Written by Daisy Carter
The summer of 2024 has seen an explosion of celebration of queer women in the media. With superstars such as Chappell Roan and Billie Eilish topping the charts and selling out arenas, it seems that perhaps, despite ever continuing homophobia and the ominous rise of the right-wing in the United Kingdom, queer women may at last feel celebrated and comfortable. The summer was kicked off by BBC 1’s prime-time series ‘I Kissed a Girl’ – dubbed “lesbian Love-Island” – the reality dating show which brought queer female relationships to the forefront of British television. The featuring of the pop icon Billie Eilish (who had been recently forced to come out as queer) on Charli XCX’s hit Guess secured queer women’s place in Charli’s so-called ‘Brat Summer,’ the messy, nightlife-loving, lime-green brand which has exploded in the real world and online alike. This theme continues with the kiss shared by Sabrina Carpenter and Jenna Ortega in the music video for the former’s new song Taste, which sent the internet into frenzy.
This begs the question, is this current craze forecast to last? Can lesbians and queer women finally feel a sense of acceptance and representation? Unfortunately, when looking at historical trends for answers, the future does not appear so hopeful.
The turn of the twentieth century in Paris witnessed a rise in Sapphic lesbianism, particularly in the salons of prominent aristocratic, immigrant women such as Natalie Barney and Gertrude Stein. Paris was seen as a haven for decadence and promiscuity; anything that was not accepted in Britain or the United States would be there. This saw an influx of artistic and literary types into the city, many of whom are now considered to be the forerunners of modernism – they tested not only the bounds of literary norms, but also of social and sexual ones.
This tolerance came alongside a rise in the publication of literature about queer women by queer women, a topic that had so far only been covered by the voyeuristic fascination with the ‘lesbian character’ in works by writers such as Diderot, Balzac and Baudelaire. She was depicted in these novels as often fulfilling the role of the ‘mad woman’ character, frequently fated to die at the end. Depicted by Baudelaire’s Femmes Damnées, queer women were proponents of vice and sin. This rather bleak obsession with lesbianism, by men with an essentialist view of what the sexuality meant, took a turn when queer women writers themselves came into prominence, such as Colette, Djuna Barnes and Hilda Doolittle.
This renaissance-esque fascination with Sapphism was proliferated by writer René Vivien, who published translations of the Greek poet’s work, intertwining classical lesbianism with that of contemporary Paris. It seems that a continuing fixation on the ancient world allowed lesbianism to be deemed acceptable. Indeed, Vivien and her partner Natalie Clifford Barney sought to create a ‘Paris Lesbos,’ both in order to worship the classical poet, and also to create a tolerant space for lesbian writers and artists to flourish. Fictional queer characters were brought into existence by queer authors, such as in the works of Oliva by Dorothy Strachey, The Pure and the Impure by Colette, and Nightwood by Djuna Barnes. However, this tolerance generally only stretched as far as the middle- and upper-classes; working class women in Paris did not enjoy the same luxuries as those able to frequent literary salons and circles, which promised to protect each other. Can today’s cultural climate be said to reflect this? Although lesbianism is topping the charts, do queer women always feel safe in the streets? It would be naïve to believe so.
Despite what felt like the beginnings of true representation of same-sex female relationships, both in literature and in the city of Paris itself, this was soon to change. By the late 1920s and early 1930s, with the full ramifications and cultural changes of the First World War taking effect, followed by the earth-shattering impact of the Great Depression, that which had been once accepted was soon being shunned and vilified. With a move away from Sapphism, popular views saw lesbianism return to the vice that it had been in the nineteenth century, with queer female characters in contemporary literature being accompanied by a sense of self-loathing and sin. Not only does this highlight the continuing sway of classicism on Western culture, the idea that something can be permissible if the ancient Greeks did it, it also demonstrates that seeming acceptance can dwindle remarkably quickly, virtually overnight. Lesbianism can be tolerated when following the tradition of Sappho, or when influential, wealthy, Parisian salon-owners partake, however, to extend such sufferance to the ordinary, working woman seems to be too extreme of a request.
Furthermore, the ‘modern woman’ which had emerged from the rubble of the First World War, having gained independence and legislative rights, was resented and envied by the millions of men who felt as though they had sacrificed so much in the name of their country. Lesbianism, in their eyes, which was considered a threat to masculinity and male pleasure, was merely an extension of this; the emancipated, trouser wearing, short-haired working woman who had risen from the horrors of the war, had no interest in satisfying men’s romantic and sexual desires.
If this pattern is to be followed today, the lesbian-loving ‘Brat Summer’ of 2024 may be falling with the leaves of autumn. It is of huge importance that the proponents of this trend do not allow it to return to something of shame and vice; lesbians will still be such when it is no longer trendy to be, and when celebrities are no longer celebrated in the media for their queerness. Hopefully, despite worrying trends in politics, the 2020s will not mirror the rise and fall of the decadence of the 1920s.
Bibliography
Benstock, Shari. “Paris Lesbianism and the Politics of Reaction, 1900–1940.” In Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past, edited by Martin Duberman, Martha Vicinus, and George Chauncey, Jr.Meridian, 1989.
Lesselier, Claudie. “Silenced Resistance and Conflictual Identities: Lesbians in France, 1930–1968.” Journal of Homosexuality 25 (1993): 105–25.
Longworth, Deborah. “The Gender of Decadence: Paris-Lesbos from the Fin de Siècle to the Interwar Era.” In Decadence and Literature, edited by Jane Desmarais and David Weir. Cambridge University Press, 2019.
Querlin, Marise. Women Without Men. Mayflower, 1965.
Waelti-Walters, Jennifer R. Damned Women: Lesbians in French Novels, 1796–1996. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000.
Featured image credit: The Bath by Jules Scalbert, 1913. Accessed via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:J_Scalbert_-_The_Bath.png
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