Most debates on camp revolve around the equation of camp and gay male taste in order to explore camp's effectiveness as a form of opposition for a gay subculture.' Insofar as camp has been attributed a political function, that function seems to depended entirely upon its articulation within a gay male subculture. While recognizing camp's appeal for straights, most critics argue that something happens to camp when taken over by straights--it loses its cutting edge, its identification with the gay experience, its distance from the straight sexual world view.'2 Women, in particular, been excluded from discussions of camp because women-lesbian and straight--are perceived to have had even less access to the imageand culture-making processes of society than even gay men had.3 And women argued that camp's preference for blatantly misogynistic images of female excess merely reproduces signs of patriarchal oppression, just as gay camp reproduces gay stereotypes and reinforces gay male oppression. By most accounts, then, the only authentic form of camp is gay and generally misogynist. Camp, however, offers feminists a model for critiques of sex and gender roles. This essay argues for the role of women as producers and consumers of camp, using Mae West's star text as an example. I aim to de-essentialize the link between gay men and camp, which reifies both camp and gay male taste; and to underline camp's potential for asserting the overlapping interests of gay men and women, lesbian and straight. I do not deny the historical phenomenon of camp and its alliance with gay subculture. But I suggest that camp as a structural activity has an affinity with feminist discussions of gender construction, performance, and enactment; and that, as such, we can examine a form of camp as a feminist practice. In taking on camp for women, I reclaim a female form of aestheticism, related to female masquerade, that articulates and subverts the imageand culture-making processes to which women traditionally been given access. In 1971, when Playboy asked Mae West to define camp, she responded: Camp is the kinda comedy where they imitate me.4 West's self-reflective definition of camp could be taken as an assertion of her own role as a producer of camp, or of a style compatible with camp taste; in other words, Camp is the kind of comedy that imitates the kind of comedy I produce. However, for