Her research interests include constructions of femininity and female sexuality in the media, compulsory heterosexuality and understandings of female–female sexuality, and the contemporary feminist movement.

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