by Jeanine C. Cogan and Joanie M. Erickson
page 1-9
by Carol Wuebker
page 13-14
by Anna Myers, Jennifer Taub, Jessica F. Morris and Esther D. Rothblum
page 15-26
This article examines the effects of appearance norms within lesbian communities, drawing both on the research literature and on direct interviews with lesbian and bisexual women. In particular, the author assesses the impact of heterosexual beauty mandates on women's communities and asks whether lesbian and bisexual women are affected by the dominant culture's beauty mandates to a similar or lesser degree than heterosexual women. In addition, the authors examine appearance mandates developed by women within lesbian subculture. The positive and negative effects of these various "styles" on members of different lesbian subcultures are discussed.
by Jennifer Taub
page 27-36
This article examines how coming out and gender of partner affect bisexual women's behavior, thoughts and feelings regarding beauty and appearance norms. Seventy-four bisexual women participated in a qualitative survey addressing these issues. Results showed that just under half (49%) of respondents felt that coming out as bisexual affected their beauty ideas and practices and over two-thirds (71%) felt that the gender of their partners affected their beauty ideas and practices. Most of the latter group (80%) felt more appearance pressures when involved with men than when involved with women. Themes from openended responses are presented through specific examples and the implications of findings are discussed.
by Kim M. Thompson, Nancy Brown, Joan Cassidy and Jacqueline H. Gentry
page 37-44
Two conversations with three aging lesbians are presented to identify and explore different definitions of beauty and how these definitions change and are influenced by age. the three women interviewed believe beauty is more than skin deep, yet they differ regarding specific components of beauty. Two believe that their definition of beauty has changed as they age and one believes that her definition has remained basically unchanged through the years. Topics of discussion include: beauty role models, the impacts of the American beauty standard on their self-esteem, and what they look for in potential partners. Through these women's diverse opinions on how beauty is defined and experienced by older lesbians, we see that there is no one perspective representing all older women.
by Jennifer Lyle, Jeanell Jones and Gail Drakes
page 45-53
Everyday identities are constructed and re-constructed. For persons with multiple identities as women, as Black, as queer, as budding scholars, etc., the conceptions they have of beauty and of attractiveness are colored by the identities they created and maintain. In this piece, three graduate students of color share their experiences and perspectives on the topic of lesbian beauty. Through their dialogue they examine the functions of beauty in their communities, what attractiveness means for them as women, as Black women and as Black lesbians, and the power of images in their everyday lives. In their conversations, we see how three Black women, in their attempt to remain unfettered, must navigate their way through many social roles.
by Tania n. Hammidi and Susan B. Kaiser
sbkaiser@ucdavis.edu
page 55-63
Beauty is often formulated as a singular image, system, or narrative. Missing in these formulations are conceptualizations of personal desires, agency, and affiliation with community aesthetics. The following essay seeks to "complicate" current understandings of beauty-understandings that implicitly assume heterosexuality-by focusing on how lesbians do beauty to negotiate within and across four discourses. These discourses, we argue, function like cultural conversations that include verbal and visual messages, individual acts and media images, and dominant and community looks. Lesbians negotiate mixed responses to these discourses, in part, through lesbian styling. In the process, lesbians' assertions of agency allow for a reclaiming of beauty. To illustrate the ways lesbians re-frame and reclaim beauty in everyday life, we rely upon the voices and experiences of lesbians from Northern California.
by Jeanine C. Cogan
page 65-66
by Joanie M. Erickson
Jrytes@aol.com
page 69-72
According to stereotypical homosexual images of the stone-faced woman stomping around in work boots, lesbians adopt a more masculine demeanor and style of dress after coming out. In this article the author debunks this notion by sharing her personal experience of how her appearance changed through the course of her coming out process. She contrasts her views about beauty and how she felt about her body when she lived as a straight woman to her new found comfort and freedom as a lesbian expressing the feminine and masculine sides of herself. In an ironic twist, coming out allowed her to shed the heterosexual beauty prescriptions, reconnect with her feminine side, and come out as beautiful.
by Beth Daily-Wallach
page 73-75
by Jeanine C. Cogan
page 77-89
This research addressed how lesbians are influences by and respond to beauty constructions of dominant culture while they simultaneously redefine and create their own meaning of beauty within lesbian communities. A sample of 181 lesbian and bisexual women from the Sacramento area completed a survey examining their reasons for exercising, amount and type of exercise, body image, and satisfaction with weight, eating disorder symptoms, perceptions of lesbian health threats, degree of feminist identification, appearance as a form of lesbian identification, and change of appearance after coming out. Whereas feminism served as a buffer against negative body image, the body's image results found lesbians to be bound to dominant culture's thinness expectations. Other findings, however, also suggest that lesbians define beauty in their own unique way. Moving beyond simply responding to traditional beauty pressures, lesbians in this study also used beauty markers as a creative strategy to find and identify each other, suggesting that one purpose of lesbian beauty is functional.
