. . .Which isn’t to say there haven’t been noticeable changes, beginning in the late ’80s, when k.d. lang became an icon of lesbian chic. Nor is it to minimize the impact of ‘‘The L Word,’’ a tribute to the high testosterone level of gay babes, or to ignore hip same-sex Hollywood couples, like Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson. It is to say rather that Sapphic archetypes tend to raise questions more than answer them, since both categories (butch and femme) borrow from gender-influenced dichotomies of beauty. There have, that is, always been women known for a sort of arrant handsomeness — like Gertrude Stein, who always struck me as resembling no one so much as Hadrian VII— or for their arresting exoticism, like the painter Romaine Brooks. And then there are the gay women, known as ‘‘lipstick lesbians,’’ who look like any other pretty young thing. Indeed, the power of lipstick lesbians relies precisely on the fact that theirs is an exclusively inner ‘‘outing’’; outside they are all mascara, blush and, yes, lipstick. Their allure is in their ability to mimic the normative language of sexual discourse while at the same time poking it in the eye.
Well, look again. Lesbianism has finally come into a glamour of its own, an appeal that goes beyond butch and femme archetypes into a more universal seduction. Her name is Rachel Maddow, the polished-looking, self-declared gay newscaster who stares out from the MSNBC studio every weekday night and makes love to her audience.
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