Pantomime Dames: Queer Femininity Versus ‘Natural Beauty’ in Snog, Marry, Avoid

The British Broadcasting Corporation's television show Snog, Marry, Avoid (SMA) states its mission is, ‘to reveal a nation of stunning natural beauties who are currently hiding behind layers and layers of slap’ [BBC. 2008. Snog, Marry, Avoid Season One. United Kingdom: Remarkable Television]. This article considers SMA as a useful text for deconstructing contemporary norms of femininity. I utilise queer and affect theory perspectives from Berlant [2011. Cruel Optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press], Halberstam [1998. Female Masculinity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012; Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal. Boston, MA: Beacon Press] and Puar [2007. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Durham, NC: Duke University Press] to reveal the queer dimensions of the excessive femininity represented in the show. Berlant's work illuminates attachments to particular stylings, to understand where ‘cruel optimism’ operates. Further, I apply the idea of ‘queening’ as an inverse reference to Halberstam's ‘kinging' [Halberstam, J. 1998. Female Masculinity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 259]. Lastly, Puar's ideas are used to analyse the affective dimensions of excessive feminine embodiment in order to consider how this involves a queering of the body. This article departs from recent feminist scholarship on the rise of raunch culture and post-feminism. Rather than focusing on the participants of SMA as symptoms of a problematic hypersexual culture, I argue for seeing these contemporary young women's excessive femininity as queer, that is, as troubling the boundaries of gender ‘normality’.