Hello and welcome to Outward. I'm Christina Cotarucci, a senior writer at Slate, and I hope you've all spent this

Pride Month reveling in our beautiful community, recommitting to the fight for queer liberation,

and gracefully navigating the intersections of all your various polycules at your local Pride parties.

This year at Pride, I've been particularly impressed by the queer

fashions I've seen out and about. And it seems like there's a much wider variety of what people

are wearing these days than in many Pride's past. This is a very anecdotal unscientific observation,

but I think people are getting sexier. We're doing every possible variety of mesh.

We're doing underboob. We're doing side boob. We're doing the tried and true top boob.

We're doing tank tops with unbelievably explicit sayings on them. And that's just at my house at the

Friday night pregame. It's been so exciting to see people out this year.

I miss last year's pride because I had COVID.

I love getting dressed up and seeing people look cute.

But I also know that the clothing of queer women and the people who love them has often

been diminished or overlooked.

In cultural history, lesbian fashion has been a punchline or no line at all. So it always

feels like a treat when I can notice trends in my queer circles because I get to think about

why we wear what we wear and what it says about who we are. Lucky for me and for you, there's a new

book out this month that has really scratched that

itch. It's called Unsuitable, A History of Lesbian Fashion. It's written by Eleanor Medhurst,

and I'm thrilled to have Eleanor with us today to talk about it. We'll chat after the break.

All right, welcome back.

Eleanor Medhurst is the author of unsuitable, a history of Lesbian Fashion. She's a historian of lesbian fashion and the author of the blog Dressing Dikes.

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