Xena: A Literature Review

From its beginning, the TV show Xena: Warrior Princess (1995-2001) was an instant success. Originally conceived as a spin-off of action-adventure series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (1995-1999), Xena quickly out-stripped its originator to become the most popular American show in syndication.¹ Set in a vaguely historical “ancient” past, the series follows evil-warlord-turned-just-hero Xena and her spunky, young sidekick/partner Gabrielle as they travel the world together righting wrongs, wrestling with the morality of the “warrior’s way,” and developing their deep emotional bond. The show immediately caught the attention of critics for its unique appeal to audience groups whose tastes were commonly considered irreconcilable.² Adults and children, the casual viewer and the more stereotypical sci-fi/fantasy fan, the “mainstream” and self-identified feminists, heterosexuals and queers alike eagerly tuned in over Xena‘s six-year run to watch a woman in a metal bra and leather mini-skirt lay waste to countless men, rewrite history, and emote with her “soulmate”³ – who, coincidentally or not, happened to be a woman.

The nature of Xena and Gabrielle’s relationship was – and continues to be – a site of fierce speculation among fans, critics, and scholars. In fact, a review of the outpouring of scholarship that has been produced about Xena reveals that the show’s lesbian innuendo, dubbed by fans as the “subtext,” is by far the most studied aspect of the series.⁴ The focus of this study may have begun as a simple are-the-or-aren’t-they debate largely among fans,⁵ but has since extended to critiques and appraisals of the role that identifiable, yet intentionally subsumed, lesbian elements in popular television plays in the feminist movement, the gay liberation movement, and society at large.⁶

Given its prominence in the world of Xena studies, it only seems appropriate to begin a literature review by examining the discourse surrounding lesbian “subtext,” focusing first upon its specific presence in Xena, then expanding to take in the critical conversation about subtext that occur at the intersection of cultural studies and queer studies. It is important to note that, at this point, the majority of documentation, analysis, and critique of Xena‘s subtext has come from fans and is largely available on-line. While a great deal of this material is avowedly un-scholarly and more intended as a testament to “prove” to the world that Xena and Gabrielle are, in fact, lesbians,⁷ the production of well-researched Xena-related scholarship was a significant component of the practice of Xena fandom during the show’s run.

The frequently-updated and carefully-maintained “International Association of Xena Studies” (more commonly known as Whoosh.org) established a unique role for Xena fans as semi-scholars.⁸ As a group who had a personal , rather than objectively “scholarly,” stake in interpreting the show’s meaning and the producer’s intentions (commonly, and often bitterly, referred to by fans as “The Powers That Be,” or “TPTB” for short)⁹, self-identified fan-scholars produced a strikingly vast body of critical essays on various aspects of Xena. A great deal of these concern Xena and Gabrielle’s relationship, and are overwhelmingly “pro”-subtext – in other words, they argue that a full understanding and appreciation of the show is not only impoverished, but genuinely misguided, without an acceptance of the fact that the main characters’ love for each other is romantic and monogamous.¹⁰

Juxtaposed against this fan scholarship is the work of feminist and cultural critics, who remain arguably un-“tainted” by the hint of personal agenda that clings to scholarly works by self-identified fans, whose analytical arguments are mostly precluded from more “legitimate” scholarly discourse except as an illustration of the breadth and diversity of Xena fandom. Critics of the show generally operate with the assumption that the subtext does exist (an assumption that many non-scholar fans continue to struggle with)¹¹, that its inclusion in the show was an intentional move on the part of the producers to expand Xena‘s fanbase, and that its presence had great potential, in the mid- to late 1990′s, to affect public perceptions of lesbian love. Taking these understandings as a starting point, critics have engaged in intense debate about whether relegating the show’s lesbian aspects to an undertone was reactive in that it perpetuated the dominant presumption that lesbian love should not be screened,¹² or whether the presence alone of a potentially lesbian couple in such a widely-viewed show was a progressive step for lesbian visibility.¹³ Further, critics have debated whether or not, despite the positive effects the show may have off-handedly produced, that the presence of the subtext should be considered wholly negative because of its main intent to titillate male heterosexual audiences, and its only secondary intent to maintain lesbian viewership.¹⁴

