Producing Cosmopolitan Sexual Citizens on The L Word

Abstract

Using Showtime's The L Word as a case study, we argue that lesbian sexuality and lesbian lifestyles are produced alongside broader discourses of cosmopolitan consumer citizenship. The lesbian characters in this program are first and foremost constructed through their investments in certain neo-liberal consumer and lifestyle practices that limit the possibility of what lesbian subjectivities and/or lesbian politics can or cannot become. We offer an alternative strategy of reading lesbians in image-based media and popular culture that attends to the ways in which lesbian subjectivities are produced in a climate of neo-liberal consumer and lifestyle practices that have shifted the ways in which sexual citizens are produced. Our aim is to provide a critical framework that can be applied to other lesbian-themed television texts and to a range of other image-based visual media including film, commercial advertising, and new media.