La planificación de recursos humanos en hoteles

20 _{Ibid., p. 158, 176.}

21 _{Rebecca Bell-Metereau, Hollywood Androgyny (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985).}

22 _{Cox, ‘Closet Cases’; Richard Dyer, ‘Stereotyping’, in Dyer (ed.), Gays and Film (London: BFI, 1977), pp.} 27-39; Caroline Sheldon, ‘Lesbians and film: some thoughts’, in Dyer (ed.), Gays and Film, pp. 5-26. 23 _{Dyer, ‘Stereotyping’, pp. 27-39.}

27 As Dyer explicated, ‘types’ which are perceived as ‘outside’ one’s own society are typically negatively portrayed and classified as stereotypes.25 Homosexual ‘identity’ was first widely publicised at a time when homosexuality was much theorised but overwhelmingly condemned in Western cultures, and ‘types’ of (gay and) lesbian identity were consequently formed as objectionable stereotypes. An important factor of work on gay and lesbian representation in the media is that concepts of both stereotypes and ideas of ‘authentic’ iconography are often split down gender lines. In some sense, this goes back to the early days of psychosexual theories of identity. Late nineteenth century sexologists like Freud, Karl Westphal and Richard von Krafft-Ebing evidenced strictly binary concepts of gender by mapping homosexuality onto heterosexual structures of desire, conflating sexuality and gender to form classifications of gay women as being like men.26 The stereotype of the unstylish, unglamorous and cross-gender identified ‘mannish lesbian’ was thus cemented in the public imagination.27

Over the years, gay activists have fought hard against stereotyping; in 1973 the Gay Media Task Force deemed it ‘bigotry’ and ‘damaging’ to exclusively depict stereotypically gay people out of the ‘broad spectrum of the gay community’.28 As recently as 2010, Sue Perkins responded in the Guardian to a media report on the representation of gay, lesbian and bisexual people on television with the following: ‘the same issues keep arising. For gay men, it's the predominance of the camp cliché. For lesbians, despair at the outdated butch-

26 _{See Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth Century} America (Penguin: New York, 1992), p. 41; Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis (New York, Little, Brown& Company, 1965), Sigmund Freud, ‘Female Sexuality’, in James Strachey (trans.), Angela Richards (ed.), The Penguin Freud Library Volume 7: On Sexuality (London: Penguin Books, 1991), p. 376. Also see Freud, ‘Femininity’, in James Strachey (trans.), James Strachey and Angela Richards (eds.), The Penguin Freud Library Volume 2: New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (London: Penguin Books, 1991), p. 164.

27 _{Esther Newton, ‘The Mythic Mannish Lesbian: Radclyffe Hall and the New Woman’, Signs 9:4 The Lesbian} Issue (Summer 1984), p. 560.

28 _{‘Gay Media Task Force Platform’, 1973, quoted in Steven Capsuto, Alternate Channels: The Uncensored} Story of Gay and Lesbian Images on Radio and Television (Ballantine Books: New York, 2000), p. 99.

28 femme stereotypes.’29 To replace these, Perkins called for more ‘real’ depictions of gay people, for example, ‘just sitting around paying bills like Average Jos.’30

Since the 1970s, scholars like Dyer, Andrea Weiss and Cindy Patton have problematized the notion of the stereotype as always bad, because visual signifiers of minority sexual identities act as a reminder of the specific social implications of living as one of those minorities.31 As Wilson points out, clothing can be a useful communicative tool for minorities because it allows for visibility: ‘Clothes are the poster for one’s act.’32 Dyer himself strongly argued for ‘the importance of holding on to some concept of typing… at the same time as we are exposing the reactionary political force of most social and stereotyping.’33 He advocated the use of ‘member types’, which are ‘linked to historically and culturally specific and determined social groups or classes’.34 Member types, Dyer argued, could potentially shift concepts of collective gay identity away from psychological distinctions, instead emphasising ‘distinctions as the basis of collective identity and the heart of historical struggle’, incorporating a sense of community and a potentially politically productive viewpoint which centres on an understanding of the social factors that shape gayness.35

