My research for this week focused primarily on how womanhood and heteronormative gender roles appeared in Die Freundin, as well as how they interacted with ideas of both contemporary lesbian identities and larger German nationalism. My secondary source, Angeles Espinaco-Virseda’s “‘I feel that I belong to you’: Subculture, Die Freundin and Lesbian Identities in Weimar Germany” features an interesting discussion about not only the new “possibilities for identification” that diverted from the ‘German Woman’ in Freundin, but also how, at the same time, traditional heteronormative gender and relationship roles were inserted into lesbian relationships through the magazine’s portrayal of a split between “virile” (masculine) and feminine women. This source prompted me to consider how these gender and relationship roles lended themselves to larger notions of gender performance and, from there, belonging in the German nation. I looked at two issues of Freundin for my primary sources this week, both from 1928, as they featured an ongoing debate on whether the magazine’s readers were pro- or anti-Bubikopf (a bob haircut trendy among Weimar lesbians and “New Women”). Startlingly, much of the reasoning against the haircut was tied to notions of what was ‘proper’ for a woman. One particularly striking statement from a reader claimed that the haircut was “simply not for the German woman, nor for the entire German race”. Within this statement, lesbian women with shorter hair or less traditional gender presentations are directly excluded from both German womanhood and German race at large. Various interesting interactions between lesbian and German identity in the Weimar Era are making themselves apparent already, which has been exciting to see.
I would also like to note another trend I took note of while looking through some issues of Freundin this week, that being a startling amount of orientalism and Asian fetishization. This trend appears even on one of the covers for an issue featuring the great Bubikopf debate, where a woman wearing nothing but some beaded jewelry and a belt is labeled as “S’ent Marona, orientalische Tänzerin” (oriental dancer). Other issues I found by chance but did not use for this week included issue 18 from 1932, featuring the story “Ein Orientalischen Märchen” (“An Oriental Fairytale) and issue 11 from 1928, featuring the article “Chinesischen Frauen” (“Chinese Women”). I would like to look into this trend further if possible, as I am sure I will be able to find more than I already did in my brief search; why is this such a trend in the magazine, and how does it relate to German culture/xenophobia/nationalism in the Weimar Era? I did a very brief search on this topic and was not able to find any secondary literature exploring this trend, so it may be an interesting idea to consider in my further research and ultimate writing.