Britney and Madonna did it to shock. Katy Perry sang about it to get attention. Miley Cyrus pretend-pashed a female dancer on Britain’s Got Talent as part of her ongoing campaign to prove she’s Not A Little Girl Anymore. And I’m not entirely sure why Sandra Bullock likes to plant one on the ladies whenever she wins an award.

It seems the only celebrities who aren’t engaging in a little public lesbianism are the ones who, you know, actually have sex with women. You and I may be bored to death of it, but as someone who works in media, I can tell you that faux-lesbianism is up there with sex tapes and Justin Bieber when it comes to guaranteed clicks.

That’s not why I’m writing about it, though.

I’m writing about it because last week’s pash fest happened to coincide with my presentation at the Challenging Politics conference in Brisbane, which looked at media representations of teens and twentysomething sexuality.

Everyone may love a fake lesbian, but no one, it seems, loves one as much as men’s magazines, in which models routinely crawl over one another in wrestling-meets-foreplay poses, and “real girls” tell stories of the time they cooked naked with their best friend while their dad sat watching TV in the next room, or how much fun it was to romp naked on the beach with their superhot female friends, treating the onlookers to a good perve on their “sexy, wet, bodies”.

That (some) heterosexual men like to fantasise about lesbian encounters is a cliche even older than celebrity faux-pashes. It’s been put down to voyeurism, homophobia/the freedom to fantasise about women in sexual situations without having to worry about being “gay”, and - of course - the possibility that you might be able to join in.

The real fantasy these magazines are selling the reader isn’t the visage of airbrushed, implanted bodies, but the idea that the “hot chicks” they see on the street would have sex with them in the right circumstances and with the right “lines”. Michael Kimmel writes about this in his excellent book, Guyland:

Men are eager - even desperate- to believe that those college girls, the ones who are their equals in chemistry class, on the debating team, or even on the soccer field, are really, underneath it all, “just girls” who are happy to bare their breasts and let men look.

In the men’s mag context, faux-lesbianism is a part of this availability fantasy. It’s designed to suggest that the women featured are so uninhibited and unable to control their desire that it burst out in every direction, to encompass even their usually platonic female friends. That almost every woman featured in these magazines has these desires or these experiences suggests a world of endless sexual possibility and adventure.

(What’s interesting is that media targeted at women is rather less keen on faux-lesbianism - and even less keen still on actual lesbianism. When a reader asks: “I have a boyfriend but girl-on-girl porn turns me on. Am I a lesbian?” she is reassured: ”Probably not. It’s more likely you’re just turned on by the sensuality of what you see.”)

But celebrity faux-lesbianism seems to be playing at something else. It’s like a lot of other things in our culture that once signaled sex and have since been drained of any such meaning for those who participate in and consume them - short skirts, pole dancing, Beyonce and Lady Gaga videos. The arousal it conjures isn’t about physical desire per se, but about the thrill of doing or viewing something “transgressive”.

Unlike the men’s mag girls, I never feel like anyone’s actually meant to be turned on by these displays. They serve purely as means for the celebrity in question to show herself to be adventurous, uninhibited, and a little bit “naughty” within some very confined parameters.

In an attention economy, it’s a sure fire way to cash in.

Related: How ZOO magazine got its name
Britney, Christina and the upside of raunch
Katy Perry and heteronormativity

Elsewhere: Remember when lesbian kisses actually meant you were a lesbian? (Defamer)
I kissed a girl. Because I had something to sell. (Mama Mia)