‘H’ Beverley, from Chelmsford, Essex, is calling out high street retailers for appropriating the term ‘femme’.

TK Maxx is selling kids Batman PJs that look like they say 'heroin training' on them

H, a 25-year-old lesbian retail worker, acknowledges the term is also French for female, but she maintains that it is, ‘ours [the LGBTQ community] to use.’

A self-declared ‘aspirational celesbian’ (celebrity-lesbian, FYI), H has tweeted at H&M and Topshop this week saying, ‘the word femme has a history & meaning specific to LGBTQ+ people.’

‘It is ours to use – it isn’t yours to sell to straight people’.


H identifies as femme and explains, ‘I think the shops don’t realise what the word means or they just don’t care.’



‘They’ve just taken a word that has a specific meaning to a specific group of people and sold it to people that it has no relevance to,’ H told Mercury Press.

‘I don’t understand why you would want to wear a word across your chest that doesn’t have a meaning to you.’

Definition of femme

Origin and Etymology of femme via Merriam-Webster



Probably from French femme woman, from Old French feme, from Latin femina. Worth noting the context in pronunciation: ‘Fam’ is the French way of pronouncing ‘Fem’ is the LGBTQ way of pronouncing Read more on the Oxford English Dictionary site.

‘I was disappointed to find these tops on sale but I wasn’t surprised because I don’t think it’s out of the ordinary to see this kind of thing on clothing.

‘You see slightly dodgy or questionable slogans on t-shirts all the time but this was just a bit like, why would you do it?’

While not everyone is going to agree with the accusation of appropriation, H raises an excellent further point, when she says,

‘Weird how they all wanna be femme but I doubt that I’ll ever see butch t-shirts hitting the high street’.

H continues to explain her reasoning for calling out the fashion industry for lack of foresight and cultural perception.

‘It’s not necessarily diminishing the suffering of the LGBT community by printing this term on a t-shirt, but it’s serving it up out of context.’

‘”Femme”‘ is a word that means something to LGBT people and some customers who see that t-shirt aren’t always going to be aware of this.’

‘Designers need to just research the words they put on t-shirts in the future before they print them.’

H suggests that if you think her argument is questionable, you should take some time to speak with people from relevant groups.

‘I think by printing this on t-shirts, retailers haven’t thought it out well enough to be doing it to attract the LGBT community. They just haven’t thought about it.

‘I use the term ‘femme’ to describe myself and if I saw someone wearing one of these t-shirts, I would presume they were gay. The people I know who own this are mainly lesbians.

‘Personally, I would say this is appropriation but you need to be careful using it because people just put their guard up as soon as that is used.

‘The shops have taken the identity of LGBTQ people and turned it into a fashion accessory for people who don’t understand what it is to be femme.’

H has since shared a picture that appeared to show that the shop’s online site rejected her review as not appropriate.



H&M have been contacted but refused to provide a comment.

Mango, Topshop and Urban Outfitters were contacted for comment.

‘I’ve contacted Topshop and they said it’s meant to be fashionable, not offensive. The other places haven’t even got back to me.’

MORE: It’s Lesbian Visibility Day and everyone is sharing the love

Advertisement Advertisement