Journal of Lesbian Studies, 15:148–165, 2011
Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1089-4160 print / 1540-3548 online
DOI: 10.1080/10894160.2011.521097
Narrating Rural Lesbian Lives: Body Image and
Lesbian Community in Central Pennsylvania
MEGAN R. YOST
Departments of Psychology and Women’s and Gender Studies, Dickinson College, Carlisle,
Pennsylvania, USA
JENNIFER F. CHMIELEWSKI
Psychology Department, Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, USA
Research on women’s body image has focused on the sexual objectification that women experience in society. The present study explored how rural lesbian women experience their bodies and how
lesbian communities, as safe havens from the dominant heterosexual culture, contribute to their body image. Ten lesbians living
in central Pennsylvania were interviewed for this study. Interviews were analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis, which aims to explore individuals’ experiences and examine
how they make sense of their world. The resulting themes focus on
participants’ descriptions of their feelings about their bodies, the
role that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities played in their sense of body image, and the difficulties of
finding these communities in the central Pennsylvania area.
KEYWORDS body image, rural communities, lesbians, qualitative
methods
Women in the United States face enormous pressures to conform to a
rigid standard of thinness and attractiveness. Western media representations
largely present women’s bodies according to what the male gaze desires, and
feminists argue that women are defined by their bodies and treated as sexual
objects for men’s pleasure (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). Body dissatisfaction
Data collection was supported by the Stephen D. Benson ’56 Research Fund, Department
of Psychology, Dickinson College.
Address correspondence to Megan R. Yost, Departments of Psychology and Women’s
and Gender Studies, Dickinson College, P.O. Box 1773, Carlisle, PA 17013. E-mail:
yostm@dickinson.edu
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and a desire to lose weight are so common among women that it has been
termed “normative discontent” (Rodin, Silberstein, & Striegel-Moore, 1985).
Objectification theory, proposed by Frederickson and Roberts (1997),
explains how cultural sexual objectification experiences in the media and in
interpersonal relationships can lead to body dissatisfaction and disordered
eating in women. Research indicates that self-objectification is predictive of
body shame and eating pathology, and that body shame mediates the relationship between self-objectification and disordered eating (Noll & Fredrickson, 1998). Of course, lesbian women are not equally objectified by the
larger society (Rothblum, 2002), and so it is questionable how this theory
might account for lesbians’ body image concerns.
Lesbian Women and Body Image
Two distinct theoretical perspectives have been proposed to explain lesbians’
body image. One perspective holds that women’s socialization is the same
regardless of sexual orientation: lesbians are socialized in a culture that
objectifies women, and the development of a lesbian sexual orientation
in adolescence or adulthood does not negate the impact of this gender
socialization (Dworkin, 1988). In support of this perspective, many studies
report no significant differences between lesbian and heterosexual women
in terms of feeling fat, body disparagement (Bergeron & Senn, 1998), and
overall body dissatisfaction (Cogan, 1999).
An alternative theoretical perspective holds that lesbians’ lack of desire
to appeal to the male gaze may contribute to a healthier body image, and
that lesbian and feminist communities may be safe spaces where lesbians can
accept their bodies (Brown, 1987). From this perspective, the lesbian community is believed to de-emphasize appearance and challenge heterosexual
cultural objectification of women (Pitman, 1999). In support of this perspective, some research has shown that lesbians, as compared with heterosexual
women, do not suffer as much from body dissatisfaction (Heffernan, 1996;
Strong, Williamson, Netemyer, & Geer, 2000), and have higher levels of body
esteem (Share & Mintz, 2002).
Clearly, research findings on the relationship between sexual orientation
and body image are mixed, and additional research exploring the influences
on lesbians’ body image concerns is warranted. It is also important in this
context to acknowledge that the lesbian community exerts pressures of its
own: some research indicates that lesbians are encouraged to adopt a particular appearance (more traditionally masculine or androgynous) in order
to promote social group identity (Myers, Taub, Morris, & Rothblum, 1998;
Rothblum, 1994). Further complicating our understanding of lesbians’ body
image are homophobic attitudes that link unattractiveness with lesbianism
(Rothblum, 2002). It is unclear how these attitudes from the broader heterosexual community might affect the ways lesbians think about their bodies.
