Selling sexual subjectivities: Audiences respond to gay window advertising

Abstract

This essay addresses the relationship between audiences’ sexual identifications and their readings of “gay window advertisements,”; which appeal to lesbian, gay and bisexual consumers while remaining innocuous to heterosexual readers. Five focus groups, including heterosexual, bisexual, lesbian and gay participants, described nine magazine ads. Lesbian, gay and bisexual participants were more likely to produce gay readings of the ads, although there were cases where they did not, and other cases where heterosexual participants did articulate gay readings. I consider the dynamic between sexual identification and reading strategies, including the implications of constituting sexual identification as a basis for consumer appeals.