Oh, the lesbian chic of it all

If last season's must-have was a baby, this season it's a girlfriend. Never since the ancient Greeks have all things Sapphic caught the fashionable moment.

After the years of stars hiding their true sexuality, now it is almost obligatory to be caught snogging your gal-pal at an awards dinner, a White House bash or the latest premiere. If you're not gay, the least you can do is join in, as Caroline Aherne [aka Mrs Merton] did earlier this week when she was photographed French-kissing Eurovision Song Contest winner Katrina Leskanich at the Sony Radio Awards ceremony.

Even Geri Spice has admitted fancying fellow Spice Victoria, and the British computer program Converse, which has won the Loebner prize for its ability to hold conversation on screen, demonstrated its prowess by talking about CNN's reports on Ellen DeGeneres kissing her female lover in front of President Clinton.

Culturally, our society has changed since the (sadly apocryphal) story that lesbians were not mentioned in the law on public decency because Queen Victoria could not believe that women could do that to each other. The political angle popular in the 1970s, when for some being a lesbian was following feminist ideals through to its logical conclusion, also seems to have faded into the background.

Now lesbians "are all the rage", says Anya Palmer of Stonewall. "It's extraordinary. There are lots of well-known and successful women coming out - or admitting their fantasies." The media has been transfixed by stories, such as that of novelist Jeanette Winterson revealing that in her past she was paid in Le Creuset saucepans for sex, or the mystery writer Patricia Cornwell, accused of stealing the wife of a former FBI "deep cover" agent, Eugene Bennett, in a lesbian love-triangle.

So it's been a good year for lesbians, if even sitcom stars are joining in the fun. We seem to be living in a more tolerant society where it's okay to be gay. But does Mrs Merton snogging Katrina actually do anything for real-life lesbians or is the influence wiped away with the lipstick?

Ellen DeGeneres's coming out did have a great influence, according to Sonny and Cher's daughter Chastity Bono, who finally came out in 1995 after years of speculation.

In the episode of Ellen where Ms DeGeneres came out, the cast was star- studded. Oprah Winfrey (who else?) played Ellen's psychotherapist and lesbian singer kd lang made a guest appearance.

The real Ellen is also making the most of it. She made the cover of Time magazine, had an interview on ABC's main personality slot 20/20 and, most daring of all, arrived at one of Washington's chief social events of the year - the White House Correspondents Association dinner - with, as one correspondent put it, "her friend, the rising Hollywood star,Anne Heche, on her arm and occasionally around her neck".

"When Ellen's coming-out episode was shown, it is estimated it got 36 to 37 per cent audience share - that's 45 million people who watched it," says Ms Bono, entertainment and media director for Glaad [Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination] based in Beverley Hills. "It's great stuff. I do think things are changing. Last year, the film Bound [which has just opened in the UK] was an excellent film but what was so good about it was that it wasn't seen as a `lesbian film' but a good film, even though the two protagonists were lesbians."

Anne Heche did upset people, she thinks, because "she wasn't seen as gay before and now people can't put a label on her. People are confused."

The problem is that people tend to label men or women as gay and then expect them to behave in exactly the same way, adds Ms Bono: "We are seen as different but we are coming from very different parts of the world, religious, racial and socio-economic backgrounds but the media does not see us in all this diversity."

One theory that has been put forward is that the growing acceptance of lesbianism is because the barriers between homosexuality and heterosexuality are coming down - as Amanda de Cadenet said when she was hanging out with Courtney Love, holding hands and sporting identical silky nighties and tiaras: "Lesbianism doesn't mean you're gay," she opined. "It's an extension of friendship."

Marjorie Garber, professor of English at Harvard University agrees: "Of course, bisexuality is not a new thing on the cultural or erotic scene. There was `bisexual chic' in the Seventies, in the Twenties and Thirties, in the 1890s and the 1990s ... Bisexuality is sexy to a lot of people and (perhaps therefore) threatening to some.

"Lots of our most glamorous stars have been or are bisexual - Marlene Dietrich, James Dean, Tyrone Power, Greta Garbo, Judy Garland, Marlon Brando, Elton John, Sandra Bernhard. The appearance of recent biographies of all of these figures emphasising their bisexual lives draws attention to the fact that we as readers and consumers of culture are fascinated by bisexuality. It's really an aspect of star power - to make everyone fall in love with you."

The other theory for greater acceptance of lesbians is that they are less threatening and more cuddly than gay men. There is less aggressive in-your-face sexuality, more "gentleness" as one commentator put it. (Or more classic male fantasy, a cynic might argue).

But life for lesbians in Britain is not all Chanel lipstick and Sophie Ward. Despite 120 women MPs in the new Parliament, not one says she is a lesbian, according to Stonewall. Ms Palmer points out that the other prominent "lesbian" story of the week, apart from Mrs Merton and Katrina, was that of the two women who had become pregnant through insemination. Under the headline "Gay mums are making a sickening mockery of motherhood", The Sun accused Lisa and Dawn Whiting of having "DIY babies" and brand the case "a sickening, selfish, immoral perversion of the act of procreation".

"The recent ubiquity of Ellen DeGeneres in the popular press has made some of us more visible but you have to set that against quite revolting coverage that we have seen in The Sun about women who have chosen to raise children in a lesbian family. They have been vilified," says Gillian Rodgerson, editor of Diva magazine, the bi-monthly journal of lesbian life and style. "What particularly depresses me is that people such as Victoria Gillick can ... say that the children of these women should be put up for adoption because they are irresponsible parents. I do think that is a bit rich coming from someone who has had as many children as she has."

"There is always been a tolerance for certain kinds of lesbian - Helen Baxendale is a babe, so no-one minds if the character she plays likes women. Anyone glamorous seems to get away with it," says columnist Suzanne Moore. "But once it involves lesbian parents, then it becomes disgusting, however the children are produced. Lesbian babes are a glamorous classic male fantasy. They don't quite believe that women can manage without a man. They are no sexual threat. But once they have a child, it's like `we really meant this; we're not joking - we don't need you'."

So lesbian chic is fine as long as you look like the actress Sophie Ward (and not her lover, who was described as a bulldog chewing a wasp), you don't have kids and you're well off. Prejudice against lesbians is manifested not against what you do but how you look when you do it. Or as Ms Rodgerson wryly points out: "If you're young, pretty, white, middle class and urban, your life will be better whether you are lesbian or heterosexual."