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What
the article did not mention was that 1993 had been
proclaimed the year of “lesbian chic” by New
York magazine in a May 1993 cover story that also featured
k.d. lang as the newly crowned poster-butch for “lesbian
chic.” lang's status as the lesbian icon of the day was
firmly cemented by the time Vanity Fair published its
cover, so in a way, being able to point to lang and say “that’s
a lesbian” blunted the impact that the image had on the
public. It was okay for one woman to look like that, but only
that specific woman.
After
the Vanity Fair cover, images of butch lesbians once
again dwindled. In 1997, supermodel Linda Evangelista was photographed
in an ad for Kenar dressed as both a man and a woman, kissing
herself, but fashion photography has a long tradition of manipulating
gender to sell clothes. When Ellen DeGeneres came out on the
cover of Time in April 1997, she was clearly a woman—perhaps
not the most feminine of women, but no one could point to her
and say “she’s a lesbian” on first glance.
In
1999, another image of female masculinity came into prominent
view when the film Boys Don’t Cry garnered Hillary
Swank an Oscar for her role as the troubled, transgendered Brandon
Teena. That movie effectively lifted masculinity out of the
realm of lesbianism (the boyish Brandon declares that he’s
not a “dyke”) and moved it into the medicalized
arena of transgenderism. This has rendered many butch lesbians
invisible as transgender issues become prominent both in local
gay communities and nationally.
As
masculinity in women is increasingly associated with transgenderism,
masculinity in lesbians becomes less acceptable. One case in
point is the media backlash that resulted from Rosie O’Donnell
coming out and cutting her hair in 2002. She was quickly judged
to be “radical” and “masculine,” and
painted as an overly
aggressive, angry dyke.
Since
then O’Donnell has grown out her hair and notably made
an effort to soften her image.
In
another example of resisting butchness, when The
L Word premiered in January 2004, none of the characters
could claim a butch identity. Indeed, New York magazine
proclaimed in their cover story on the new show that these were
“Not Your Mother’s Lesbians,” marking a major
distance from their 1993 heralding of “lesbian chic.”
Similarly,
Vanity Fair’s next major gay cover after the
August 1993 k.d. lang photo was almost a decade later, in December
2003, when they proclaimed “TV’s
Gay Heat Wave!” This cover featured six people, including
one openly gay (Queer Eye’s Carson Kressley,
a fashion stylist) and one bisexual (actress Megan Mullaly).
But none of these six celebrities challenged gender norms in
any way; they all consistently fit into “male” or
“female” categories.
These
signs of gender re-entrenchment are disturbing because
they firmly underline a gender binary in which deviation from
the culturally accepted norm is stigmatized. This kind of movement
is anti-feminist as well as homophobic, but is not unexpected
in the current political climate. Even though we now have three
gay cable channels and (feminine) lesbians are more accepted
than ever, those steps forward have come at the expense of marginalizing
non-normative gender expressions.
There’s
no way that k.d. lang would be on the cover of Vanity Fair
these days. One could argue that she’s no longer the celebrity
she used to be, but more importantly—and sadly—her
kind of butch has gone out of style.
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