If the 90s were, as Entertainment Weekly dubbed them in 1995, the “gay 90s,” we may well consider the mid-2010s onwards the age of the lesbian. Over the last decade and a half, increased representation in film and television and a growing emphasis on queer female culture as distinct from a broader, often male-centric gay culture in the mainstream have produced a new wave of visibility for–and often by–queer women. One manifestation of this has been in the form of the lesbian icon, a figure that has shifted from a subcultural phenomenon to a status that mainstream Hollywood stars, both queer and heterosexual, have openly and eagerly started to embrace.

This dissertation places the lesbian icon centrally in an investigation of queer female (in)visibility in contemporary film and platform culture. Working with the popular dual definition of the lesbian icon as either a lesbian who is an icon or a woman who is an icon for lesbians, it explores the coming together of the queer politics of visibility, platform economies and film stardom/celebrity in the construction and circulation of contemporary Hollywood stars as lesbian icons. To achieve this goal, this study conducts four case studies grounded in the star images of some of the most prominent lesbian icons since the mid-2010s: Jodie Foster, Kristen Stewart, Cate Blanchett and Natasha Lyonne.

The first case study, focused on Jodie Foster, explores the cruel optimism of queer celebrity, showing how visibility politics are integrated into neoliberal ideals of individuality and success. Starting in the 1990s, this chapter provides a backdrop from which the further economization of visibility, as it occurs in the platform economy, is explored. Kristen Stewart’s case study extends this analysis, considering how queer visibility is drawn into profitable forms of algorithmic polarization. Here, a new double bind of visibility forms, where visibility is enabled by the same processes that render it vulnerable to being exploited for homo- and transphobic discourses. The third case study investigates the memetic circulation of Cate Blanchett’s image to show how queer reception strategies that have historically functioned as a form of resistance, such as gossip, are becoming a form of promotional labour. This grants a greater visibility to queer audiences, but it does so by absorbing their labour into Hollywood’s larger promotional machinery. Finally, Natasha Lyonne’s streaming success offers a way to reflect back on the previously discussed themes through a different lens, showing how a more niche visibility can bypass some of the previously discussed limitations yet remain deeply tied to the consumerist and algorithmic logics of streaming platforms.

Combined, these cases show that the visibility of the lesbian icon is always paradoxical: at once empowering and exploitative, relying on queer labour, identity and reception to be rendered visible, but simultaneously shaping and controlling this visibility through its embedding in the platform economy.