Gay for Pay?

If the 90's brought lesbianism to the forefront of media attention only to popularize the construction of the "femme" lesbian and blanket the "butch" lesbian, then the 00's served to further complicate lesbian representation with the emergence of the "faux" lesbian trend. This faux lesbianism seemed to be a means for girls and women to get attention, often from the opposite sex. It stemmed from the fetishization of lesbians by the media. One of the most notable examples to come out this trend was the Russian pop duo t.A.t.u (as previously mentioned by Dominika). The lesbian image of the girls was created to hone in on the public's fascination with both lesbians and teen girls. So while the two were instructed by their manager to hold hands, pose for touchy-feely photoshoots, sing songs about loving girls and respond questions about their so-called relationship with vague broken English answer, their boyfriends were kept out of public view. Eventually reality interfered with their image a little too much, and they fell out of the spotlight when the public could no longer pretend that Russian singers were actually together romantically. Here's a video of their 2003 performance at the MTV Movie Awards in which they ran through the audience in skimpy outfits, and brought up about 50 dancing girls in schoolgirl uniforms, all of whom eventually stripped down to tank tops and mens briefs and proceeded to make out for the duration of the song. Oh and then MTV decided to zoom in on Ashton Kutcher and P.Diddy giving them a standing ovation and clapping wildly.