Unsuitable: A History of Lesbian Fashion (2024)
Natasha Booth-Johnson (she/her)
Eleanor Medhurst’s Unsuitable offers a fascinating dive into the history of women’s queer fashion that covers a tremendous scope beginning with the Greek poet Sappho and ending in the present day. She uncovers hidden histories and illuminates the wide range of codes queer women utilised to identify one another and express themselves. For those interested in the queer nineteenth century in particular, there is plenty to sink your teeth into, and it is those sections, found in parts one and four of Medhurst’s study, that I will focus on in the course of this review.
Medhurst begins her book with a necessary caveat: that while queer women have often been positioned on the peripheries of womanhood, this does not necessarily exclude them from it – ‘we remain separate from most understandings of womanhood’, she says, ‘rooted as they are in heterosexuality and the roles of “wife” and “mother”’, adding that queer women can, of course, also fulfil these roles (Medhurst, 2024: 1). She acknowledges the slippage between the queer and the non-queer, the ambiguity that lies between our twenty-first century understandings of queerness and gender non-conformity and that of the past and allows us to explore alongside her the multiple roles women have held across the centuries. Additionally, she explains that the word lesbian itself is something of an anachronism, and applying the word categorically to people in the past is done so mostly for the sake of ease in the present. She uses the word ‘lesbian-adjacent’ to expand the category to include those who may not have been queer themselves but certainly contributed to lesbian fashion histories, but, Medhurst adds, ‘I do not want to minimise the other histories – particularly trans histories – to which they also belong’ (Medhurst, 2024: 4). Beginning her book with these definitions allows Medhurst to explain what her book seeks to achieve and what it does not, and she does so thoroughly and without falling too deeply into overly academic jargon.
Part One
Unsuitable is divided into five segments, each following a distinct theme in which Medhurst pursues her lesbian fashion history. The first, titled ‘We Were Always Here’ explores the lives and clothing of Sappho, Christina of Sweden, Anne Lister, and the literary lovers of 1910s Japan. While many scholars of the nineteenth century will be familiar with Lister, Medhurst’s chapter offers a fresh insight into how she made conscious clothing choices to represent herself in a certain light. Medhurst highlights how, while Lister did not dress in quite as gender-non-conforming manner as portrayed in twenty-first representations such as Gentleman Jack, she did utilise the male fashion for black clothing that, at the time, did not typically extend to women.
‘Anne was unable to dress entirely in men ‘s clothes, and she never wrote that she wanted to. Occasionally, she wrote in her diaries that a stranger mistook her for a man. However, we might assume that these exclamations were reproaches at her less-than-ideal level of femininity, rather than genuine mistakes’ (Medhurst, 2024: 38)
Lister’s diaries, at several different points, make mention of her clothing choices, but never does she ascribe this to a decision towards gender non-conformity or challenge, but rather to a ‘bad figure’ which she felt necessary to obscure in black (Medhurst, 2024: 37). Others suggest that Lister adopted black clothing to shun fashionable dress entirely, and others still postulate that this comes instead from a place of mourning after her lover Mariana married, a pivotal point in which her black attire came into existence.
In addition to her black clothing, Lister chose distinctly male accessories, such as gentleman’s braces which seem to have been of particular importance to her. Quoting her diaries extensively, Medhurst crafts an image of a woman uncomfortable with femininity – ‘Anne suited the ambiguous line between masculinity and femininity’ espousing a ‘specific form of womanhood that is masculine but does not necessarily pass as male’ (Medhurst, 2024: 39).
While Lister is likely familiar to many readers, the literary lovers of 1910s Japan may not be. Although this era does not fit comfortably into the nineteenth century, I have elected to include it here anyway as Medhurst offers a fascinating look into a new-to-me lesbian subculture outside of Europe and America that I am keen to share. Medhurst notes that the 1910s are an odd position in queer history, ‘a stopgap’, as she calls it, ‘before the so-called roaring twenties and outside of the most acknowledged lesbian societies in Europe and North America’s cosmopolitan cities’ (Medhurst, 2024: 47).
The literary magazine Seitō (also known by its translated title, Bluestocking) emerged at the end of the Meiji period during which world trade began to change the cultural conversation in Japan at a rapid rate. As may be unsurprising given its title, Seitō was a magazine created to promote women’s rights and other feminist causes. Medhurst pays particular attention to two of the magazine’s writers, Hiratsuka Raichō and Otake Kōkichi, who were frequently the target of criticism towards Seitō amongst growing anxieties about gender non-conformity and homosexuality.
‘While Japanese men were encouraged to take up the shirts and trousers of Western fashion, women were expected to wear traditional Japanese garments as a “reassuring, visual image”’ (Medhurst, 2024: 48) (Green, 2017)
‘The public fear of and disgust for dōseiai [homosexuality] soon reached a fever pitch. Raichō and Kōkichi were easy targets. Their personal relationships, their feminist ideals and their clothing all pinpointed them as different’ (Medhurst, 2024: 50)
During a time in which women were expected to dress in ways that allayed cultural anxieties, Hiratsuka and Otake drew attention to themselves because of the clothing they wore. Medhurst explains that the umanon hakama was a garment historically worn by men that became associated with young female students, but that Hiratsuka and others continued to wear long after their education ended due to being more comfortable than the feminine alternative (Hiratsuka, 2006: 95).
