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In the rule-breaking, gender-bending present day, bisexuality is being marketed to lesbians and straight women alike as the latest fashion. Mainstream newspapers and women's magazines sport articles entitled'Why girls just want to have fun with each other'(The Observer),'Want to get ahead? Get a girlfriend'(The Guardian), or'Sappho So Good'(Harpers & Queen).'Lesbian chic'(New York, Diva, Everywoman),'bi-girl frisson'(Elle) and'sexual tourism'(Harpers & Queen) are trendy. These articles suggest it's trendy to have sex with a man if you're a lesbian, because for a lesbian to have heterosex is' transgressive'. Similarly the articles suggest it's chic to have sex with a woman if you're straight: the risqué glamour of a girlfriend is marketed as the latest fashion accessory for the heterosexual woman.

The image of the new'sapphic sophisticate'(heterosexual or lesbian) depends on the creation of a dualism between the oldstyle'political lesbian'and the new-style'lipstick lesbian'. Lesbian feminists are caricatured as ‘manhating harridans with bad haircuts and no dress sense'(Hamer and Budge 1994 p 11), political'ugly sisters' left over from the 1970s and 1980s: