Honey Lee Cottrell & the Legacy She Leaves Behind
On September 21st, the world lost a fantastic visionary, photographer, filmmaker, and eroticist when Honey Lee Cottrell passed away from pancreatic cancer. Honey Lee was a fierce butch lesbian, perhaps most widely known for coining and defining "the Lesbian Gaze."
According to Curve Magazine, the Lesbian Gaze is:
"...how lesbians see each other irrespective of and in defiance of men. It’s how lesbians see each other when we are alone and we are the only ones looking. It’s how lesbians see each other as butch and femme, androgynous and gender-non-conforming and not as the male gaze defines us." Read more.
Or, as Cottrell herself described it:
“The lesbian gaze meant that there was a contemplation, a restraint, a sincerity and a warrior-quality. This lesbian look was compelling. While your heterosexual woman model might compel the rest of the world to look at her, a lesbian was addressing you.”
Out Magazine succinctly yet reverently some up her career:
"Cottrell revolutionized the female nude, validated women’s right to pleasure, and opened possibilities for women to see themselves and their desires in new ways through her engagement in a variety of feminist, artistic, and sex education projects." Read more.
Some of Cottrell's legendary work, which will be preserved at Cornell University in New York, includes:
- "Sweet Dreams" (director)
- On Our Backs Magazine (photographer, 7 years)
- I am My Lover (co-author)
- Fatale Video, the first lesbian-created erotic movie company (cinematographer)