Crucially, stereotypical concepts and styles, including masculine gay women, were not only imposed upon lesbians. Such identities were also already inhabited by women who loved other women prior to the time many sexologists were busy classifying them, as Terry Castle argues in The Apparitional Lesbian.36 In The Matter of Images, Dyer notes that

the development of gay sub-cultures meant that many homosexual people did participate in a lifestyle, a set of tastes, a language and so on that meant that their

29 _{Sue Perkins, ‘Gay roles on television need to be real’, Guardian.co.uk (Tuesday 5 October 2010)} <http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/oct/05/gay-roles-television-real?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487>, accessed 30 May 2011.

30 _{Perkins, ‘Gay roles on television need to be real’. I enjoy the fact that Perkins uses the feminine here,} appropriating the supposedly ‘universal’ male form typically used, in a rather feminist manner.

31 _{Dyer ‘Stereotyping’, pp. 27-39; Andrea Weiss, Vampires and Violets: Lesbians in Film (New York:} Penguin, 1992), p. 63; Cindy Patton, ‘What is a nice lesbian like you doing in a film like this?’, in immortal invisible: Lesbians and the Moving Image, Tamsin Wilton (ed.), (London & New York: Routledge 1995) pp. 20-33.

32 _{Elizabeth Wilson, ‘All the Rage’, in Gaines and Charlotte Herzog (eds.), Fabrications, p. 33.} 33 _{Dyer, ‘Stereotyping’, p. 39.}

34 _{Ibid., p. 37.} 35 _{Ibid., p. 39.}

36 _{Terry Castle, The Apparitional Lesbian: Female Homosexuality and Modern Culture (New York &} Chichester, West Sussex: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 8.

29 lives were, in more respects than the sexual, different from that of most

heterosexual people.37

He argues that ‘sub-cultural activity was itself a form of resistance to the negative implications of the lesbian/homosexual categories, in that it took the categories as a basis for a way of life rather than as something to be overcome or cured’, forming the basis for the Gay Movement which began in the late 1960s. The movement itself privileges visibility. As Dyer recounts in a passage worth quoting in full:

Wearing badges, kissing in the streets were means of being visible, but so equally were behaving and dressing in recognizably gay ways – they brought you together in an act of sharing and made you obvious on the streets. Typification (visually recognizable images and self-representations) is not just something wished on gay people but produced by them, both in the pre-political gay sub-cultures and in the radical gay movement since 1968.38

There are two important aspects here which are relevance to my thesis. First, there is such a thing as a ‘recognizable’ image of gayness. Second, looking gay can be understood as a positive political act.

In Chapter One I will go over what might be considered ‘recognizable’ aspects of lesbian identity in contemporary western society, but for now let’s concentrate on the political benefits of being seen to be gay through dress. In the 1950s and ‘60s in lesbian subcultures in the West, the butch in particular was a powerful political sign, using non-gender conformity to signal non-heterosexuality, stating a daring claim for one’s right to love as one chose. Butch women are not the only ‘kind’ of lesbian to exist, but they are the most instantly recognisable as not adhering to heterocentric norms in a particular (lesbian) way. Joan Nestle has argued for the 1950s butch as a pre-second-wave feminist identity, the obvious butch/femme couple’s image functioning, through the butch’s visible mismatch of biological sex and gender presentation, as a ‘conspicuous flag of rebellion.’39 Nestle demonstrates her investment in the visible butch as powerfully political by insisting:

37 _{Dyer, The Matter of Images: Essays on Representation (2}nd _{edn.; London: Routledge, 2002), p. 21.} 38 _Ibid.

39 _{Joan Nestle, ‘Butch-Fem Relationships: Sexual Courage in the 1950s’, Heresies #12 (Sex Issue) 3:4} (Winter 1981), p. 21.

