Someone over in the UK must’ve gotten their grandmum to write an article about the growing “lipstick lesbian” problem they seem to have these days. The Daily Mail’s TV reporter, Penny Marshall (not Laverne) just conducted an independent study that is as sad and laughable as Reefer Madness. In fact, the article she wrote is so ridiculous it’s almost impossible to not want to copy and paste its idiocy in its entirety. I’ll try to give you just the best highlights.
Marshall sets up the scenario:
Olivia and Lara had their first kiss at their friend Clara’s 15th birthday party. That is, they first kissed each other then. They’d both kissed boys before, and they will do so again, because neither girl considers herself a lesbian. But after a couple of drinks, they thought it would be fun to see how it felt to kiss each other.
Both girls come from smart homes with professional parents, are well-spoken and attend a well-respected Inner London day school.
OK, so what I’m getting so far is that these 15-year-old girls shouldn’t be scolded for drinking, just for having the audacity to kiss each other in public because they come from good middle-class households. Wherever did their parents go wrong?
She goes on to write:
It all started with Britney Spears and Madonna — a star well practised in using her sexuality to attract headlines — and the very public kiss they shared at the MTV Video Awards in 2003.
At the time, Britney said she didn’t instigate the smooch: “It was not my idea. No, Madonna threw it around a couple times in rehearsals … she just kinda said, “You know, do what you feel in the performance … just go with it and see what happens.”
Really? She’s using something from 2003 to back up her argument? Not only is Penny giving Madonna way more credit than what is due, but she also makes her seem rather predatory. Let’s not forget poor Christina Aguilera — where does she fit in with this? Xtina shared a kiss with Madonna too and yet gets no attention.
But wait it gets much, much worse:
“Nowadays, the term lipstick lesbian pretty much implies someone who is pretending to be gay,” says author Judi James, who has written extensively about celebrities. “It describes the female, publicity-hungry celebrities who are desperate to get their pictures in the paper and who engage in kissing each other to do so.”
“For them, the options to get coverage are: one, fall over and show yourself in a state of embarrassing undress; or, two, kiss one of your female friends. It’s a posture; an attention-seeking measure.”
Wow. I’m not so sure Judi James is qualified to write a chain letter much less be quoted as though she were an expert on anything. I can agree that some celebs and pseudo-celebs have used the shock value that comes with kissing another woman to boost their headline status. But to say that this is what defines the term “lipstick lesbians” is just absurd.
A variety of other celebrity girl-kissers and wanna-be girl-kissers are blamed for this sudden “trend.” Penny mistakenly says that Katy Perry wrote the song, “I Kissed a Girl” about an actual experience, which she’s went out of her way to say it’s not.
This makes her next statement even more ridiculous:
Internet message boards in the U.S. were overloaded as mothers panicked about their daughters’ slumber parties turning into vast, experimental orgies.
I honestly don’t know whether to laugh or cry — mostly because there weren’t parties like these when I was in high school.
To further prove how out of touch Penny is with not just gay community, but also pop culture, she writes:
The social trend has even sparked its own acronym — LUGs, or Lesbian Until Graduation.
Maybe I just grew up in the future, but the term “Lesbian Until Graduation” has been in my gay family for at least 15 years.
Penny keeps coming back to damning progress:
For previous generations, exhibiting any type of gay behaviour was certainly considered “harm done’. Being teased for being “lesbian” was one of the more cruel taunts that could be hurled at a teenage girl. But today we’re witnessing the emergence of a growing number of young girls who are willing to experiment with their female friends.
Something tells me Penny grew up in a secluded land with only sheep and pet rocks to keep her company. Experimentation between girls at a young age (or boys for that matter) has existed since the beginning of time. Maybe in the past the lip-locking occurred behind closed doors and wasn’t discussed, but now that it is becoming more mainstream (although I really hate to use that term) it is taking the “shame” factor out of it.
Articles like this one make me laugh, but really it’s just so I can cope with the anger I have for this stranger. It’s people like this who are up in arms about two girls kissing but don’t have a problem with the “everything but” policy many of the hetero kids are into these days.
You know, instead of getting upset by this, I think I’ll just start making shirts that say, “If all else fails, go gay.” It’s all the rage these days, didn’t you know?
