Lesbian portrayal in media is generally in relation to feminism, love and sexual relationships, marriage and parenting. Some writers have stated that lesbians have often been depicted as exploitative and unjustified plot devices. Common representations of lesbians in the media include butch or femme lesbians and lesbian parents. "Butch" lesbian comes from the idea of a lesbian expressing themselves as masculine by dressing masculine, behaving masculinely, or liking things that are deemed masculine, while "femme" lesbian comes from the idea of a lesbian expressing themselves as feminine by dressing feminine, behaving femininely, or liking things that are deemed feminine.
Literature
Sappho was an ancient Greek poet who, over time, has become well known for her poetry fragments that frequently dealt with love between women. During the twentieth century, lesbians such as Gertrude Stein and Barbara Hammer were noted in the U.S. avant-garde art movements, along with figures such as Leontine Sagan in German pre-war cinema. Since the 1890s the underground classic The Songs of Bilitis has been influential on lesbian culture. This book provided a name for the first campaigning and cultural organization in the United States, the Daughters of Bilitis.
Joseph Sheridan le Fanu's 1872 novella Carmilla, published as part of the book In a Glass Darkly, is often cited as a root of the lesbian vampire trope about the predatory love of a vampire (the title character) for a young woman (the narrator) which was picked up in 20th-century exploitation films. The novella has since been adapted into a webseries, as well as a film based on the series.
During the 1950s and 1960s, lesbian pulp fiction was published in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, often under "coded" titles such as Odd Girl Out, The Evil Friendship by Vin Packer and The Beebo Brinker Chronicles by Ann Bannon. British school stories also provided a haven for "coded" and sometimes outright lesbian fiction. During the 1970s the second wave of feminist-era lesbian novels became more politically oriented. Works often carried the explicit ideological messages of separatist feminism and the trend carried over to other lesbian arts. Rita Mae Brown's debut 1973 novel Rubyfruit Jungle was a milestone of this period; Patience and Sarah, by Isabel Miller, became a cult favorite. By the early 1990s, lesbian culture was being influenced by a younger generation who had not taken part in the "Feminist Sex Wars" and this strongly informed post-feminist queer theory along with the new queer culture. Molly Bolt in Rubyfruit Jungle has numerous romantic and sexual relationships with other women, and she confronts the "hypocrisies of both heterosexual and homosexual societies." In 1966, Renee LaRoche became the first "openly out Indigenous lesbian" in the detective novel Along the Journey River.
In 1972, the Berkeley, California lesbian journal Libera published a paper entitled "Heterosexuality in Women: its Causes and Cure". Written in deadpan, academic prose, closely paralleling previous psychiatry-journal articles on homosexuality among women, this paper inverted prevailing assumptions about what is normal and deviant or pathological. The paper was widely read by lesbian feminists. The journal is no longer published, and the article is nearly impossible to find: a Google search on the title typically yields Albert Ellis's book Homosexuality: its Causes and Cure, which was published before 1972, and before the American Psychiatric Association decided that homosexuality was no longer a mental disorder.
Happy Endings Are All Alike, in 1978, became the first novel with a "clearly lesbian main character," named Jaret Taylor who comes out in the book's first line.
Andrea Gibson, who gained fame in 2006 for their performances in multiple poetry slams, was a queer activist poet, who was open about their sexual identity and wrote often about their challenges and experiences as a queer person in their poems.
Art
In Art History, paintings showing two or more females together seldom displayed much in the way of potential sexual activity between them. When it came to nudity, most women subjects were depicted as dancers or bathers, usually stated as goddesses.
One well known painting from the 19th century is Gustave Courbet's Sleep which openly depicts two women asleep after love-making (indicated by the broken pearl necklace); and Dominique Ingres' Turkish Bath in which, in the foreground, one woman can be seen with an arm around another and pinching her breast. Both these paintings ended up in the collection of erotica collector and diplomat Khalil Bey,The Art of the Nude by Deirdre Robson, published by Siena but are now exhibited in the Metropolitan Museum of ArtSleep at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Louvre,Turkish Bath at the Louvre respectively.
Another work from the 19th century, Lysistrata haranguing the Athenian women (1896), by Aubrey Beardsley depicts a group of naked women, with one of them about to manually stimulate another.
More famous is Damned Women (c. 1885) by Auguste Rodin, which is a sculpture of two women in movement on top of one another.
Music This section gives examples of lesbian musicians, and few music videos that portray lesbian couples. See also Category:Lesbian musicians. Alix Dobkin Janis Ian Hayley Kiyoko Mikaela Straus, also known by the stage name King Princess Julia Nunes Indigo Girls Javiera Mena Sandra Mihanovich and Celeste Carballo Tegan and Sara, who are lesbian twin sisters that have gained much respect in the queer community Mary Lambert, who gained attention from her song She Keeps Me Warm
The 1981 Spanish-language hit single "Puerto Pollensa", written by Marilina Ross and popularized by Sandra Mihanovich, is considered the first Argentine popular song to thematize lesbian love, and is regarded as a quintessential gay anthem and an icon of 1980s lesbian culture in its home country. Mihanovich later formed a music duo with Celeste Carballo, who was also her partner. Although they never took an explicitly activist stance, they played a fundamental role in making lesbianism visible in South American popular culture.