It is, therefore, significant to note that much thought has been given to the intentions of Xena‘s producers, and the cultivation of their relationship with their viewerships. The inclusion of subtext has been conceived of as the main product of a conversation that took place, albeit somewhat obliquely, between lesbian fans and Xena‘s producers.¹⁵ From the show’s first episode, lesbian fans were able to read lesbian codes enacted by Xena and Gabrielle¹⁶, and, with the timely advent of the internet, came to discuss these elements, agitate for their intensification¹⁷, and elaborate their potentials through the production of “fan fiction.”¹⁸ The on-line fandom (colloquially referred to as the “Xenaverse”), whose most vocal participators were lesbian, proved impossible for the show’s producers to ignore. In direct response to the desires of their lesbian fanbase, Xena‘s writers and actors began incorporating more sexually-suggestive dialogue and interaction between the main characters, as well as intensifying their fairly frequent vows and displays of love for each other.¹⁹ Scholarly works on the fan-producer interface have analyzed the exploitative aspects of this interaction,²⁰ its productive potential as located in its unique bestowal of lesbian agency,²¹ as well as its implications for the future integration of television and internet.²²

Through these discourses, the construction of Xena‘s lesbian element as inherently subtextual has been normalized. While fans have eagerly documented the exact points when the subtext becomes “main”text for brief, exhilarating moments,²³ the assumption that the lesbian element exists only as an undercurrent beneath the intended heteronormative reading has generally gone unchallenged. However, the concept that a lesbian text must always be inherently subordinate has been influentially disputed by at least one cultural theorist. In Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture, Alexander Doty argues that television shows produce queer responses and pleasures in all kinds of audiences, regardless of sexual preference, therefore rendering the dominant reading of queer elements as “sub”textual erroneous.²⁴ While Doty wrote in a historical moment (early 1990s) before Xena and before the popular boom in explicitly gay/lesbian supporting characters and story-lines,²⁵ his work carves out an ideological space in cultural studies critique that has not yet been entered in regards to Xena-related scholarship.

Interestingly, while “queer” has generally not been a word associated with Xena (except as a stand-in for “lesbian”)²⁶ , the show’s penchant for ambiguity and destabilization of norms has been widely analyzed. The fact that it cannot be pinned down to any one stance on gender, sexuality, morality, or confined to one mythological tradition, chronology, or even a single understanding of what constitutes “reality” is most often the first assertion in essays concerning Xena.²⁷ While the show’s openness to multiple interpretations has been correlated with its wide marketability,²⁸ it has also led scholars to develop a more theoretical analysis of how this marks Xena as separate from the genealogical development of the “just hero”²⁹ and “warrior queen”³⁰ figures in the Western imagination. While the hero/warrior image has historically been quite one-dimensional, scholars point to Xena’s defining traits as a character – her versatility of skill, ability to adapt to new situations, comfort with moral vagueness, cultural fluency, and multidimensional capacity to take into consideration diverse viewpoints and solutions for problems – as the embodiment of hitherto unmarked “hero” territory.³² Accordingly, a number of scholars have constructed Xena as a useful “role model,” both literally and figuratively.

In a theoretical sense, Xena has been lauded as the originator of a new trajectory in the development of the hero or, at the very least, as a figure who has constructively and lastingly expanded the boundaries that a hero can inhabit. For varying reasons, scholars have highlighted Xena as the first of a new breed of heroine that has since been emulated – though, arguably, never quite paralleled — in other popular cultural figures (the most evident being Buffy of Buffy the Vampire Slayer [1997-2003]).³³ For example, media scholar Sharon Ross points to Xena’s willingness to develop a loving friendship and to genuinely rely on her partner as one significant departure from the traditional, “masculine” model of heroism.³⁴ Further, the fact that Xena‘s production coincided with the turn of the twentieth century led to a conception of Xena as a hopeful harbinger of change for the new century. In particular, literary scholar Sharon Innes, who has been a part of the larger project of documenting the boom of new “tough girl” images in popular culture, envisions Xena as the epitome of the kind of hero humanity needs to learn from as we enter the globalized, electronicized future. She especially foregrounds Xena’s tendency to reflect on the personal meaning of her actions, as well as their potential ripple-effects for the rest of the world, as a trait worth emulating.³⁵ Others have focused on Xena’s willingness to stay true to herself while still taking into consideration differing viewpoints and cultural norms as a necessary model for the “Electronic Present.”³⁶