by Dvora Zipkin
page 91-101
A number of myths and misperceptions related to images of lesbian beauty surround hair length. Short hair has become a symbol of being a lesbian, and many lesbians with long hair have felt pressured to cut theirs when they come out. For this essay, seven white lesbians were interviewed regarding their long hair. They describe how, in choosing not to cut their hair, or to grow it long again, they are not recognized or taken seriously as lesbians, both by other lesbians and by heterosexuals. They feel that they are perceived as heterosexual or bisexual, questioning, just coming out, trying to pass as straight, or buying into male-defined standards of female beauty. This is in part because many lesbians have rejected traditional "feminine" images of beauty, including long hair, and have placed a higher value on more "masculine" attributes, including short hair. In doing so, however, lesbians are still reacting to male-defined images and standards, and may be internalizing and perpetuating sexism. As more and more different kinds of women are coming out as lesbian, it becomes necessary to avoid making assumptions based on a woman's hair length. The time has come to create new images of who and what lesbians are and can be, and new standards of lesbian beauty.
by Ellen Samuels
page 103-105
The author narrates the experience of growing her hair after long years of keeping it short, and ponders "the sociocultural sexual implications of hair growth." While her lesbian friends respond with curiosity and doubt, the rest of the world, including her grandmother, wants to see long hair as a return of traditional (straight) femininity.
by Bonnie Ruth Strickland
page 107-115
This personal narrative describes the reactions of a "butch" lesbian to notions of "beauty". I grew up in a Southern culture that glorifies strength, courage, and honor for males and beauty, care-taking, and passivity for females. My interests and activities in childhood were almost exclusively masculine. Beauty was of little importance to me except as a characteristic of the desired other. Through adolescence and young adulthood I felt alienated, confused, and conflicted about sexuality, gender and beauty. I lived my personal and professional lives independently of each other. As I grew older and as social attitudes changed, I eventually began to incorporate and integrate a more complete and complex sense of being.
by Jeanine C. Cogan
page 119-120
by Karen Hefferman
kheffern%pw@nyh.med.cornell.edu
page 121-127
Findings from study of body image, weight concern, and disordered eating in lesbians are presented. While lesbians were more critical of traditional social norms regarding the rights and roles of women in general than heterosexual controls, this difference disappeared in regard to norms concerning women's weight and appearance. Dieting was frequent, almost half of the participants were dissatisfied with their weight, and self-esteem was strongly influenced by body esteem. A large number of lesbians said that physical attractiveness was important in a partner. However, lesbians' conception of physical attractiveness had a more functional quality, related to physical condition, and less concern for conventional aspects related to "looks" than heterosexual women. Involvement in lesbian, but not feminist, activities was found to be a protective factor against low body esteem. These findings are discussed in terms of understanding lesbians' relationships to beauty norms, variations across subgroups, and risk for eating problems.
by Gayle E. Pitman
page 129-139
Body dissatisfaction in lesbians is a subject which has traditionally been ignored in the psychological literature on body image and eating disorders. Early feminist theorists and researchers argued that body dissatisfaction in women developed as a way of dealing with the oppression and misogyny they are faced with on a daily basis. However, these theories failed to take issues of race, class and sexual orientation in to account, thereby excluding the experiences of a diversity of women. This article focuses specifically on the lesbian experience and explores how cultural message about thinness, femininity, and heterosexuality shape lesbians' feelings about their sexuality and about their bodies. Through the inevitable process of internalizing homophobia and fat hatred, both of which are institutionalized ways of keeping heterosexuality and female oppression in place, lesbians may begin to believe that there is something inherently wrong with them and with their bodies. This article explores how the impact of racism, classism, sexism, and homophobia on women may provide a more comprehensive understanding of the cultural forces behind women's dissatisfaction with their bodies.
by Constance Guille and Joan C. Chrisler
page 141-148
Two hundred seventeen women completed the Kinsey Sexual Orientation Scale, the Feminist Identity Scale, and three questionnaires that measured eating attitudes and behaviors. Lesbian participants were significantly more likely than heterosexual participants to work actively to improve the status of women, and they were less likely than heterosexuals to report attitudes and behaviors that are associated with eating disorders. Older women were more committed to feminist activism than younger women. Although feminist identity scores did not directly predict eating attitudes and behaviors, evidence suggests that feminism may serve a protective function against eating disorders in lesbians.
page 149-161
Transcribed by Aynsley Gough
24 August 1999