ABSTRACT
In 1992, supermodel Cindy Crawford shocked Hollywood by announcing that, in the age of AIDS, lesbianism was a safe way to explore sexuality. When a supermodel-who in 1993 poses for Vanity Fair in lesbian sex tableaux-ranks lesbian sexual practices above all others, giving a new but fashionable twist to that somewhat outmoded term "sexual preference," it seems almost churlish to point out the theoretical deficiencies of her position. Locating the lesbian body as a site of discursive contestation allows a middle path between the oppositional and ultimately equally unsatisfactory models of idealist voluntarism and structural determinism. The lesbian body does not signal a corporeality that exceeds by preceding cultural inscription, nor does its invisibility and suppression within the dominant order allow it to take up a privileged position outside the mechanisms of power. Lesbian Utopics argues instead for an understanding of the category "lesbian" as not simply prohibited.