When reading the literature concerning the show, one may be particularly struck by how much faith people placed in Xena as a catalyst for change, and how many cultural hopes and desires were projected onto this one character. Not only was she considered a refreshing blueprint for the construction of the hero in mass cultural output, but she was also considered by many as a potentially powerful role model for the developing youth of “Generation-X.”³⁷ As the pioneer of a new wave of “girl power” images on television, Xena was celebrated as an accessible representation of an independent woman who did not need to rely on men (Warrior), yet was not afraid of being feminine and emotional (Princess).³⁸ This particular ethic has come to be a hallmark of the current “third wave” of feminism, and therefore offers an implicit critique of the decidedly un-girlish, stodgy second wave feminists of the 1960s and 70s.³⁹

In fact, Xena‘s self-consciously tongue-in-cheek camp aesthetic creates a site of feminist potential that offers a contrast to the stereotypical seriousness that purportedly characterized the second wave.⁴⁰ While there has been much fanfare made in camp studies about the genre’s association with gay males,⁴¹ there has been less focus upon its association with women,⁴² and even less upon its association with lesbians.⁴³ However, In 1996 (the same historical moment of Xena‘s introduction to popular culture), cultural theorist Pamela Robertson expanded the concept in her groundbreaking analysis of camp as a style that had a history of unique interpretation by women.⁴⁴ Her particular conception of “feminist camp” – “a failed seriousness, a love of exaggeration and artifice, the privileging of style over content and a being alive to the double sense in which things can be taken”⁴⁵ – has been readily applied to Xena in two particular essays, one written at the peak of Xena‘s popularity (“Xena: Warrior Princess as Feminist Camp,” 1998)⁴⁶ and another written this year, exactly a decade later (“Xena, Camped Crusader,” 2008).⁴⁷ As Joanne Morreale points out in her 1998 essay, camp’s greatest appeal for feminists lies in its ability to to parody gender; Helene Shugart and Catherine Waggoner echo this argument in their new book, updating the argument by focusing, among other elements, on the show’s unique deployment of lesbian “sub”text.

Shugart and Waggoner bring Xena into the current moment, juxtaposing the show against the more contemporary popular culture icon of Karen Walker (supporting character in sitcom Will & Grace [1998-2006]), as well as female musicians Macy Gray and Gwen Stefani. The fact that these authors consider Xena to be a show that continues to resonate with audiences while still maintaining its intellectual viability indicates its continuing relevance to feminist and queer studies. However, there may be some doubt outside of camp studies as to the show’s relevance in the growing proliferation of texts concerned with gay/queer television studies.⁴⁸ Since 2006, the field of television studies has experienced a flourishing in interest concerning the representation of GLBT and queer characters on television, both in the form of essays and in the development of popular entertainment websites AfterEllen.com and AfterElton.com.⁴⁹ While this study was initially more focused on homosexual males,⁵⁰ this year saw the publication of a volume solely dedicated to the televisibility of queer women.⁵¹

Significantly, both the groundbreaking Gay TV and Straight America (Becker, 2006) and Televising Queer Women (Beirne, 2008) include barely any reference to Xena, despite its status in the minds of many as the first and only prime-time series to feature a sustained lesbian relationship between two main characters⁵² and its incredible influence on the practice of lesbian fandom, which continues to this day.⁵³ There are many possible reasons for Xena‘s striking absence from current queer television studies. The overwhelming focus of this field is on explicitly gay/lesbian/bisexual characters, whose popular presence in prime-time television began in the mid-1990s; though this was the same time period that Xena premiered, the featuring of obviously queer characters and the inclusion of finite gay-themed storylines (mostly among minor characters) has become a common practice,⁵⁴ whereas the cultivation of an ongoing are-the-or-aren’t-they ambiguity has been largely abandoned, and therefore may appear somewhat archaic. Secondly, queer programming, like other niche markets, has shifted mostly to cable networks, which are able to take much greater liberties than prime-time television in exploring the pleasures and ambiguities of queer existence.⁵⁵ The tame, delayed-gratification excitement of Xena and Gabrielle’s relationship, which barely ever experienced any form of overt physical expression, pales in comparison to much more sexually-explicit cable shows such as The L Word and Sex and the City. Overall, Xena‘s ambiguity and campiness hardly fit the prevailing trend in “gay chic” that characterizes the current era of “reality TV,” in shows such as Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Project Runway, America’s Next Top Model, and A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila.⁵⁶

