‘I like my women to look like women. I don’t much fancy going out with a male impersonator.’ No, it’s not someone’s dad collared at a pole-dancing club. It’s Julie Wetherspoon, a clubber from London, and she’s not being ironic. Julie is 22. She’s been clubbing since she left her native Yorkshire three years ago, around the same time she came out, only these days she doesn’t call herself a lesbian – ‘I don’t do labels’ – and she looks like pop singer Avril Lavigne.
When she realised she was attracted to women, Julie went through the usual rigmarole of coming to terms with it, telling her family and friends, and that was pretty much it. ‘I didn’t cut my hair off or head for Topman, and it wasn’t until I found out about lesbian history from about 20 years ago that I learned that shaving your hair off was a part of the coming-out process for most lesbians.’ With her long blonde hair, longish fingernails, heels and low-cut Swarowski crystal-encrusted vest, Julie looks like most of the gay women you’ll find in London’s more fashionable women’s bars. But as she hints, it wasn’t always thus.

Roll the clock back 20 years, and Julie may well have been like me, a newly-out lesbian who wore make-up and even the odd skirt or dress in my teens. And yet, when I came out at university I felt compelled to shave off my long curls, switch skirts for designer denim and monkey boots. I didn’t look masculine, as such – I was lesbian chic, natch – but I sensed a requirement to disavow my femininity in order to be powerful in a culture that denied lesbians the right to exist. At that time, among the dykes I was starting to make friends with, chopping off ones locks was an ersatz key to the lesbian kingdom. In other words, I changed my look to conform to what was expected of me.

In 2008, the default look for most lesbians is noticeably more feminine than at any other time in our history. Monica Martinez (pictured left), London’s most glamorous party hostess, runs Corsets and Diamonds, a high-class bi-monthly club night for beautiful people, the majority of whom are lesbians. She too has noticed a shift over the last ten years, and welcomes it. ‘Thanks to the media and the general acceptance of lesbians in recent years, we’re less likely to feel the need to dress in a masculine way to identify ourselves to each other as lesbian.’

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