Femmephilia
Love Letters to Trans Mermaids, Queer Mothers, and Marilyn Monroe
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
From the author of Enemy Feminisms and Abolish the Family, an original diagnosis of femmephobia in our culture, and a vision of a life-giving femme feminism for all.
To be femme is to embody a dispossessed femininity, to be freighted with freedom, to refuse to be made proper or institutionalized. To love it is to embrace love for women (be they butch or not) in the broadest sense. In Femmephilia, Sophie Lewis makes the case for the vital importance of politicized femme-ness: a feminism that is self-consciously artificial, extravagant in its erotic and political appetites, and staunchly anti-work, abolitionist, and utopian. Femme labors deserve our care, respect, and support, but instead face dismissal from masculinist antagonists and feminist allies alike.
Where neoliberal women’s empowerment has failed to combat the eruption of right-wing, anti-trans, and anti-feminist attacks, Lewis argues that femmephilia can help us imagine a radical future. In essays on the high femme genius of Marilyn Monroe and trans yearning in the myth of Apollo and Daphne; on octopuses and girlbosses, reluctant heterosexuals, lesbian separatists, and anti-work cats; and on a mother on strike from maternity, Femmephilia offers a new logic of liberation for all feminized people.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This vibrant essay collection by independent scholar Lewis (Enemy Feminisms) criticizes femmephobia, or the devaluation of feminine traits, behaviors, and aesthetics that are seen as soft, girly, and frivolous. Through explorations of pop culture, mythology, and history, she champions artificial and extravagant displays of femininity as a form of resistance to capitalism and challenges traditional structures of caretaking. For example, in "She Gave Herself Freely," Lewis analyzes portrayals of Marilyn Monroe, including tributes to her on "BimboTok"—the TikTok subculture where Gen Z creators combine hyperfeminine performance with leftist politics—asserting that those who worship and those who trash Monroe ignore her agency. Instead, Lewis encourages enjoying or critiquing Monroe's art "without falling into the condescension of so many feminists and nonfeminists alike." In "Can the Sirenform Speak?" Lewis offers a queer reading of The Little Mermaid, arguing that the 1989 animated film and 2023 live-action remake "sanitize the gory, gay, and antisocial themes of Hans Christian Andersen's original 1837 fairytale, while preserving the colonialist freight that has long weighed down Western mermaid mythology." Beneath the author's sharp, often scathing critiques is a contagious belief in the possibility of liberation for "femmes of all lands." The result is a lucid and stimulating appraisal of contemporary gender dynamics.