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Rural Lesbian Experience
While there is a burgeoning research literature considering lesbian body
image and beauty norms, no research, to our knowledge, has explored
these issues among rural lesbians. While this may be relatively unsurprising
given the paucity of research on rural lesbians in general, the topic may be
particularly important given research finding an association between rural
living and an increased risk of poverty, which in turn is associated with
higher weight (Joens-Matre et al., 2008). Research suggests that lesbian, gay,
bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities are highly valued by rural
lesbians, but difficulties in accessing and sustaining communities in rural
areas lead many lesbians to create informal friendship networks that do
not offer the range of support found in formal communities (McCarthy,
2000). This difficulty in finding community may be especially problematic
because rural areas are often more politically and religiously conservative
regarding sexual orientation (Bell & Valentine, 1995). The LGBT community
could provide important social supports that could help alleviate the stress
associated with living in a homophobic, rural area (Rothblum, 2008).
THE PRESENT STUDY
The purpose of the present study was to explore rural lesbians’ experiences
of body image. Our research questions were as follows: How do lesbians
negotiate the dominant heterosexual culture that promotes both sexual objectification of women and disparagement of LGBT people? How do lesbians,
living in rural central Pennsylvania, relate to an LGBT community given the
relative lack of opportunities to engage with such groups?
METHOD
Participants
Qualitative analysis calls for relatively small sample sizes in order to do each
individual case justice during analysis. The method of analysis we chose,
Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), calls for homogenous samples based on a specific criterion (Smith, Flowers, & Larkin, 2009), which in
the present study was lesbian identification. The goal is to achieve saturation, meaning that additional participants would not yield new information;
research suggests between 6 and 12 participants should achieve this (Guest,
Bunce, & Johnson, 2006).
Participants in this study were lesbian women (n = 10) in central Pennsylvania who had identified as lesbian for at least two years. The women
ranged in age from 28 to 69 years old, and all participants were White (see
Table 1). We recruited through an LGBT community center’s e-mail listserv,
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TABLE 1 Participant Descriptive Information
Participants
Age
Carla
Frances
Leanne
Karen
Michelle
Kathryn
Pamela
Sarah
Diane
Jessica
51
42
44
46
42
28
34
39
43
69
Race/Ethnicity
Education
Relationship Status
White
White
White
White
White
White
White
White
White
White
Bachelors
Obtaining Bachelors
Bachelors
Masters
Bachelors
Masters
Ph.D.
PhD
Bachelors
PhD
Long-term with Frances
Long-term with Carla
Long-term with Karen
Long-term with Leanne
Dating
Long-term relationship
Long-term relationship
Monogamous relationship
Long-term relationship
Single
Note: All names are pseudonyms.
an e-mail sent to the faculty and staff at a small, liberal arts college in the
area, and through snowball sampling. Participants received $15 as compensation for their participation in the interview, which lasted approximately
one and a half hours.
The county in which participants live is classified as rural according
to United States Census maps (over half of the county has a population
density at or below 200 people per square mile). This county would be best
characterized as “shallow rural” rather than “deep rural” (Halperin, 1994)
as it contains several small towns (the population of the largest is 18,000),
and most inhabitants are within a one-hour drive of the state capitol (a
small city with a population of 47,000). The area is culturally and religiously
conservative (Ulmer, Bader, & Gault, 2008), and there are limited LGBT
organizations in the area, all located in the state capitol.
Procedure
Semi-structured interviews were conducted by the second author in a private
room in the psychology department on a college campus, or at a local LGBT
center. Participants were read an informed consent script, provided their
compensation, and their willingness to participate was recorded. After the
interview was completed, they were thanked and debriefed. The interviews
were audiotaped and then transcribed prior to analysis. All participants were
offered the opportunity to read our analysis upon completion, as a validity
check.
Materials
The interview began with warm-up questions asking participants to describe
their family of origin and their coming-out process. The interview progressed
through questions grouped into four main topics: (1) body image concerns,
self-presentation as related to sexual orientation, and sexualization by others;
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(2) engagement with an LGBT community; (3) romantic relationship history;
and (4) feminist identification and beliefs.1 For the purposes of this Special
Issue, we restricted analysis to the first two topics.
Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis
The qualitative method of IPA, developed by British psychologist Jonathon
Smith, was used to analyze interviews. IPA aims to explore individuals’ experiences and examine how they make sense of their world. This method
for psychological analysis allows participants’ experiences to be expressed
on their own terms, according to their personal perspectives (Smith et al.,
2009). IPA emphasizes an active role for the researcher and participant in
a double hermeneutic, or two-stage research process, in which the participant makes sense of his or her experience and the researcher interprets that
meaning-making (Smith & Eatough, 2007). Although commonalities among
participants are used to create a cohesive story, each individual’s narrative is
examined and valued as a whole.
The first stage of the analytic process is theme identification using Participant #1. Theme identification is a two-step process. In the first step, the
researcher reads the interview while making notes in the left-hand margin
of the transcript. These notes are initial thoughts and observations about the
material, possibly involving associations, summary statements, or descriptive
labels. In many cases, these notes are simply restatements or summaries
of what the participant has said, highlighted because that statement seemed
particularly noteworthy. In the second step, the researcher re-reads the interview, but now records in the right-hand margin emerging conceptual themes.
In this step, the researcher attempts to capture the essential quality of the
participant’s comment using psychological terminology.
Once themes have been identified, the second stage of IPA involves
building structure by clustering themes together into superordinate themes
when there are conceptual links. These superordinate themes are named,
possibly using in vivo terms (statements used by the participant herself) or
a descriptive title. A third reading of the interview may take place at this
stage, to ensure that the clustering accurately reflects connections that the
participant herself made.
After the thematic structure has been created using Participant #1, the
third stage of IPA proceeds with the second interview. Stage 1 and 2 are
followed using Participant #2’s transcript, with the additional task of looking
for further evidence of Participant #1’s themes.
This analytic method is an iterative process; after creating a structure
of themes from the second interview, the researcher goes back to the first
interview to see if any of these new themes were represented. This entire
process continues with each consecutive interview, which results in each
interview being read at least five times.
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The final stage of IPA involves creating a master list of superordinate and
subordinate themes that represent all of the data. In this stage, the researcher
must decide which themes to maintain and which to drop, based on both
the initial research questions and the richness of the data. Unlike other
qualitative methods, such as grounded theory, IPA does not only maintain
themes that are represented by all participants (Lyons & Coyle, 2007). Thus,
some superordinate and subordinate themes are deemed important because
they speak directly to a research question, even if only voiced by one or two
participants.
Limitations of This Method
In the Results and Discussion section that follows, we have attempted to
provide a credible analysis, in which the results of our analysis do justice to
participants’ descriptions (Byrne, 2001). We have also attempted to demonstrate confirmability of our analysis by thoroughly documenting all stages of
the analytic process and critically reflecting on the role of the researchers in
this interpretative analysis (Payne, 2007).
Despite these quality checks, this research is limited in important ways.
First, we acknowledge our own influence on the research process. All of
the interviews were conducted by the second author, a female undergraduate researcher with a feminine gender presentation and a slender figure.
Because the interview was focused on body issues and sexual orientation,
we recognize that participants may have chosen to divulge some information and keep other information private based on their assumptions about
the interviewer’s ability to respect that information (see Del Busso, 2007,
regarding embodiment in the research interview). In terms of analysis, both
researchers are queer-identified, although not lesbian, and we likely drew on
our somewhat-insider status (Le Gallais, 2008) when interpreting the findings.
We also acknowledge the limitations of our sample. The overall goal
of qualitative research in psychology is to provide “rich descriptions and
possible explanations of people’s meaning-making” (Coyle, 2007, p. 11),
and to that end, small, purposive samples are chosen. By design, our sample
is homogenous, representing only women who self-identify as lesbian. Thus,
the voices and experiences of other sexual minority women (queer, bisexual,
unlabeled) are not explored here. Due in part to our geographic location, our
sample represents only White women, and due in part to our recruitment
methods, our sample is highly educated. Thus, experiences of women of
color and women with less formal education are missing.
However, the goal of qualitative research is not to generalize to a population, but to fully explore the experiences of specific people (Byrne, 2001).
Thus, despite these limitations, our analysis accomplishes the goals of qualitative work by painting a complex picture of the experiences of lesbians in
a semi-rural area around body image and lesbian community.
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RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Our analysis uncovered two superordinate themes related to our research
questions on lesbian body image and rural communities. We present an
integrated results and discussion in which we discuss the superordinate
themes and their respective subthemes, provide illustrative quotes along with
our interpretations, and link these findings with prior research and theory.
