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Why are there no lesbian advertisements?

University of Helsinki, annamari.vanska{at}helsinki.fi

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.

Key Words: femme gaze • femme desire • fashion advertisements • feminist and lesbian feminist constructions of the gazing subject • femme-inine viewing subject • femme-ninity • femme-nine

Feminist Theory, Vol. 6, No. 1, 67-85 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/1464700105046976


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