With a checkered past and an unsympathetic readership, Well Well Well hopes to blaze a new trail in lesbian glossies as it debuted last Friday in France. The magazine, which will initially be published biannually and focuses on the modern French lesbian woman, hopes to succeed where others have failed. “Earlier this year, Jeanne — an online magazine for lesbians — saw the light. And now, Well Well Well is born. But despite these small in-roads, lesbian media faces an uphill struggle as much-needed cash is hard to come by, observed editor Marie Kirschen. “There is a small pool of readers and advertisers are not always forthcoming.”
The history of lesbian magazines in France, reports Marianne Barriaux in Agency French Presse, has been rocky. “Lesbian media emerged in France in the 1970s alongside the feminist movement, but gradually lost steam as the mainstream took over. In 2012, Lesbia — which had been going for three decades — shut down. La Dixième Muse (The Tenth Muse) followed suit and closed in 2013, as did online magazine Tetue.com, marking the end of lesbian publications in France. By comparison, Curve was still going strong in the U.S. after its 1990 launch and Diva remained active in Britain after a years-long run.”
Two problems, all things being equal, mar what could be the successful longevity of a magazine, however infrequently produced. “The problem in France is that … brands don’t want to be associated with gay media, or they don’t see gays and lesbians as clients. And when they do see the potential, they fall into age-old clichés: gays as well-groomed men who buy lots of moisturizing cream…lesbians are women who don’t shave and never buy moisturizer.”
The other issue is that France, despite its cultural permissiveness and c’est-la-vie morality, is, at its core, a fundamentally Catholic nation with an influential church. The debate over same-sex marriage was, contrary to the American media’s whitewashing of the bill, controversial and, at times, violent in France.
Barriaux goes on to report that, according to Kirschen, “while the gay community in France has a hugely famous and rich champion in the person of Pierre Berge — the partner of late designer Yves Saint Laurent who until last year owned gay magazine Tetu — lesbians do not. “Investments have been made in the gay press that were never made in the lesbian press,” says Marie-Helene Bourcier, a professor at Lille 3 University and a well-known activist. “We don’t have a lesbian equivalent of Pierre Berge, no one injects cash into the lesbian economy in France.”
