In 2006 a group of women decided to launch the “I Heart Brooklyn Girls” calendar, a celebration of queer femininity. Their initial concept—twelve months, twelve decades of pinup—gave way to a focus on 1950s pulp aesthetic in later calendars, but the link between Brooklyn and femme agency remains consistent. Yet the ways in which time, place, gender, and race meet are not straightforward. Through the various iterations of the calendar, we can see that these contemporary performances of femme-ness are part of a particular affective attachment to the 1950s. This essay interrogates this conglomeration of femme visibility, historical play, the politics of location, and the invisibility of racial difference that these historical fantasies produce.
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2016
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