Lack of scholarship, rather than proliferation, is what marks Xena in the current moment. While this may not be particularly surprising for a show that ended seven years ago, it is potentially surprising in a moment when “queer” is more a part of popular culture and intellectual inquiry than ever before. Xena was the predecessor to our current understandings of lesbian televisibility, lesbian audience studies, and on-line lesbian fandom. However, her image has been shrouded in so much controversy that it may be more simple to leave her as a 1990s icon.

Created in a time period when the gay liberation movement was most concerned with the implications of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” imperative that required (and still does) that gay/lesbian/bisexual members of the military remain closeted⁵⁷, the popular representation of the warrior woman who would never let her love dare speak its name hardly seems like a model for progress.⁵⁸ Scholars have juxtaposed the character of Xena with the character of Ellen Morgan (portrayed by Ellen DeGeneres) from the sitcom Ellen (1994-1998). At the same time that the “closeted” warrior’s popularity was soaring, Ellen Morgan came out of the closet to find her show abruptly canceled.⁵⁹ The scholarly and popular interest in reading the trajectories of these two characters side-by-side indicates the value placed on “coming out” as a means towards progress, and is still a valued trademark of GLB characters in the present, so that a clear evolution from Ellen to the current moment has been forged (again, the website AfterEllen.com serves as a prime example of this), while Xena has seemingly fallen out of the family tree. The fact that actress Ellen DeGeneres herself simultaneously came out of the closet in the “real world” and has since been able to become and remain an activist icon marks her (and her show) as still relevant. Significantly, essays on Ellen are still being produced.⁶⁰

Ultimately, the literature produced about Xena: Warrior Princess exhibits fairly stark binaries in interpretation of the characters, the lesbian “sub”text, and its feminist appeal. While many conceive of the show as progressive, positive for lesbian visibility, a feminist’s dream come true, and a valuable role model for the construction of future female heroes and even “real world” identity formation in the age of the internet, others believe it to be reactive, a negative perpetuation of “don’t ask, don’t tell” ethics, a deterrent of lesbian visibility, anti-feminist⁶¹, and therefore a poor model for Generation-X. All of these claims, divisive as they may be, point to Xena as a productive site of inquiry and social change. This productiveness has been documented mostly through the interface of the television and internet, which produced a line of communication between the fan desires and the show’s producers. Now off the air for seven years, it may seem that Xena has lost its relevance; however, in a time period that has just begun to see a growing interest in queer television studies, the show’s role in the development of queer representation and audience may make it a site of renewed inquiry.

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Note: This essay was originally produced for “Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1300: Approaches to Research and Writing in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality,” Harvard University, Fall 2008.

Endnotes

1. Morreale, Joanne. “Xena: Warrior Princess as Feminist Camp.” Journal of Popular Culture. Fall 98, Vol. 32 Issue 2, pgs. 79-87. Para. 1.

2. Butt, Miriam, and Kyle Wholmut. “The Thousand Faces of Xena: Transculturality through Multi-Identity.” Globalization, Cultural Identities, and Media Representations. Natashca Gentz and Stefan Karmer, eds. NY: SUNY Press, 2006. Pg. 89.

3. From midway through Season 4 (Episode 15, “Between the Lines”) through to the end of the series, Xena and Gabrielle refer to each other as their “soulmate.” Examples:

“Between the Lines.” Xena: Warrior Princess (Season 4), DVD, directed by Rick Jacobson. (2004, Anchor Bay Entertainment).

“The Ring.” Xena: Warrior Princess (Season 6), DVD, directed by Rick Jacobson. (2005, Anchor Bay Entertainment).