The music video for The Head and the Heart's "Another Story" portrays a lesbian couple.
The music video for Bjork's "All Is Full of Love" depicts two lesbian robots kissing.
Other music videos:
dodie's "Sick of Losing Soulmates" Halsey's "Ghost" Hayley Kiyoko's "Cliffs Edge" Hayley Kiyoko's "Girls Like Girls"
In 2019, Billboard compiled a list of the 30 lesbian love songs: Baum's "Hot Water", Gia Woods' "Only a Girl", Ames' "Flowers for Anna", Rina Sawayama's "Cherry", Asiahn's "Like You", King Princess' "Pussy Is God", Kelela's "Truth or Dare", Beatrice Eli's "Girls", Kehlani's "Honey", Alyson Stoner's "Fool", Keeana Kee's "You're Real", L Devine's "Daughter", Dizzy Fae's "Her", Studio Killers' "Jenny", Girl in Red's "I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend", Tegan and Sara's "Closer", Mary Lambert's "I'd Be Your Wife", Lucy Whittaker's "Curious", Janelle Monáe's "Make Me Feel", Zolita's "Like Heaven", Emily Burns' "Vanilla Sundae" (featuring Olivia Nelson), Hayley Kiyoko's "Girls Like Girls", Beth Ditto's "Love in Real Life", Halsey's "Strangers" (featuring Lauren Jauregui), Melissa Etheridge's "Come to My Window", Kodie Shane's "Sing to Her", k.d. lang's "Constant Craving", the Japanese House's "Lilo", LP's "Girls Go Wild", and Rita Ora's "Girls" (featuring Cardi B, Bebe Rexha, and Charli XCX).
Opera and theater Lesbian characters rarely appear in opera; Countess Geschwitz in Alban Berg's Lulu is one exception, but Charles Gounod's Sapho portrays the poet as straight. Patience and Sarah, based on the Isabel Miller novel, has been described as the first lesbian opera.
In theater, there are quite a few plays and musicals that have lesbian characters or focus on lesbian themes. One particular musical that has received a lot of recognition in the past few years is Fun Home. Based on the graphic novel of the same name, Fun Home is a personal account of Alison Bechdel's self-discovery as a lesbian. The show also features themes of the decision to come out, having sex for the first time, and coming to terms with one's sexuality. Many of the songs in the show focus on these themes, such as the moment of recognition one knows they are gay, when they find gay role models, and the awkwardness and authenticity that comes with first time sex. This show stands out because it normalizes the lesbian experience and speaks of lesbian sex without the fetishation found in much other media platforms.
Cinema
The first lesbian-themed feature film was Mädchen in Uniform (1931), based on a novel by Christa Winsloe and directed by Leontine Sagan, tracing the story of a schoolgirl called Manuela von Meinhardis and her passionate love for a teacher, Fräulein von Bernburg. It was written and mostly directed by women. The impact of the film in Germany's lesbian clubs was overshadowed, however, by the cult following for The Blue Angel (1930).
Until the early 1990s, any notion of lesbian love in a film almost always required audiences to infer the relationships. The German silent film Pandora's Box (1929) is the first film to have a lesbian subplot, where a Countess (portrayed by Alice Roberts) is deeply infatuated with the protagonist Lulu (Louise Brooks). The lesbian aesthetic of Queen Christina (1933) with Greta Garbo has been widely noted, even though the film is not about lesbians. Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940), based on the novel by Daphne du Maurier, referred more or less overtly to lesbianism, but the two characters involved were not presented positively: Mrs. Danvers was portrayed as obsessed, neurotic and murderous, while the never-seen Rebecca was described as having been selfish, spiteful and doomed to die. All About Eve (1950) was originally written with the title character as a lesbian but this was very subtle in the final version, with the hint and message apparent to alert viewers.
Playwright Lillian Hellman's first play, The Children's Hour (1934) was produced on Broadway. Set in a private girls' boarding school, the headmistress and a teacher are the targets of a malicious whispering campaign of insinuation by a disgruntled schoolgirl. They soon face public accusations of having a lesbian relationship. The play was nominated for a Pulitzer prize, banned in Boston, London, and Chicago and had a record-breaking run of 691 consecutive performances in New York City.Playersring.org, Children's Hour A 1961 screen adaptation starred Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine. The play's deep and pervasively dark themes and lesbian undertones have been widely noted. In 1968 The Killing of Sister George featured a lesbian love triangle.
In 1985, the film Desert Hearts was released, which was based on the novel Desert of the Heart by Jane Rule. This movie shows one of the first positive portrayals of lesbians in wide-screen films. Although when the main character Vivian first comes to town she knows nothing of being queer. In fact, she is there to stay because she is currently seeking a divorce with her husband. Upon arriving, she discovers Cay, who is known to the locals as a 'bad boy' type, save for the fact that she is a woman. From there Vivian and Cay establish a fairly unproblematic relationship together, though, in the end, Vivian must return home.
Mainstream films with openly lesbian content, sympathetic lesbian characters and lesbian leads began appearing during the 1990s. By 2000 some films portrayed characters exploring issues beyond their sexual orientation, reflecting a wider sense that lesbianism has to do with more than sexual desire.