From Chappell Roan and Billie Eilish to BBC’s I Kissed A Girl, sapphic representation in pop culture is at an all-time high
Chappell Roan dominated New York’s Gov Ball earlier this month, becoming easily the most talked about performer at the music festival. The 26-year-old singer belted her lesbian anthems to hundreds of thousands of fans who came out to watch her set. It was a moment that solidified her status as pop’s new girl of the moment – something she has achieved thanks to her raunchy, camp aesthetic and undeniably gay music. But Roan’s not the only one – looking around pop culture right now, it seems we have found ourselves in a sapphic renaissance.
On the big screen, films like Bottoms and Drive-Away Dolls put a refreshingly lesbian spin on the straight male-oriented teen sex comedy, while Kristen Stewart’s Love Lies Bleeding centred around a queer relationship. Women’s sports have never been more popular, throwing a spotlight on the many openly queer athletes in their ranks, while the opening of London lesbian bar La Camionera earlier this year went viral after hundreds of women flocked to the small venue. Billie Eilish, one of the biggest pop stars in the world, just released a song about eating a girl out. She first teased the single at Coachella, where bisexual Dazed cover star Victoria Monét used her mic to mimic a strap-on, and Reneé Rapp brought out the cast of The L Word before performing in front of a pair of giant scissors as her fans screamed out the lyrics, “Can a gay girl get an ‘amen’?”
“The word sapphic is on everyone’s lips, the word dyke is on everyone’s lips… the floodgates have opened,” says Amy Spalding, a cast member of the BBC’s WLW reality dating show I Kissed a Girl – the ratings for which have been significantly higher than its all-male predecessor, according to executive producer Dan Gray. “It’s no surprise that as soon as we got fed one tiny thing, we were like we’re not settling for just one, we’re getting it all. There’s a tidal wave coming and hit me with it, baby – I’m ready for this sapphic wave.”
Historically, the queer women’s stories deemed worthy of mainstream attention are full of tragedy, death, and mournful longing doomed from the start – from Radclyffe Hall’s 1928 novel The Well of Loneliness to 2019’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Or, on the other end of the spectrum, gay women have been over-sexualised and used to spark controversy and titillation – take 2013’s Blue is the Warmest Colour, which featured such intense lesbian sex scenes that its actors were reportedly left traumatised. “It comes down to the patriarchal society that we live in and the misogynistic [view we have towards] lesbians in particular, [which] is very over-sexualised,” says Spalding.
Now, though, lesbian joy is being given free rein, and queer characters are being allowed to express themselves on their own terms. “Bottoms is so fucking ridiculous and funny. It’s still taking lesbian relationships seriously, but not hypersexualising it to the point where it’s uncomfortable for everybody involved,” says culture writer Alex Rigotti. “These films are more representative of where we’re at now – we can treat lesbian relationships with a bit of lightheartedness, a bit of drama.”
While lack of funding and support from both labels and the media has led to a chronic shortage of mainstream queer music in the past, now these artists can gain a following independently of the industry. Think of supergroup Boygenius, who self-produced their debut EP, or Muna, who flourished after they were dropped by RCA and signed to an independent label. Queer artists are also being celebrated on the big stages, with Tracy Chapman being honoured at the Grammys earlier this year. There was also the casual announcement that Rosalía and Hunter Schafer had been in a relationship – news that, in the words of culture writer Shannon Keating, would have previously “fed us representation-starved lesbians of the not-too-distant past for months”. Today, these announcements feel barely worth mentioning thanks to the glut of gay content available to us.
“I remember growing up and consuming anything I could get my hands on,” says Egg (Scout Moore) from the indie band Porij. “And lots of the time, it was bad. I would sit through eight seasons of a show if I knew there was a slight gay moment in season five, episode two. For people to have this kind of content readily available, they’re literally saving hours of their lives… They’re hours of my life I'll never get back!”
Lauren Pett, one of the co-organisers of Muse, a Greek mythology-inspired sapphic film night in London, echoes this sentiment: “Growing up in suburban London in the 80s and 90s, the words queer or lesbian were really soaked in shame and fear,” she says. “There were no positive role models, and very few positive depictions in TV or film. Pretty much all the lesbian characters died at the end of the film – or were left heartbroken. To see so much mainstream queerness, and to see people embracing words like queer, butch, trans and lesbian is really incredible.”
Shows like I Kissed a Girl, which unapologetically showcases a wide range of queer experiences, has also been groundbreaking, says fan Joanna Peters, one of the show’s many TikTok obsessives. “If I had I Kissed A Girl on my TV growing up, it would’ve helped my confidence hugely and shown me that being a queer woman is not something you have to hide away from,” she says. “Even [now I’m] 26, the likes of Amy Spalding and Georgia Robert speaking openly and honestly about being queer women has had a massive impact on how I feel, proving to my younger self that being part of this community is something to be proud of.”
Next up, TV, film, and music industry executives should turn to tackling the comparative lack of non-binary, trans and asexual representation. “The fact that it’s taken this long to get something as palatable as sapphic women on the screen is outrageous in itself,” says Spalding. “This will just be a baby step in that movement towards it – and I think we’re going to be there very soon.”