This positions these women in an interest place. They wore male clothes, but the clothes they wore were at the time not being worn by men, who instead opted for more Western styles. Hiratsuka and Otake claimed a masculinity ‘that no longer belonged to men’ and in doing so created a new facet, a new option for gendered self-expression (Medhurst, 2024: 56).
Medhurst’s opening section is delightful and truly engaging, and she parses the complications of assigning queerness to the past with delicacy and respect. With each example used in this section selected from a different country, culture, and time-period, Medhurst effectively highlights that, indeed, We Were Always Here.
Parts Four and Five
Following this, Medhurst turns to what she terms ‘The Lesbian 1920s’ and ‘A Butch/Femme Interlude’, two sections where she sequences lesbian fashion history in four different cities in the 1920s, and makes note of the fact that, historically, the butch lesbian has been more visible than her femme counterpart. While these are fascinating sections, for the sake of brevity, I will continue to maintain my focus on the sections which pertain to the queer nineteenth century, the next of which occurs in Part Four: Miraculous Masculinity.
Medhurst focusses in on the music hall performance of gender in Victorian Britain and North America. Male impersonation was, for many women, a successful venture as both cross-dressing for entertainment and the music hall itself became more and more popular into the 1890s. Medhurst rattles off a lengthy but incomplete list of performer’s names: Annie Hindle, Ella Wesner, and Florence Hines to name a few. Some of these women were ‘followed by rumours of lesbian’ attachments but all of them certainly engaged with the cult following of women they attracted (Medhurst, 2024: 132). Medhurst opines that these performers’ queer entanglements, rather than causing damage to their reputations, ‘added to [their] eccentric appeal’ (Medhurst, 2024: 136). Speaking about Wesner, Medhurst writes that
‘Being a male impersonator gave her a free pass to love women, and for women to love her – it was all just an act in the eyes of the public […] If women were falling in love with her, it was her masculinity which they adored’ (Medhurst, 2024: 136)
Things became more complicated for these performers off-stage, however. While it was expected that these women perform masculinity each night at the music hall, and wear the appropriate trousers, on the streets outside this became more contentious. For some, it was possible to continue to don masculine attire and be successfully perceived as male, but for others this was an impossibility. To combat this, Medhurst says, ‘the shirt-and-tailored-skirt combination is a certifiable lesbian tradition’ as women such as these who were unable to avoid feminine garments wore them in such a way that both marked them as different while carefully adhering to the expected limitations. ‘If eccentricity rules’, Medhurst concludes, ‘queerness goes unnoticed, and lesbian relationships become an act or a novelty’ (Medhurst, 2024: 142). Through the pure fact of these women being paid to engage in gendered performance, exceptions were made to their behaviour off the stage.
The final chapter to which I now turn sits in Part Five: Lesbian Politics, Political Lesbians and is titled ‘The Lesbian Threat of the Suffragettes’. I, myself, am in the process of writing my doctoral thesis adjacent to this very subject, so it pleased me immensely to see the queer side of the suffragettes, which is so often overlooked, given an entire chapter in Medhurst’s book. Queerness was a threat to the suffrage movement, with oppositional forces decrying the movement as “unfeminine”, and any woman associated with queerness could run the risk of undermining suffrage’s goals. In the press, Medhurst informs us, ‘sufragettes were shown as unacceptable women, primarily through their clothing’ (Medhurst, 2024: 169). It was for this reason that suffragists and suffragettes sought to put forward an appropriately feminine uniform, fit with a colour scheme of white, green, and purple.
Despite this, however, women who embraced masculine fashions still had their place within the movement, and often flourished there. Medhurst cites such examples as Ethel Smyth and Vera “Jack” Holme. The latter, Holme, became well-respected as the first female chauffer in Britain. Medhurst’s analysis of the queer underpinnings of the women’s movement is detailed and illuminating in the way it stiches together aspects of fashion history with interpersonal stories from the women involved.
Conclusion
Due to the wide scope of this book, Medhurst is, of course, unable to uncover every aspect of lesbian fashion history and there are undoubtedly examples that didn’t make the cut. An entire book could be made out of each chapter and more work is obviously necessary. As a jumping-off point, a much-needed introduction into the queer history of women’s fashion, this book achieves its goals excellently. It was a thoroughly enjoyable read, and Medhurst’s writing is both informative and engaging, ensuring that over the weekend I read it I was thoroughly impressed with the depth of work she uncovers (even despite the limitations of a book that necessarily covers such a wide scope) and the ease with which she presents it. This is not a book that one need be an academic to understand: Medhurst compiles her work in an incredibly readable way, and I hope that anybody with any sort of interest in queer history of any time-period gives it a well-earned read.
The only criticism I have for Medhurst it is that I wish there were more of it – at some moments I found myself desperate for more information on certain examples for which Medhurst does not go into deeper detail – but I have no doubt that should Medhurst continue this line of research in the future, she will satisfy my greed.
Works Cited
Green, Cynthia, 'The Surprising History of the Kimono', Jstor Daily (8th December 2017)
Hiratsuka, Raichō, In The Beginning, Woman Was the Sun trans. by Teruko Craig (Columbia University Press, 2006)
Medhurst, Eleanor, Unsuitable: A History of Lesbian Fashion (Hurst, 2024)
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