ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how gay men discover a queer desire for female bodies and visual and sonic surfaces, that is not narrowly focused on masculine, muscular bodies. It explores how Britney became a queer icon because of the psychical intensity presented by her persona, and why this intensity is so deeply destabilizing and potentially subversive. The chapter also examines how Britney emerged as a gay icon in the first place, focusing on her 2007 MTV Awards performance of "Gimme More," which was an instance of the failed performance of femininity. To understand gay men's queer desire for Britney, it applies the analytic of emptiness across a number of domains—the purported emptiness of pop music; postmodern aesthetics of depthless surface; the appeal of image, voice and sound; the crumbling of a substantive social order. Desire and fantasy are not queer by nature, but they can both contribute to a queer politics.
