The sapphic gaze: How Berlin’s lesbian renaissance is reclaiming desire

“In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female”, feminist film critic Laura Mulvey wrote in her now legendary articulation of the ‘male gaze’, back in 1975. It’s a pervasive truth, one that has fostered a constant state of female self-surveillance under the regime of compulsive heterosexuality. But what happens when this process is queered, transforming women from passive visual objects into active agents of desire?

Today, the answer can be found within the lesbian* community, where a queered gaze is redefining beauty and desire for a new generation. While the community isn’t immune to dominant beauty standards, its rejection of normative gender roles gives rise to alternative aesthetics – ones that resist viewing the body as a product for patriarchal or capitalist gain. Instead, beauty becomes a site of agency, where women and non-binary people take on active roles in shaping aesthetics, expressing desire, creating community, and reclaiming self-expression.

One such space is (lip) service, a Berlin-based lesbian* party co-founded by Gabriella Rowland and Lilian Aya Bencze. What began as an idea to create a sexier, more music-focused lesbian* night finally manifested itself when the duo moved from London to Berlin. In a city that has historically prioritised white, cis gay men over the sapphic, trans and POC communities, (lip) service proudly continues the queer tradition of fighting for space to exist diversely and without prejudice. For them, this has meant building a “safe(r) space dykes of all genders and their NB and trans siblings”.

2025 has been a busy year for (lip) service. Their popular bar night series launched back in the spring, and opening night drew a 600-strong crowd. The format was designed to make it easy for queer women and non-binary people to “meet, mingle and make-out”. Now, on a sunny Friday in late July, (lip) service is preparing to celebrate its first birthday. It’s also the day of Berlin Pride’s annual Dyke* March, an event which was last year marred by police brutality and anti-Palestine aggression. But today, the mood is defiant. Despite official organisers pulling out due to rumours of police enforcement, the streets of Neukölln are flooded with thousands of lesbians, marching for queer rights, and for Palestine. At the front, a banner reads: “No dyke is free until all dykes are free.”

Six hours later, I’m once again completely surrounded by dykes* – only this time, we’re not at a march, but at OXI, a FLINTA-friendly club in Friedrichshain that (lip) service is calling home for the night. The atmosphere is buzzing, tinged with a hint of nervous energy. Yet despite the novelty of an event like this in Berlin, it’s clear the crowd feels far more at ease here than they might elsewhere. “I feel like I can present more feminine here,” says Leo, who wears shaggy shoulder-length hair and wire-framed glasses. “Usually I feel [uncomfortably] sexualised by the male gaze. But around females, I feel sexy. I feel outgoing.”

I don’t want to be a girl to guys. I don’t want to be perceived as a woman by straight men

It’s a sentiment echoed later by Taja and their wife, both with dark hair slicked back, who explain they’re “happy to be sexualised by girls, but not boys.” Even Anna, who presents more masc with cropped hair and no makeup, tells me they feel freer to explore both femininity and masculinity in the absence of cis men: “I don’t want to be a girl to guys. I don’t want to be perceived as a woman by straight men.”

So what does sapphic beauty actually look like? “TikTok lesbians have made the stereotypical lesbian aesthetic popular again,” Lilian tells me, citing the mullets, minimal make-up, bleached hair, eyebrow slits, tattoos and piercings that have become core sapphic beauty stereotypes. But in recent years, as lesbian culture has trended, we’ve seen straight women co-opt these lesbian-adjacent visual signifiers to align themselves with alternative values. Meanwhile, with the growing availability of dyke-led spaces like these, the necessity of such signifiers, and “the seeking, the searching” that comes with it, as Lilian puts it, is changing.

There’s a sense that parts of Berlin’s lesbian community no longer feel the need to adhere to the visual codes that once served as crucial signals of safety and recognition. At (lip) service, the abundance of androgynous haircuts, tattoos, piercings – and the noticeable absence of makeup – suggests that many queer women still embrace these long-held markers of identity. But the aesthetic landscape is far less rigid now. Tonight, it’s a fluid mix of mainstream and alt-girl trends, masc and femme coding, and unapologetically personal style. “I think the liminal space is being adopted more, whereas in the past, the butch and femme dichotomy used to be more exaggerated,” says another partygoer, who chooses to be anonymous. “Now, there’s a combination of hyper masc and hyper femme that are coming together.”

The stereotypical aesthetics of lesbian beauty still remain, and yet they feel more malleable than they used to be, more intertwined with the broad spectrum of culture. There are lesbians here that are distinctly normie, with long hair and shimmery eyeshadow, butches covered in piercings and tattoos, and dolls with bleached eyebrows and dramatic smoky eyes. It’s as if the sapphic gaze isn’t defined by a fixed aesthetic or beauty standard, but by its active state. Queer women and trans people are reclaiming the gaze as their own, becoming not just subjects of their own desire, but agents of it. It’s an energy exchange that feels mutual, feels collective. 

For some, it simply means being able to participate in the community at all. As I wander through the club’s maze-like corridors, there seems to be a different couple kissing around every corner. Eventually, I find myself back in the smoking area, where I sit beside Jee Hea and her girlfriend – matching mullets, one bleached, one dark, side by side. Jee Hea, who moved to Berlin from Korea, tells me about home, where “you’re not allowed to be gay,” placing a hand gently on her chest. “It feels happy to be here,” she says. To just be.