Lesbian Images In International Popular Culture

Lesbian images are everywhere these days–cable television, film, popular magazines, advertising, Internet and the news–creating desire in men and women alike, selling commercial products and services, and stirring up controversy on many levels. But do these images truly represent the diverse identities of women-centered women worldwide? This book addresses the limited access to images of diverse and international lesbian identities and experiences, in order to provide the reader with a more complete understanding of what it means to be lesbian in a global context. It investigates how lesbians portray themselves as well as how they are portrayed by others in several areas of popular culture, including television, film, the arts, Internet, advertising and the news. It features articles on U.S. lesbian cartoonists, Canadian viewer perceptions of lesbians on the cable show Queer as Folk, panoramic looks at lesbians' representation in Australian and Spanish television programming, and in-depth explorations of films by Spanish director Pedro Almodovar, leading Indian film producers, and independent Chinese-American filmmakers.

This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Lesbian Studies.

Sara E. Cooper is Associate Professor of Spanish and Multicultural & Gender Studies at California State University, Chico. Cooper edited The Ties That Bind: Questioning Family Dynamics and Family Discourse in Hispanic Literature and Film and has published articles in Kunapipi: Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Letras femeninas, Ciberletras, Journal of Lesbian Studies, Cuban Studies, Chasqui., Confluencia: Revista Hisp’anica de Cultura y Literatura, Tortilleras: Hispanic and Latina Lesbian Expression, Reading the Family Dance: Family Systems Therapy and the Literary Study, Mujeres latinoamericanas del siglo XX: Historia y Cultura, Women and War: A Historical Encyclopedia from Antiquity to the Present, and Women’s Issues in North America and the Caribbean.