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What does a lesbian look like? Until a few years ago, mainstream culture was pretty sure they knew the answer to that question, even though they didn’t. The Autostraddle Roundtable tackles passing, why people can’t understand that lesbians can have long hair, and the relationship between gender, style, and sexuality.
What does a lesbian look like? Until a few years ago, mainstream culture was pretty sure they knew the answer to that question, even though they didn’t. A lesbian looked like K.D. Lang or the gym teacher, right?

Now, all bets are off! The patriarchy and the lesbians have been warned and men are increasingly disarmed to meet girls who “look straight” but turn out to be gay (See: Chasing Amy) while women are increasingly disarmed to meet girls at gay bars who “look straight” (See: The L Word). Meanwhile, the Obviously Out & Proud Homos wonder why they’re still getting hit on by men, and we’re all wondering why the doctor told us to close our eyes and think nice thoughts about our boyfriend while he administered a painful shot.

This doesn’t come out of nowhere. For centuries our civilization has measured a woman’s worth by her attractiveness to men, and our ensuing beauty rituals and fashion choices have long been attributed to desiring male attention/approval or acting as mindless slaves to the omnipotent power of the beauty industry.

Defining the minority’s “other-ness” by emphasizing obvious physical differences has been a key technique used by those in power to subject and withhold political & social power from the minority. On a practical level, it’s easier to openly express prejudice when you feel you can visually identify any potentially offended parties in your midst.

It’s weird, being part of a self-identified minority with no absolute methods of physical identification. Of course homos aren’t alone in that weirdness, but in a world where people are accustomed to easy people-labeling techniques, there’s people on every level who seem, in some way, to want to instantly be known and to know others based on physical cues.

It’s weird, being part of a self-identified minority with no absolute methods of physical identification.

But as lesbian culture moves out of silent secret places into the mainstream, and as civilization moves towards accepting style’s separation from Self as they once had to do when reconcving women eschewing dresses for long pants (while realizing that many women would still self-select dresses and other initially successful options), eschewing the maxim that anyone who doesn’t “look gay” must be straight is one of many silent conceptual evolutions that could, quite possibly, redefine gender as fluid, style as costume and labels as an option rather than a necessity. You’ll hear a lot of us complaining about the idea of “butch” and “femme,” but certainly for some people those words are important and useful.

But with this fluidity and increased visibility of lesbians of all attitudes, styles, shapes and colors comes a new set of expectations from others in our community and outsiders. If women are wearing makeup and paying special attention to style for either personal reasons or because they want to look a certain way for other women — it’s no surprise we’re inspiring alternating suspicion from our own, and fear from the patriarchy.

Our cultural gender belief system and societal structure ties masculine & feminine gender roles to biological sex, and therefore people who have traits of one prescribed gender role are expected to fulfill all the rest of the traits too. Thinking that lesbians are like men and gay men are like women is so backwards — the old term is “inverts.”

So, here we are at the crossroads. How do these shifting expectations and judgments play out in our everyday life? When are we guilty of reinforcing stereotypes when judging others? Can you identify a lesbian just by looking at her? Do you want to be identified?

This week we ask:
What do people think they know just from looking at you?
What does a lesbian look like?

(Comments and credit for this article is found at The Autostraddle Roundtable)