Theme 1: Ambivalence About One’s Body
All ten women described their bodies as imperfect, although they had a positive outlook in general. Weight played an important role in most women’s
body image but, notably, some women emphasized an understanding of
their bodies in terms of physical, active characteristics rather than appearance. These two ways in which participants experienced their bodies shed
light on the tension they felt in facing the dominant heterosexual culture as
women in a devalued minority.
GOOD WITH BODY,
BUT IT
CAN ALWAYS
BE
BETTER
All ten women expressed overall satisfaction with their bodies and stated that
body image was not really an issue. At the same time, they still acknowledged
aspects of their bodies that they were uncomfortable with, namely weight
(Jessica, the oldest participant, was the only one whose primary body dissatisfaction was due to aging, not weight.) Michelle stated that “overall I’m
at peace with my body” and “I feel good about my body. I like that I feel
strong and I feel in my skin.” Although our participants did not feel that
they struggled with body image issues, the issues that did come up were in
terms of weight in much the same way as has been found with heterosexual
women (Kelly, 2007; Moore & Keel, 2003). This adds to previous findings
that lesbians are socialized in the same way as heterosexual women in our
culture, and thus experience similar pressure to value thinness. However,
there was perhaps greater awareness of how detrimental this is to one’s selfesteem. Lesbians expressed a desire to get away from this thin ideal even
as they found it hard not to measure body satisfaction in terms of weight.
Pamela explained her struggle:
I hope I’m not trying to fit this always “skinnier is better” thing but I
do want to look. . . . I think about, like, “be more fit, look more fit” and
so I’d like to think that that’s not . . . that probably is internalizing the
whole thinness culture in some way but I try not to feel overly fucked
up about it.
Participants expressed resistance to this “thinness culture” and felt good
about their bodies, even while acknowledging pressures to be thin. This
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supports previous literature on lesbians’ rebellion against cultural standards
of thinness for women (Beren, Hayden, Wilfley, & Striegel-Moore, 1997) and
also suggests that with increased age and time since coming out, lesbians
become more comfortable with their body image (Pitman, 1999). Participants
seemed to evidence “normative discontent” as women, but were also able
to think critically about cultural standards and thus define their bodies in a
more positive way.
An important exception to these findings was Leanne, who was the only
participant who had a completely negative body image and reported never
having felt good about her body. She seemed to be more openly affected by
media images of women than the other participants (“I do picture that, you
know, the perfect body that we see pretty much portrayed in most places.
That is what I feel I’m supposed to look like”), and experienced her body
image strictly in terms of appearance and weight: “Since I can remember
being old enough to think about it I always thought I was too tall or too fat.
. . . I’m constantly one of those trying to diet, trying to . . . you know, look
better.” These comments show the ways in which lesbian women are affected
by the dominant cultural values for women’s appearance, and are in line with
previous literature suggesting that lesbians do experience similar levels of
body dissatisfaction to heterosexual women (Bergeron & Senn, 1998).
Although it is not clear what made Leanne’s experience so different
from the other women, we did note some important aspects of uniqueness. Leanne did not feel feminism impacted the way she thought about
the thin-ideal for women, whereas the others did. Leanne also claimed a
more feminine appearance than the other participants. Her valuing of traditional feminine appearance as portrayed by the media was an important
factor in her negative body image, compared to the other participants who
endorsed more androgynous styles (Ludwig & Brownell, 1999). In addition,
Leanne described much more limited involvement with an LGBT community
than most other women, indicating that she had individual friends rather
than a cohesive community. This history highlights the importance of LGBT
communities in lesbians’ self-concept and how they feel about their bodies
(Dworkin, 1988; McCarthy, 2000).
The participants’ accounts point out both the generally positive attitudes
that these lesbian women had about their bodies as well as the struggle that
they faced in constructing their body image on their own terms as opposed
to conforming to the thin ideal.
AMBIVALENCE ABOUT BEING
A
LARGER WOMAN
Two participants (who were in a relationship together) were large women
who expressed great shame about their weight and felt that they could not
be accepted either by lesbians or straight people: “It would be odd to think
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M. R. Yost and J. F. Chmielewski
that there would be anywhere that Frances and I would fit in and people
would not be horrified at our weight” (Carla). The lack of acceptance of
fatness from society played into their body shame, as Carla acknowledged
it as “the thing I hate most about myself” and both women emphasized
an extremely strong desire to lose weight. As Frances said, “I wish that I
could find a way of eating and exercising that the weight would come off
naturally and I wouldn’t be so . . . focused on it, that I could focus on my life,
not my weight.” Their accounts are similar to previous qualitative studies in
which lesbians experienced fat stigma and a desire for thinness (Kelly, 2007;
Pitman, 2000).
