Femmes can and are be bissexual, of course, so I think you’re most persuasive point about Jenny is: “She has a feminine presentation, but that is not the same as being “femme.” If that were true, most of the cast of the L Word would qualify as femme. And they are not.” I agree entirely. But I’d be really interested to know why not. Doesn’t this come down to self-identification in the end?

@ theginjaninja

If you haven’t already done so, you might take a look at some of the posts I’ve written on queer femininity in my blog. And are you aware of straight women–both conservative and progressive– IDing as “femme”?? See for example: Prettier Than Napoleon Check out the Nov. 7 entry in particular. And then there’s neo-con Helen Rittelmeyer who has appropriated my whole discourse about high femme.

The logic that drives all of this seems to be: If you’re a pomo intellectual straight girl who loves knitting, baking, cooking, fashion, etc, then you’re femme because you’re self-conscious about the gender choices you’re making, or because you love this stuff ironically, or something like that. Femme and high femme in particular are self-reflexive, but that doesn’t mean that any woman who is self-conscious about her performance of femininity is femme.

SF

I take issue with this. As butch, I never read Jenny as femme. She has a feminine presentation, but that is not the same as being “femme.” If that were true, most of the cast of the L Word would qualify as femme. And they are not.

What Jenny has always appeared as, to me, is the consummate bi-curious convert. The one who goes over the top in her “lesbianism.” Because she was previously solely heterosexual, she has to go overboard to proclaim her gay nature, including dating everyone in the spectrum.

But femme? No.

I’m not expressing myself very well, as it’s a complex subject, I haven’t got my ideas all worked out and this blog post is basically just me talking to myself and trying to make some linear sense out of it, hoping people will pull me up on what I get wrong. And I totally agree that they don’t espouse very up-to-date gender values – my point (and I’m not sure that I have one yet) is that the characters *think* that they do, which is what lead to them shunning Moira initially, and their attitude is critiqued within the programme as being essentially classist in origin. Oh, and I’m aware that the whole ‘it’s just role-play’ thing dates back to the 2nd wave as well, I just haven’t come up with a way to work this into my analysis yet.

I disagree, however, that Jenny isn’t femme – she seems to me to be the most self-consciously performative in terms of her dress sense of all the characters and, I feel, has quite a postmodern approach to fashion. She is constantly trying on different identities, sometimes more dykey, sometimes a caracature of a feminine archetype – playing dress-up basically. She is also the most vocally feminist of all the characters, so reading between the lines we might see her as the most likely one to be familiar with queer theory etc. and espouse these values. Of course, it’s TV, and any real radicalness is contained, so we can’t actually see the political nature of her dress-up.

Just some thoughts, feel free to respond! Glad I found your blog, by the way, it might help with my research!

PS. Yeah, I’m studying film and television and we can write about pretty much whatever we want. It’s an undergrad dissertation though, not a doctoral one (I wish)!

I’m not convinced that 3rd wave feminism is a particular point of reference in the show; how will your support this claim? You talk about the show’s 3rd wave approach to fashion, but just because characters resist lesbian feminist values around beauty, femininity, etc doesn’t make them 3rd wavers. (e.g. I have students for whom this is true)

I have a longer response, which I’ll post on my blog, Sublimefemme Unbound. Let me know what you think!

SF

PS You’re writing a dissertation for a course?! You must be in a very unconventional doctoral program!