What's with all the Lady GOGA?

It's always been my contention that female sexuality is far more fluid that male sexuality.  We've graduated from the days where lesbians were portrayed as psycho killers and have moved on to an era where the idea of lesbianism is primarily presented for the titillation of heterosexual men.  So, is it any wonder that we are bombarded with images of faux lesbianism in media?  From Chaka Khan and Patti LaBelle on the BET Awards to Miley Cyrus, female celebrities seem to be embracing their inner Lady G.O.G.A. (that's "girl on girl action" for the uninitiated.)


On one hand it's easy to dismiss the displays as no big deal.  But, the real problem is that media socializes and polices us.  Where it was OK for Karen and Grace to kiss on Will & Grace or for Grace to kiss (and sleep with) any number of suitors on Will & Grace, it was rarely OK for Will or Jack to kiss another man in a romantic way. We are socialized to see male homosexual displays of affection as "ewwww" moments.  Whereas heterosexuality is constructed as normal and something we don't have to "protect the children" from.  And more recently, Adam Lambert was deemed as having gone too far when he kissed a band member on live television when "the children were watching."  But no such movement ensued over Miley Cyrus (or the kiss that started it all: Madonna, Brittany Spears and Christina Aguilera).

Provided that the women are hot, our society readily accepts displays of lesbianism (or faux lesbianism).  This is best illuminated by borrowing Laura Mulvey's term "the male gaze" which essentializes femaleness as a male object of desire.  Even one of my all-time favorite shows, The Golden Girls, traffics in this idea of lesbianism being asymptomatic of not having found "the right man" in an episode where Dorothy and Blanche are unknowingly labeled as lesbians on a local television show.

It seems to be a :heterosexual) man's world out there and as long as that is the case and we continue to subscribe to socially constructed ideas about masculinity and femininity, we will always have female sexuality (including lesbianism) on display for male consumption while refusing to show its inverse.