At the same time, however, their attitudes were not completely negative,
as they expressed some pride and love for their bodies. Frances said that she
sometimes felt positively about her body, adding that “it’s strange, sometimes
I feel proud to be a large woman and take up the space I do and to have
that kind of power that comes with being a large woman and having a large
voice and speaking up.” Although they looked at their weight as negative
and unsightly according to the traditional ideal for women’s bodies, they
also were able to appreciate their bodies as a way to claim a powerful space
for themselves as nonconforming women.
This body image empowerment seemed related to their acceptance and
ownership of their sexuality, which had been difficult given their conservative families and communities. They both discussed destructive and objectifying relationships with men in the past (Frances mentioned feeling like she
was “a piece of meat”) and both believed that their acceptance of their sexual
orientation freed them to truly accept their bodies. Carla succinctly said,
I did not really start to really like my body until I accepted my sexuality.
My body . . . felt like something that was more holding me back and it
wasn’t until I really started to embrace my sexuality that I really started
to appreciate my body.
Accepting their lesbian identity allowed them to experience their bodies
more positively. This finding illustrates a tension between previous shame
based on how they were viewed by society versus their understanding of
themselves as empowered lesbians rejecting oppressive femininity ideals
(Brown, 1987; Pitman, 1999). Through their physical presence, Frances and
Carla would not be limited to the passivity of traditional femininity, and this
allowed them to assert themselves as individuals and be more accepting of
themselves as large women.
APPRECIATING WHAT
THE
BODY CAN DO
Seven women emphasized health and how their body feels rather than how
it looks. When asked about her body image, Carla answered that her body
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157
was “such a wonderful, such an amazing thing, that it can go through so
much and it has gone through so much. I’ve had . . . a very extraordinary
life and my body still goes so I feel very positive about that.” Although she
felt badly about her weight, her discontent was related to a desire to be
healthier, not necessarily thinner. Carla discussed what her body could do
and how healthy she was, which seemed to be the most important aspect of
how she valued her body. Similarly, Diane described her body in terms of
strength and health rather than weight: “I feel I’m healthy, I feel pretty good
. . . I feel strong, I feel fit, I feel healthy.”
THEME 1 SUMMARY
Previous research has noted lesbians’ valuing of fitness over thinness (Beren
et al., 1997); however, this conceptualization of body image as a broad
assessment of personal fitness rather than a narrow focus on outward appearance has not been previously explored in depth. These participants
espoused a much more holistic and positive sense of body image than has
traditionally been found among heterosexual women (Brand, Rothblum, &
Solomon, 1992). Theorists have suggested that lesbians are less likely to internalize the thin-ideal (Brown, 1987). The present finding that lesbians do
not self-objectify, and instead highlight the pride they feel in their body’s
performance corresponds to this research. This suggests that there are ways
in which lesbians are able to think about their bodies apart from cultural
standards to create a more positive body identification, valuing strength and
action rather than thinness.
However, this first theme emphasizes conflicted or ambivalent views
lesbians have of their bodies as they struggle to get away from dominant
conceptualizations of what is attractive for women and have a more holistic
and health-centered approach to body image. These results are not unlike
the quantitative research demonstrating that lesbians are equally susceptible
to objectification and the thin ideal (Bergeron & Senn, 1998; Heffernan,
1999) but also provide some support for the theory that lesbians are better
protected from such objectification due to subcultural norms that do not
emphasize appearance (Brown, 1987). Although none of the women were
perfectly comfortable with their bodies, they were able to recognize that
women’s bodies have worth regardless of appearance. Our results are in
line with the idea that lesbians are influenced by the broader culture and
cannot escape normative ideology, but their place outside of heterosexuality
allows them to view their bodies in relatively less objectified ways.
Theme 2: Situating Body Image in a Lesbian Context
Nine participants described experiences connecting with LGBT communities, and explained the influence that these connections had on their body
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image. Although early experiences with the lesbian community encouraged
women to maintain a butch presentation, as these women became older and
more secure in their sexual orientation identity, lesbian connections played a
crucial role in helping participants feel good about their bodies regardless of
gender presentation. Unfortunately, there was a lack of lesbian space in central Pennsylvania, making it difficult for many to find a home within the small
LGBT communities that did exist. Although community played an important
role in participants’ self-concept and body image, the lack of resources and
the homophobic area prevented a strong community of women from taking
root.
