In this blog, Harriet Steele discusses the rise of lesbian consumer citizenship and the inclusionary power of the lavender dollar.
In 1992, an anonymous letter to the editor of Lesbians on the Loose (LOTL), a prominent Sydney lesbian magazine, began a line of questioning around the perceived inclusionary power of the lavender dollar, invoking a sense of consumer citizenship.
Detailing Toyota’s contact with Bluestone Promotions to target the gay market, the letter noted the lack of data around the purchasing power of lesbians, seen as less desirable than the emerging ‘pink dollar’. Danae Clark has attributed the lack of attention to lesbian consumers to the anti-capitalist stance of lesbian feminism since the 1970s, leading marketers to be unsure of lesbian spending power and desires as consumers.
The January 1992 letter asked several key questions of LOTL’s readership, preceding any real engagement with marketers:
These are my questions to Lesbianland:-
- Do we want to become a marketing target for advertisers?
- Do we want to be featured by advertising executives in pictorial promotions designed to sell products?
- Do we want our ability to consume/purchase merchandise researched?
- Finally, do we care, one way or the other, what happens in the advertising world regarding our image?
An answer was received with a letter to the editor in the next issue. Michelle Reiner expressed her differing perspective, not sharing the same anxieties as the first letter. Reiner stated: ‘How many times a day do we have image upon image of heterosexuality thrust upon us, making us wonder if ours really is a valid form of existence?’ Significantly, she stated, ‘it may be a money-making scam for them, but it spells validation and visibility for us.’
In the 1990s, Australian lesbians were attuned to visibility in mainstream society, both politically, through rights discourses, and in media, including entertainment and advertising. The latter was showcased in a regular LOTL column, ‘Great Moments in Media’, which documented both positive and negative commentary about lesbianism. There was a sense of invisibility that many lesbians sought to rectify. Historian Barbara Baird has stated, ‘this idea of the lack of context for lesbian citizenships in public spheres, their unthinkability and unknowability, still carries the weight of popular wisdom among many lesbians and their allies’.
At this juncture, an argument for queer inclusion through consumer citizenship was being formed. In LOTL, Australian lesbians were being featured as a new market niche. Lisa Peñaloza highlighted the marketplace as a site of contestation, where marginalised groups engage in ongoing struggles for social and political incorporation. Marketing to their sexuality could have conferred a sense of validation for some wishing to see images of themselves in mainstream media.
In February 1994, LOTL published the results of its most ambitious reader survey. Surveys were completed yearly from the magazine’s inception in 1990, with the 1993 survey standing out. Independently completed by Significant Others Marketing consultants, the survey mapped Australian lesbians’ lifestyles and spending power. Unlike previous surveys, which had focused on demographics and opinions on the magazine’s layout and content, this survey detailed readers’ consumption habits.
LOTL readers recorded high levels of income and education, with almost half of respondents in managerial or professional positions. The average reader earned $100 more than the average woman in New South Wales. This trend would continue throughout the 1990s.
At least some Australian lesbians had buying power, so what did they buy?
The survey noted that travel ranked highly with lesbian consumers, with 80% of respondents travelling domestically within the last 12 months and over half having gone overseas in the last three years. Other products highlighted were books, entertainment media and clothing.
Significant Others Principal Consultant Ian Johnson stated: ‘Mainstream corporate Australia has to realise that lesbian and gay consumers make up a significant portion of their target market… they have a right to be factored into the equation when corporations are considering the types of products and services to be provided to consumers’. The right to be included as a consumer citizen and respect for their purchasing power was slowly emerging for Australian lesbians.
During this same year, Telstra began its own market research into the lesbian and gay market. As reported in Melbourne-based magazine Lesbiana, the research revealed high use of telecoms amongst lesbians and gay men. Further, the high rates of travel meant that lesbians and gay men connected with long-distance friendships and relationships in high numbers. Alongside this research was the development of a series of advertisements focused on the Sydney lesbian and gay community, published in the Australian gay press and presented on billboards and bus stop posters.
These advertisements would feature within Australia’s lesbian press, with one featuring a lesbian couple. Published as the back cover of the September 1995 issue of LOTL, the advertisement depicted two women on a motorbike, wearing leather. Notably, the advertisement was captioned ‘So glad you’re there’, validating the existence of the lesbian couple, but at a distance.
This advertising campaign and Telstra’s Mardi Gras sponsorship led to the company becoming shorthand for corporate validation and assimilation. In a 1996 opinion piece for LOTL addressing the corporatisation of Mardi Gras, writer Kirsty Machon noted the graffiti around Sydney, which read, ‘I’m so normal since Telstra sponsored my sexuality’.
The Australian lesbian media of the 1990s exposed the constraints and hopes of consumer citizenship. The pre-existing desire for independent lesbian cultures, including businesses, competed with political activism to achieve mainstream recognition. As Katherine Sender stated, ‘gay marketing visibility complements an already-existing political visibility, it does not produce it’. Although political activism for relationship reform would see results in the early 2000s, the 1990s can be seen as a transition point for Australian lesbian cultural practices as magazines became much more attuned to mainstream visibility and representations of lesbianism.
The magazines themselves serve to highlight the lesbian citizen through participation in the readership communities of the publications through the completion of surveys and letters to the editor. Whether or not lesbians attained a level of consumer citizenship, they were affirmed by lesbian media in producing a lesbian public sphere.
Harriet Steele is a PhD Student at ACU Melbourne. Her thesis examines the place of Australian lesbian magazines in community production and maintenance from the 1970s to the 1990s. This research is located within histories of identities and sexualities, informed by the discourses of the extensive lesbian periodical archives.
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