For an analysis of the concept of “soulmate” in Xena, see:

Fisher, Judy. “ ‘The Quest’ Kiss and Its Aftermath: How Xena: Warrior Princess‘ Greatest Scene Damaged the Show.” Whoosh!. Iss. 87. March 2004. <http://www.whoosh.org>

4. Butt & Wholmut, pg. 84.

5. Flaherty, Mike. “Xenaphilia.” Entertainment Weekly. 7 March 1997. Pg. 41.

6. Hamming, Jeanne E. “”Whatever Turns You On: Becoming-Lesbian and the Production of Desire in the Xenaverse.”” Genders. 2001. Vol. 34. <http://www.genders.org/g34/g34_hamming.html>

O’Sullivan, Catherine. “Xenaphile, and Proud of It.” Fireweed. 31 Oct. 1998. Iss. 63; pg. 42

Silverman, Robin. “”What Xena Giveth, Xena Taketh Away.”” The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide. Boston: Oct. 31, 2001. Vol. 8, Iss. 5; pg. 32.

7. A well-maintained example such a site is: “Xena: Warrior Lesbian.” <http://www.geocities.com/televisioncity/4580/> Retrieved 2 November 2008.

8. “Whoosh!” <http://www.whoosh.org/> Retrieved 2 November 2008.

9. Fisher.

10. For example, see:

Whoosh: All-Subtext Issue. Iss. 37, 1999. <http://whoosh.org/> Retrieved 2 November 2008.

11. Xena fandom is still ongoing, especially through internet forums. Observation of these forums shows that many Xena fans who do not self-identify as “subtexters” are either unable to see the subtext or actively choose to disregard it. For example, a popular discussion at the TV.com Xena forum entitled “Xena a lesbian?” illustrates various fan opinions, many of them incredulous towards the concept of Xena as a lesbian. The forum discussion began in 2005 and has continued into 2008.

“Tv.com – Xena a lesbian?” <http://www.tv.com/xena-warrior-princess/show/698/xena-a- lesbian/topic/710-138318/msgs.html> Retrieved 2 November 2008.

12. Hamming; Silverman.

13. “8 Reasons to Canonize Xena: Warrior Princess.” Girlfriends. 1 May 2001. Pgs. 28-30.

14. Silverman.

15. Russo, Julie Levin. “Indiscrete Media: Television/Digital Convergence and Economies of Online Lesbian Fan Communities.” Ph.D. Diss., Brown University, 2009 (expected). <http://j-l-r.org/diss> Retrieved 18 October 2008.

16. Findlay, Heather. “”Xena-Philia!: Girlfriends takes a peek into the epistemology of the warrior princess’s closet.”” Girlfriends. 4 April 1998. Pg. 29, 44.

Hammer, Rosalind. “”Lesbian subtext talk: Experiences of the Internet chat.”” The International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy. Patrington: 2003. Vol. 23, Issue 1. Pgs. 80-107.

17. Silverman documents, for example, the on-line campaign that a segment of Xena conducted to urge the show’s producer’s to include a kiss in the final episode, “tongues and all.” It is still debatable whether this goal was achieved in the infamous “mouth-to-mouth water transfer” scene included in the final episode

“A Friend in Need, Part 2.” Xena: Warrior Princess (Season 6), DVD, directed by Rob Tapert. (2005, Anchor Bay Entertainment).

18. Caudill, Helen. “Tall, Dark, and Dangerous: Xena, the Quest, and the Wielding of Sexual Violence in Xena On-Line Fan Fiction.” Chapter in Athena’s Daughters: Television’s New Women Warriors. Frances Early & Kathleen Kennedy, editors. New York: Syracuse University Press, 2003.

19. Findlay.

20. Russo.

21. Hammer.

22. Hamming; Silverman.

23. Cooper, Cynthia Ward. “List ‘O the Month: What Are the Essential XWP Subtext Episodes?” Whoosh! Iss. 89, May 2004.

24. Doty, Alexander. Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture. University of Minnesota Press, 1993. Pg. Xiii.

25. Becker, Ron. Gay TV and Straight America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006. Pg. 158.

26. The noticeable exception to this would be:

Helford, Elyce Rae. “Feminism, Queer Studies, and the Sexual Politics of Xena: Warrior Princess.” Chapter in Fantasy Girls: Gender in the New Universe of Science Fiction and Fantasy Television. Elyce Rae Helford, editor. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2000.