CONNECTING MASCULINITY
TO
LESBIANISM
Eight participants linked femininity with heterosexuality. This was particularly poignant earlier in their lives, as they came to terms with their sexuality and created a sense of lesbian identity and comfortable gender presentation. When asked how images of women in the dominant culture affected her, Pamela discussed how they all depict femininity in relation to
heterosexuality:
Almost all images of, I think, about femininity, are very heterosexual.
I mean it’s a particular idea about gender where femininity is like the
opposite of masculinity, it complements masculinity . . . it’s really hard
to think about images that you get of what femininity is that are not
directly connected to, or framed, or contextualized within a heterosexual
framework.
Hammidi and Kaiser (1999) discuss beauty as a system that places femininity
and beauty within the realm of heterosexuality; this connection leaves little
room for lesbians to experience themselves as feminine.
Sexual identity was connected to gender and affected the way women
thought about their bodies, especially during their coming out process. Karen
discussed feeling very badly about being mistaken for a man before she had
accepted her sexuality, because she connected homosexuality with masculinity and was so ashamed of the sexual feelings she was having: “It
[being mistaken for a man] was always a hot button issue because I was hiding being gay and I couldn’t accept it.” She tried dressing in more feminine
clothes and reading women’s magazines in an effort to be more feminine until she finally was able to accept her sexual orientation and feel comfortable
with her gender presentation. Diane noted, “I do try to be that way [fitting a
mainstream appearance]. . . . I’m not comfortable being in a masculine outfit, or a higher haircut . . . although my hair is short and I have flats on . . .
but I don’t think of it as a gay look.” Through their styling, these women
consciously engage the cultural idea that lesbians are stereotyped as mascu-
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159
line, lying outside of the feminine, heterosexual system (Hammidi & Kaiser,
1999). Other participants who did not link masculinity to lesbianism is so
explicitly still described dressing in a more butch style during their coming
out stages to signal and confirm their sexual identity. Frances verbalized that
she used to dress butch: “I was trying to fit into a lesbian, what I thought
was fitting into a lesbian community . . . I felt like I had to fit a stereotype.”
Interestingly, none of the participants currently identified with the term
“butch” and all felt they were able to express a comfortable combination
of masculine and feminine qualities. This may be related to their current
satisfaction with their bodies, as they were more able to reject negative and
restrictive aspects of femininity while embracing the aspects of femininity
they found positive (Ludwig & Brownell, 1999).
Participants who described an androgynous appearance had rejected
dominant ideals of femininity and found a comfortable way of expressing
themselves without completely relying on masculine or feminine qualities.
In the early stages of their coming out process, claiming a lesbian identity
through the body–specifically through a masculine presentation–was very
important. Only once they were comfortable with themselves as lesbians
were participants able to become more comfortable claiming space for both
feminine and masculine attributes.
FEELING ATTRACTIVE
AND
VALUED WITHIN LESBIAN COMMUNITIES
Eight of the women felt that their past involvement with lesbian and LGBT
communities as they were coming out was influential in developing an understanding of their bodies as beautiful. Finding other lesbians to connect
with had an immensely positive effect on participants’ ability to develop their
own sense of identity as lesbians and positive feelings about their bodies. Participants talked about the support they felt from lesbian communities during
their coming out process as they struggled to feel comfortable understanding
themselves as part of a stigmatized minority. Karen, who spent many years
denying her sexual orientation, said that finding a lesbian community “was
vibrant, engaging, it was exciting” and Jessica said that “lesbians appear to
me to be at least far more tolerant of what are, after all, natural variations
in human physiology.” These narratives support theories suggesting that lesbians are more free to accept their bodies within the lesbian subculture. This
corresponds to Myers and colleagues’ (1998) findings that although lesbians
were affected by dominant cultural beauty mandates and often felt pressure
to conform, finding lesbian communities had a positive impact on how they
viewed their bodies and helped them to feel more free to reject the thin ideal.
