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Contribution to Book
“There is something chic about women wearing men's clothes” Lesbian activists as fashionable women in the fight for queer rights in the United States, 1955–1972
The Routledge Companion to Beauty Politics (2021)
  • Malia McAndrew
Abstract
This chapter investigates the ways in which a group of nascent lesbian activists used the politics of appearance to gain greater civil rights and social acceptance in the United States during the mid-twentieth century. Founded in 1955, the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), a San Francisco-based organization for lesbian women, was among the first groups in American history to advocate for the rights of sexual minorities. At the time, lesbian women and gay men faced unparalleled social and legal discrimination. In response, the DOB deployed aesthetic assimilation as a strategy for personal survival and societal change. As this chapter shows, members of the DOB consciously fashioned a mainstream aesthetic by consciously stylizing their dress, hair, and general appearance in accordance with popular definitions of female attractiveness. Indeed, lesbian leaders even attempted to gently push heterosexual understandings of suitable attire for the everyday woman into what they viewed as a more lesbian-friendly direction.
Publication Date
January 23, 2021
Editor
Maxine Leeds Craig
Publisher
Routledge
ISBN
9780429283734
DOI
https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429283734
Publisher Statement
Publisher Website: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780429283734-19/something-chic-women-wearing-men-clothes-malia-mcandrew
Citation Information
Malia McAndrew. "“There is something chic about women wearing men's clothes” Lesbian activists as fashionable women in the fight for queer rights in the United States, 1955–1972" 1st EditionLondonThe Routledge Companion to Beauty Politics (2021) p. 157 - 166
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/malia/8/