30 ‘Lesbians have always opposed the patriarchy; in the past, perhaps most when they looked like men.’40

Malinda Lo picked up on this argument with relation to The L Word in 2004, criticising the lack of ‘butch haircuts’ on the series, for example.41 Totally erasing gay iconography that makes difference visible potentially means erasing the political power of perceptibly daring not to conform. It also robs those gay women who exhibit non-gender-conforming styles of seeing themselves reflected in popular culture. Radclyffe Hall’s 1928 novel The Well of Loneliness portrayed a stereotypically mannish lesbian, which Esther Newton argued upset both ‘heterosexual conservatives’ and ‘lesbian feminists’ in the years after its publication, but the novel also ‘articulated a gender orientation with which an important minority of lesbians still actively identify,’ Newton pointed out in 1984.42 Strongly typed masculine lesbians might invoke stereotypes, but they are certainly welcomed by some, like Newton, for their rarely represented and ‘authentic’ lesbian credentials.

For the contemporary costume designer, this triangle of conflicting demands presents a dilemma. Patton argues,

To simply hunt down stereotypes and attempt to replace them fails to understand that narrative film works precisely by loading up characters with signs which refer to something larger than the description of the character who wears them. Signs stand for class traits, issues, and even stand as boundary lines between forms of human being: changing the constellation of these signs doesn’t automatically produce more acceptable representations…43

Fundamentally, theories of costume design are founded on the basic premise that dress communicates character, yet the criticisms of both stereotypes and non-typed lesbian roles places designers under contradicting pressures.44 Owing to the history of bigotry and defamation, lesbians should not be stereotyped, but lesbians should be visibly typed as gay

40 _{Ibid., p. 23.}

41 _{Malinda Lo, ‘It’s All About the Hair: Butch Identity and Drag on The L Word’, AfterEllen.com (April 2004)} <http://www.afterellen.com/archive/ellen/TV/thelword/butch.html>, accessed 28 September 2011.

42 _{See Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness (London: Jonathan Cape, 1928); Newton, ‘The Mythic Mannish} Lesbian’, p. 560.

43 _{Patton, ‘What is a nice lesbian like you doing in a film like this?’, p. 23.}

44 _{The basic theorisation of costume primarily existing to communicate character has been questioned and} troubled, most notably by Stella Bruzzi, who explores haute couture as interruptive spectacle in Undressing Cinema. This will be addressed in further detail in Chapter Two.

31 so as to allow for the political visibility of difference. These demands are not entirely mutually exclusive, but the overlap between lesbian stereotypes and recognisable gay female iconography are such that pleasing both critical camps is extremely difficult, especially—as Patton points out—in a medium which requires the simple categorization of ‘types’ of people through dress. The contemporary costumier must attempt to balance this triangle of conflicting demands: the use of what Turim named ‘storytelling wardrobes’; continuing negative attitudes towards stereotypes; and concepts surrounding ‘authentic’ representation of lesbian identity (that they exist and that they are politically beneficial), to create outfits that will both be acceptable to viewers and tell the required story through costume.45 Chapters One, Two, and Three take up detailed investigations of designers’ attempts to juggle these conflicting pressures in costume designs, with fascinatingly variant results.

Butch/Femme, postmodern lesbians and the postfeminist sensibility

One topic I have not yet addressed properly is that of Butch/Femme. Butch/Femme has a chequered history within lesbian culture and criticism. Butch itself, as discussed, has long been a recognisable lesbian identity. Butch/Femme, in which butch stood for masculine style and generally signified active sexual behaviour and femme connoted femininity and passivity, and forming what Sally Munt calls a ‘co-dependent’ coupling in which butches seek femmes as lovers and vice-versa, came to prominence as a staple of working-class lesbian bar culture in western communities in the 1950s and 1960s.46 Yet in the late 1960s and into the 1970s, (predominantly middle-class) lesbian-feminists vehemently rejected Butch/Femme practices as ‘a heterosexist imitation of the oppressive gender roles of