Why girls kiss girls

WASHINGTON - Britney and Madonna created a roar with their much-publicised on-stage liplock, and so did Scarlett Johansson and Sandra Bullock. But what is it that makes women to indulge in such a sexual act with the same gender.

Sociology professor Verta Taylor, of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and her colleague, Leila J. Rupp of the school’s feminist studies department, examined the trend in a new study.

In one national survey, they report, fewer than 2 percent of women called themselves lesbian or bisexual, but fully 8 percent reported either feeling same-sex desire or engaging in some kind of same-sex act.

The absolute numbers seem low - no surprise in a study that relies on self-reporting about so personal a matter - but what’s more important is the 4-to-1 ratio between label and behaviour, and that, the authors say, reveals a lot.

There are four main drivers of the girl-girl trend.

The first is the copycat trendiness that is inevitable when stars on awards shows do something sensational on camera.

But the biggest of the other three reasons is a desire for attention, typically from boys.

This is why parties are so often involved in same-sex kissing - and why the disinhibiting effects of alcohol frequently contribute.

“It’s usually brought on by, I don’t know, like shots or drinking or people kind of saying something to like cheer it on or whatever. And it’s usually done in order to turn guys on or to seek male attention in some way,” said one female student the professors interviewed.

That plays into the old feminist notion of the power imbalance involved in the “male gaze,” with men as observers and women as the observed, said the researchers.

Genuine experimentation is another motivation for same-sex connecting between females who don’t see themselves as lesbians.

“Bi-curious” girls - or, as they’re increasingly called when drinking is involved, “bar curious” - are hardly unique in wondering what it would be like to have a same-sex experience. But when the culture becomes more accepting, experimentation is likelier to follow.

One girl who embraces the bi-curious label told the UCLA researchers that the fact that experimentation often takes place when other people are around does not mean showing off is all that’s involved.

Some bi-curious girls also call themselves LTGs, for lesbian till graduation, and that captures what same-sex kissing represents for a lot of them: a form of intimacy and diversion, but not something that ultimately feels like a true orientation.

For other girls - those on their way to coming out as lesbians, or just discovering their orientation themselves - girl-girl kissing, particularly in a party setting, provides a safe and comfortable glide path in what can often be a rocky transition.

The researchers pointed out that the same kind of gradual transitioning may explain why so many lesbian girls’ first same-sex experience is in a threesome that involves a male.

This, they write, “is an extension of the safe heterosexual space for exploring same-sex desire.”

All of this amounts to what students and researchers alike are increasingly calling “heteroflexibility,” a sexual elasticity that, on the whole, is a very good thing.

The study is published in the American Anthropological Association magazine Contexts. (ANI)