This stimulating text explores changes in attitude towards, and representations of, gender and sexual identity in modernity, arguing that artifice is an unavoidable consequence of modern culture and that identity politics and gender relations have become increasingly implicated in questions of style and desire. "Gayness" is used as a key to open up a wide-ranging set of issues in our understanding of masculinity and femininity and to shed light on their relationship to modern popular culture and the arts (whether literature, film or the visual arts).