Dominant and mainstream representations of lesbians often depict lesbians as mentally ill, sexually predatory, or sexually available to men. As women, lesbians are often subject to objectification when patriarchal society represents their bodies in media.
In her study of 1990s media, literary scholar Ann Ciasullo analyzes the most popular depictions of lesbians and lesbian bodies. Arguing that visual representation necessitates a kind of voyeurism, Ciasullo notes that certain kinds of lesbian images are more “watchable” than others. Ciasullo asserts that the most popular images of lesbians ares ones which feature thin, white, traditionally feminine, and gender-conforming women whose same-sex desire titillates the male gaze.This iconographic lesbian is inherently reductive of the diverse breadth of lesbian lived experience. [1]
Such depictions of lesbians are also alienating to lesbians themselves, as these mainstream representations essentially reduce lesbianism to a distorted version of their sexuality made both palatable and accessible to the male viewer. These representations can be uncomfortable and traumatic as lesbians are made voyeurs of their own marginalized identity.
Lesbians tried to counteract these dominant visual narratives of lesbianism by creating their own representations of lesbians life. The photos use in Haunted Looking were part of a intentional effort by lesbian photographer Joan E. Biren (b. 1994) to provide humanizing portraits of lesbians for the lesbian public. [ Read more about Biren and the collection→ ]
However, photographs themselves are also reductive. Susan Sontag reminds us that the act of photographing a subject inherently reduces it to a snapshot in space/time, its frame erasing everything outside of the viewfinder. To Sontag, to photograph someone is to appropriate their image for your own use.
How then, might lesbians create positive, humanizing, and holistic representations of ourselves in a patriarchal media landscapes? How do we deal with our status as perpetual voyeurs? [ How can video games help? → ]
[1] Ciasullo, Ann M. “Making Her (In)visible: Cultural Representations of Lesbianism and the Lesbian Body in the 1990s.” Feminist Studies 27, no. 3 (Fall 2001): 577-609.
[2] Sontag, Susan. “In Plato’s Cave,” in On Photography. New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977, 1-24.