Most participants in the present study felt that they were not as confined to
appearance concerns as were heterosexual women. Kathryn verbalized the
impact that her connection to queer communities had:
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Thank god for the gays and the queers . . . gosh, if that [the heterosexual
culture’s body ideal for women] was my point of reference for body
image, I think life would be a whole other can of worms. . . . I do feel
very comfortable in the community and I feel like in the community it’s
very accepting of very different body images that aren’t portrayed by the
media or the heterosexual world.
These accounts support theories that lesbian communities do create a safe
haven from the objectification of women that is rampant in the heterosexual
world (Brown, 1987). Finding lesbian communities is central to feeling comfortable with one’s identity and body image as a lesbian. The participants’
continued need for lesbian connections allowed them to continue to feel
comfortable in their own skin even after having established their identities
as lesbians (Krakauer & Rose, 2002). Establishing a strong community base
when coming out and maintaining those connections as they continued with
their adult lives allowed participants to feel comfortable in their bodies away
from the influence of the dominant sociocultural ideals for women.
WHERE
IS THE
LESBIAN VOICE? THE SILENCE
OF
CENTRAL PENNSYLVANIA
All participants voiced concern about the lack of local space for queer people, and for lesbians in particular. They knew lesbians who did not feel
comfortable being out in this homophobic area, expressed frustration with
this, and voiced a need to find communities in larger urban areas. Michelle
discussed going to Philadelphia to find lesbian connections: “I actually spend
a lot more time with the lesbian community in Philadelphia rather than Harrisburg because there’s not a real active . . . lesbian community in Harrisburg.”
Participants found it difficult to develop connections with an organized community in central Pennsylvania, and some said that they planned to move to
a new area so that they could be in a vibrant lesbian community. Sarah noted
that her transition to central Pennsylvania has been “very depressing at times,
that there’s no geographical space that I can turn to . . . that certainly isn’t for
lack of trying.” Given past research suggesting that LGBT communities are
important for lesbians to feel comfortable being out (McCarthy, 2000; Myers
et al., 1998), it is not surprising that many women felt dismay at the lack of
lesbian space and desired to live elsewhere.
Rural lesbians have limited access to resources and communities, and
unfortunately the few connections that do exist feel too limiting for many
(McCarthy, 2000). The one type of lesbian community that some women
did feel positively about was based on motherhood. Leanne and Karen
connected strongly with this network, but the small community of lesbian
mothers did not encourage connections with single lesbians or lesbians without children, as Michelle discussed: “I don’t know if in the Harrisburg area I
really get together just with a group of lesbians by virtue of being lesbian,”
Narrating Rural Lesbian Lives
161
which made her feel alone as a single lesbian mother trying to date. This
finding sheds light on the limitations of lesbian life in rural or semi-rural
areas, and on the struggles lesbians face in carving out safe space for lesbians to be out and form communities. Because these women described very
positive and important connections with lesbian community earlier in their
lives, their current situations felt particularly lacking by comparison.
FAT2 LESBIANS: YOU
ARE
ALWAYS PUSHED INTO ANOTHER SUBGROUP
All the lesbians expressed dismay about the lack of local community space
for lesbians, but Frances and Carla felt even more unable to find lesbian
communities because of their weight. They did not believe that lesbians
anywhere were welcoming of diverse bodies. Carla described the struggle
to find acceptance with lesbians: “I didn’t feel like I was part of that group.
I felt like a part of another subgroup. Here I was not only a lesbian that
pushed me out of the mainstream and into this pocket of people and now
out of this pocket of people I was still strange and odd.” Frances added that
the lesbian community is just as fat phobic as the heterosexual community.
Although normal thin to mildly fat women felt accepted, those who were
much heavier felt excluded and were unable to make the connections that
had been so beneficial to others.
Three other participants also felt that the lesbian community was not
necessarily more accepting of fatness than the broader culture. For example,
Leanne felt that lesbians had the same standards for appearance as heterosexual women and that “there is no unwritten rule that lesbians shouldn’t
care about body image.” These results correspond to previous findings that
many lesbian subcultures have their own standards for attractiveness, which
often include valuing thinness and denigrating fat women (Beren et al., 1997;
Pitman, 2000). Although some women in our sample believed that the lesbian community has taken up the cause of fighting against fat stigma (Pamela
in particular expressed this belief), the actual experience of exclusion felt by
larger lesbians contradicts this idealized characterization. Again, our results
echo the mixed findings on lesbian body image, and contribute to a deeper
understanding of that ambivalence: although women believe the lesbian
community, in the abstract, to be accepting of larger women, women who are
in fact heavier do not feel this support and acceptance in any concrete ways.
