I was a teenager when weekly celebrity gossip magazines were calling women who weighed 60kg “obese.” How quickly (or slowly) a celebrity woman could lose her pregnancy weight made headlines. Kate Moss proudly declared that her motto was, “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” You couldn’t escape it. Celebrity culture and the magazines that solely focus on stalking the most famous people on Earth are a nuisance. They played a significant role in ruining Britney Spears’ life. But lesbian writers who use examples of celebrity behaviour to discuss lesbian issues are not the same. We are not the paparazzi.
When asked “Do you agree or disagree with lesbians writing on lesbian topics that involve celebrity examples?” on the Lesbian Herstory Instagram Stories, 89% agreed with it (95 participants; up for 3 hours).
Between JoJo Siwa, Betty Who, and Gaylors losing their mind that Taylor Swift is engaged to a man, I’ve written a bit on celebrities recently. I’m fully aware academics will scoff, but, unlike trashy celebrity-obsessed magazines concerned with superficial nonsense, I’ve been using popular culture to relate to a broader audience while making deeper comments about lesbian issues. It’s easy to draw parallels between celebrity news and our own world because, ultimately, these people are living, breathing humans who reflect similar patterns of behaviour.
When Betty Who said that she holds space for lesbian artist Reneé Rapp to find a man one day, she didn’t just speak from her own isolated point of view. She represents a pattern among bisexual women who previously identified as “lesbian,” seeing men as part of the lesbian trajectory, rather than acknowledging that any woman attracted to a man was never a lesbian in the first place. You discovered something about yourself – bisexuality – you don’t exist as proof that lesbianism is changeable.
When JoJo Siwa, who identified as a lesbian at the time, cheated on her partner Kath Ebbs with a man, Chris Hughes, on Celebrity Big Brother UK – for the world to see – lesbians were faced with a barrage of homophobic comments about how this was proof that “lesbians can find the right man.” Digging deeper, JoJo admitted to knowing she found men attractive before she identified as a lesbian, years before the affair. She announced she felt pressured by the community to come out as a lesbian when she did. Homophobes ate up the “lesbians manipulated me” narrative. We needed to talk about it.
One of the most popular requests I’ve received is to cover Gaylors and their theory that Taylor Swift is a lesbian. We’re here to not only reflect on history, but document current lesbian phenomena – good or bad. In the article about it, I made clear that we will never know if Swift is interested in women or not unless she states it. That doesn’t mean Swift’s straight or Gaylors are delusional, it’s just best not to speculate despite the “easter eggs.” If she is hinting at same-sex desire, it’s crumbs… not representation. Instead, I used the topic as a jumping-off point to critique impulsively calling women we suspect might not be straight “lesbian.” It’s not an umbrella term for all women who love women. She just got engaged to a man.
I can understand why academia wants to separate itself from trashy magazines, their potentially harmful influence, and the lack of evidence they present when making sensationalised claims. But rejecting popular culture in your writing altogether rejects the average lesbian’s world. Have fun trying to explain heavy concepts in conventional academic terms to lesbians who never went to university, without referencing popular culture. I’m not sure that’s the goal of academia, though.
T, lesbian, late-30s, Canada, said:
“Pop culture has always been a driving force for lesbian culture, for better and for worse (for worse meaning that it’s been bad for us when media depicts us in a homophobic way). I felt more seen by Love Lies Bleeding than Judith Butler lol.
“Lesbians were going to Marlene Dietrich movies and The Children’s Hour back in the day…we’ve always followed pop culture, good and bad.
“I read a book recently on The Children’s Hour where the author talked about being on a bus full of dykes going to see a rep screening of it circa like the 70s.”
We should all be critical of popular culture. But pretending it doesn’t exist, feeling superior to it, creating a separate “educated world” with obscure references to the rarest media you can find, has ultimately created a cultural, academic, “queer” bourgeois who are so insular that they generally do not make much sense to the average person. It’s affected the LGBT: it’s not cool to be a regular, female homosexual – you must subvert normality and identify as exactly what homophobes think of us: “queer.” You also must be OK with anyone identifying as a lesbian, because everything is “fluid” and “you’re just an exclusionary identity cop.”
What the fuck does any of that mean, in real terms? When you point that out – that whatever this LGBT bourgeois is trying to do is deliberately obtuse and nonsensical – they agree. They just think it’s cool to be unrelatable to the “heteronormative” real world, despite claiming they care about accessibility. It reads to me like a cringy competition to be the most interesting. You would have to be insecure only to accept your sexual orientation if it makes you weird, and weird is cool. Homosexuality isn’t “cool,” it just is. I don’t want lesbianism to become cool because we’re appropriated enough as it is.
When asked “Do you think using celebrity examples to discuss lesbian topics connects theory to “normal lesbians” who don’t relate to overly academic conventions?” on the Lesbian Herstory Instagram Stories, 78% hit “yes” (70 participants; up for 3 hours).
I include examples of celebrity behaviour in my writing to make complex comments about lesbian issues for relatability reasons. First of all, the average person is likely familiar with the celebrity or could find out more information about them if they aren’t. It’s much harder to make a point by using a local supermarket worker as an example. There also wouldn’t be sources for that other than my eavesdropping. Secondly, the celebrity’s actions have real-world consequences that extend beyond those of a regular person, as they inspire and influence others to a significant degree. It’s one thing for the supermarket worker to cheat on her lesbian partner with a man, which, of course, sucks anyway. But it’s another thing for JoJo Siwa – out as a lesbian herself at the time – to do it on TV. That is why it MUST be addressed.
Lesbian Herstory will always be here for the average lesbian, more than to placate the delusions of the bourgeois LGBT who want to be out of touch with the real world. It’s not heteronormative for lesbians to enjoy a basic life surrounded by popular culture, without performatively consuming the rarest edgy media so she can join the cool “culturally gay” club. Lesbianism does not dictate a set of interests, beliefs, personalities and politics. It just means female homosexual. That’s it.
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