‘I am who I am’? Navigating norms and the importance of authenticity in lesbian and bisexual women's accounts of their appearance practices

Abstract

This article explores how lesbian and bisexual women negotiate pressures to look like an authentic lesbian and an authentic individual in their accounts of their clothing and appearance practices. Thirty women responded to a ‘paper-and-pen’ qualitative survey about lesbian and bisexual women's dress and appearance. Two main themes were generated from the data: ‘norms and conformity’ and ‘freedom and authenticity’. Conformity to appearance mandates raised questions about individual authenticity; the women negotiated this dilemma either by presenting their conformity as active and strategic, a means to an end (subverting normative assumptions of heterosexuality, being recognised by other non-heterosexual women) or as an almost unconscious expression of their inner dyke. For feminine and other non-conforming women, their lack of conformity raised questions about their authenticity as a non-heterosexual woman (and their feminist credentials), and some of these women negotiated this dilemma by presenting their femininity as a subversion of heteronormative assumptions by showing that any woman can be a lesbian. We conclude this article by highlighting the potential for over-reading sexuality in accounts of sexuality and appearance practices.

Keywords:

• appearance
• authenticity
• bisexual women
• butch
• clothing
• dress
• femme
• lesbians
• thematic analysis

Acknowledgements

We thanks our participants for telling us about their clothes (!) and three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.