This article addresses the issue of femme gaze and desire in relation to a range of
heterosexual fashion advertisements from the British edition of the mainstream
fashion magazine Vogue. It considers the lasting legacy of heterosexual
feminist and lesbian feminist constructions of the gazing subject, particularly in
terms of masculinity, trans-sex identification and masquerading. Both of these
fields of knowledge have failed to recognize feminine and femme-inine viewing
subjects and to include them in the field of visibility independently, without
recourse to masculinity. The article considers possibilities for resistant femme
visibility, identification, and desire. It argues through the analysis of fashion
images that the concepts of femme-nity and femme-nine are useful in criticizing
prevailing regulatory norms of perception and normative expectations on gender, as
well as in denaturalizing the assumed relationship between the gaze, gender,
sexuality, and desire.
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