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Hey everybody. Scanner's down. It should be up and running in the next day or so. Hope to have a new paperback up on Sunday.

In the meantime, I need your help. I'm on a quest—a quest to find the phrase "lipstick lesbian" in *any* piece of writing published prior to 1984. Long story short, the rumor that (I swear) I once heard that Ann Aldrich's "Take a Lesbian to Lunch" contained the first known attestation of the phrase "lipstick lesbian" may not be true. I am now actually *reading* said book, and so far, nothing (though it's an Incredible read). Armistead Maupin's "Babycakes" (1984) is the O.E.D.'s earliest attestation for "lipstick lesbian," but Ann Aldrich (aka Marijane Meaker, who generously answers questions posted to her website, god bless her) claims that "Lipstick lesbian was from the fifties, a very common description of the uptown, dress-up lesbian." So that's at least thirty years between when the phrase was allegedly being used and its first known appearance in print. Google Books confirms Maupin as the earliest, and someone tweeted to me that Maupin himself "claims" to have invented the phrase, which seems odd.

At any rate, if you have any knowledge of writing by or about lesbians from the '50s, '60s, or '70s, and think you can track down the use of "lipstick lesbian" in print before 1984, please help me in my quest. Thanks very much.

~RP

Paperback 446: Take a Lesbian to Lunch / Ann Aldrich (McFadden Books 125-118)

Paperback 446: McFadden Books 125-118 (PBO, 1972)

Title: Take a Lesbian to Lunch
Author: Ann Aldrich
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $300


Best things about this cover:

• I've written briefly about this book before. Searching for that post led me to this thread, which quotes my original discussion of the book, and features a reply from The Author Herself. I learned about this just this second. I Heart The Internets. Discussion was about the term "lipstick lesbian," which suggested might have been "coined" by this book; that's probably not true, but the author suggests she might have been the first to use the phrase in print.
• It's not a very vivid cover, sadly, but I love the weird title and the Lipstick on the (Lesbians'?) cigarettes.
• Oh, this book is super-rare, in case the suggested dollar value didn't tip you off. There's one on amazon for $200 something. I priced mine off the ABE Books listings. The book is no longer available from ABE Books. Insider's look at gay New York in the aftermath of Stonewall by an excellent writer = cultural gold.

Best things about this back cover:

• Did people used to think lesbians were mythical? Like sylphs or unicorns or yeti?

Page 123~

"Surely it is the nature and quality of a relationship that matters; one must not judge it by its outward appearance, but by its inner worth. Homosexual affection can be as selfless as heterosexual affection, and therefore we cannot see that it is some way morally worse..." [—from "Toward a Quaker View of Sex," an essay signed by 11 British Quakers, first published in London in 1963]

Not all of this book is so earnest, I assure you. The more anecdotal parts of the book are often entertaining, touching, vivid, and sometimes very funny.

~RP

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