27. Examples:

Early, Frances & Kathleen Kennedy. “Introduction: Athena’s Daughters.” Chapter in Athena’s Daughters: Television’s New Women Warriors. Frances Early & Kathleen Kennedy, editors. New York: Syracuse University Press, 2003. Pg. 1.

Gwenllian-Jones, Sarah. “Histories, Fictions, and Xena: Warrior Princess.”” The Audience Studies Reader. Will Brooker and Deborah Jermyn, eds. Routledge, 2003. Pg. 185.

28. Findlay.

29. Kennedy, Kathleen. “Love Is the Battlefield: The Making and the Unmaking of the Just Warrior in Xena, Warrior Princess.” Chapter in Athena’s Daughters: Television’s New Women Warriors. Frances Early & Kathleen Kennedy, editors. New York: Syracuse University Press, 2003. Pgs. 44-52.

30. Inness, Sharon. “”A Tough Girl for a New Century: Xena: Warrior Princess.”” Chapter in Tough Girls: Women Warriors and Wonder Women in Popular Culture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. Pgs. 161-176.

31. Butt & Wholmut.

32. Butt & Wholmut; Early; Inness;

33. Ross, Sharon. ““’Tough Enough’: Female Friendship and Heroism in Xena and Buffy.”” Chapter in Action Chicks: New Images of Tough Women in Popular Culture. Sharon Inness, ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Pgs. 231-55.

34. Ibid.

35. Innes.

36. Butt & Wholmut.

37. Early, 3.

38. Ibid.

39. Ibid.

40. Morreale.

41. Bergman, David. Camp Grounds: Style & Homosexuality. Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994.

Cleto, Fabio (ed.). Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject (A Reader). University of Michigan Press, 1999.

42. Robinson, Pamela. Guilty Pleasures: Feminist Camp from Mae West to Madonna. Duke University Press, 1996.

43. For an example of the discussion of lesbian camp, see:

Case, Sue-Ellen. “Toward a Butch-Femme Aesthetic.” Chapter in Cleto. Pgs. 185-199.

44. Robinson

45. As quoted in Morreale.

46. Ibid.

47. Shugart, Helen A. & Cathering E. Waggoner. “Xena: Camped Crusader.” Chapter in Making Camp: Rhetoric of Transgression in U.S. Popular Culture. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2008. Pgs. 63-79.

48. Beirne, Rebecca. Televising Queer Women (A Reader). New York: Palgrave, Macmillan, 2008.

Davis, Glyn & Gary Needham (eds). Queer TV: Theories, Histories, and Politics. Routledge, 2008 (expected).

Becker, Gay TV & Straight America (2006).

Peele, Thomas (ed.) Queer Popular Culture: Literature, Media, Film, and Television. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

49. “AfterEllen.com.” <http://www.afterellen.com>. Retrieved 2 November 2008.

“AfterElton.com.” <http://www.afterelton.com>. Retrieved 2 November 2008.

50. Becker.

51. Beirne.

52. Jonet, Catherine M. and Laura Anh Williams. “’Everything Else Is the Same’: Configurations of The L Word.” Chapter in Televising Queer Women: A Reader . Rebecca Beirne, editor. Pg. 152.

53. Russo.

54. Becker, 158.

55. Ibid, 95.

56. Ibid, 5.

57. Ibid., 37-59.

58. Silverman.

59. Findlay.

60. Moore, Candace, Resisting, Reiterating, and Dancing Through: The Swinging Closet Doors of Ellen DeGeneres’s Televised Personalities.” Chapter in Beirne. Pgs. 17-32.

Reed, Jennifer. “The Three Phases of Ellen: From Queer to Gay to Postgay.” Chapter in Peele. Pgs. 9-26.

61. Morreale and Shugart & Waggoner points out in their essays on Xena‘s camp aesthatic that though Xena is interpretably feminist, the visual representations of the scanitly-clad female lead (who may be considered reminiscent of “dominatrix”) could be considered “anti-feminist” in its intentional, voyeuristic appeal to male heterosexual sensibitilies.

(c) Michelle Kellaway, 2008

~ by xenascholar on December 20, 2008.