In an attempt to find a welcoming lesbian community, Carla and Frances
once sought out a national organization for large lesbians. This group promoted fat acceptance, but Carla and Frances did not feel at home there either
because the organization was anti-health. Frances verbalized, “It’s one thing
to be a large woman, but it’s another thing to not care about your health, to
not care at all about what you eat or what you do or whether you exercise
or go to the doctor.” Carla added that it seemed “like propaganda almost
to convince themselves that being fat was okay.” Carla and Frances were
162
M. R. Yost and J. F. Chmielewski
unwilling to let go of a desire to be healthy, so they were left with no community that accepted them as fat yet health-conscious lesbians. Perhaps in
more active LGBT and lesbian communities where there are more resources
and greater diversity, larger lesbians could find an accepting space, but that
space had not been found for these two women.
THEME 2 SUMMARY
These findings indicate that lesbian communities still construct standards of
appearance that make them less supportive of fat women. In general, building community with other lesbian women had a very positive influence on
body image, and most participants considered lesbians to be more accepting
of different body shapes, adding to the literature suggesting that finding lesbian and LGBT communities serves as a buffer against body dissatisfaction
(Heffernan, 1996). However, rural areas lack lesbian communities that are
inclusive of larger women, and thus not all women are able to access this
kind of support.
CONCLUSIONS
This study contributes to the small but growing literature on the experiences
of lesbians living outside of urban centers; specifically, we examined
body image, and found that lesbians expressed ambivalence. Although
most women felt positively, and experienced an encouraging sense of
embodiment (emphasizing the way their bodies feel rather than how they
look), nearly all simultaneously expressed discontent with their bodies.
These findings point to a hopeful possibility for lesbians to escape the
objectified ways women are socialized to think about their bodies, but also
show continued evidence that all women, regardless of sexual orientation,
are susceptible to societal pressures around thinness and beauty (Cogan,
1999; Heffernan, 1999).
In line with McCarthy’s focus group (2000), women in our sample currently relied on informal networks, feeling that a true lesbian community
did not exist for them in central Pennsylvania. In some ways, this freed
them from pressure to conform to a “lesbian look” (particularly a butch appearance, which many felt compelled to cultivate earlier in their lives), and
allowed them to experience affirmation of their bodies within romantic relationships with women. However, many participants were dissatisfied with
the lack of community here because they had benefitted from such community in the past. The experiences of the two larger women were particularly
illuminating; they experienced a tension between the belief that “the LGBT
community” was more accepting of various bodies and the reality that those
communities rejected them because of their size. The present study points
to an issue for larger lesbians, who are not only devalued in heterosexual
Narrating Rural Lesbian Lives
163
society, but within lesbian spaces as well, rendering them unable to find any
spaces in which they can feel truly accepted and attractive.
Our findings highlight ambivalence in lesbians’ narratives about their
body, and both positive and negative influences of lesbian community ideals
on their body image. Perhaps our findings suggest a “normative discontent”
for lesbians that is more complicated than that faced by straight women,
involving a tension between rejecting normative conceptions of women’s
bodies (in line with lesbian and feminist ideals) while continuing to feel
pressure to conform to a thin standard. Future research should explore these
concepts with additional samples; particularly interesting would be research
using more “deep rural” lesbians, as well as lesbians of color.
NOTES
1. The full interview protocol and details about analysis of topics 3 and 4 can be obtained from
the first author.
2. We recognize that this term is often considered pejorative. However, our usage is in line with
emerging scholarship in “fat studies” that reclaim the word fat as dissociated from stigma (Rothblum &
Solovay, 2009).
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CONTRIBUTORS
Megan R. Yost, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Psychology and Women’s and
Gender Studies at Dickinson College, Pennsylvania. Her research examines
the gendered nature of human sexuality from a feminist social psychological perspective. She is interested in understanding the influence of gender
on sexuality, prevention of sexual violence, and examining people’s lived
experience related to sexual orientation and diverse sexual practices.
Jennifer F. Chmielewski, B.A., is pursuing an Ed.M. in the Clinical and
Counseling Psychology Department at Teachers College, Columbia University. The present research was conducted as part of her senior honor’s thesis
at Dickinson College, Pennsylvania. Her research interests include women’s
sexuality and sexual expression, and sociocultural influences on women’s
body image.
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