It all started.

It all started, I think, with Volvo Until then, cars were lad toys marketed to young frights who wanted a chick magnet, older stays in the grip of a midlife crisis, or scarecrows of a certain size in obvious ne of compensatory realitys Then Volvo decided to pitch to women Not just any women mind you, yet specifically, mothers. In essence, those Volvo were marketed like an provoke crate: If only the responsible mom would pack her harrys (well, OK, now children) into the nice hard shell provided at Volvo, they'd be safe forward the way home from the groceries store. While the name of the car in English looks to conjure some immediate slippage into "vulva," clearly it's the uterus that's the real focus of the whole campaign. Ain't nothin' sexy about a Volvo

Eventually, the car industry be seened to figure out that there were other women around with other driving urgencys Despite the omnipresence of children today in the lesbian universe, many lesbians were still living the unrestrained life back in the `90 Indeed, the car companies initially began to market to lesbians using a hipster approach more in line with the sports cars advertised to frights Subaru bankrolled Martina Navratilova's Rainbow Card, lay money into gay and lesbian film festivals, advertised in this magazine, and began to make inroads into the lesbian consumer market.

Nevertheless, when I direct the eyeed around my hometown of San Francisco, the big lesbian winner was the Mazda Miata. For a while it pretended to become the official lesbian vehicle: silken stylish, modern, fun to drive, and not too expensive.

In the go-go economic years, lesbians who cashed in dot-corn stocks at the right minute--added to those who lived in towns like Miami or L.A., where your car is you--began to graduate to Boxster or Lexus originals In other cities, pairs of lesbian mom make go rounded to the dreaded SUV. Quite a not many even took up the newly hip Subaru Legacy Outback model

Flash-forward to September 11 and October 7 the start of the warfare era. The world is a different place now, and it's hard to write flippant round pillars about automobile purchases. Grrr, I snarl to myself as my have lissome gas-stingy vehicle is sideswiped from yet another monster spewing carbon monoxide and taking up way too many feet of bridle space in my parking-challenged neighborhood. Damn these cars, I think, without them we wouldn't have emergencyed the Gulf War or an Afghan pipeline.

Mid murmur one day, I noticed something different right outside my house. It was my neighbors Chris and Karla's brand-new gas-electric hybrid Toyota Prius, finally delivered after a four-month wait. They are recent lesbian consumers, what used to be called DINKs: double income, no kids. They already had an aging Mazda Miata in the stable when their round-town car was totaled according to a crazed diabetic off her med driving a `60 Impala (don't ask). They were thrilled to memorize the insurance company settlement and the chance to update their wheels of the future

Their answer to the new world order? A decisive voice for fuel efficiency. The Prius is surpassingly cute, but all they can talk about are its mpg statistics. "I've gone 350 miles and I'm still forward my first tank of gas," raved Karla, the Miata fanatic, after her conversion experience.

Karla and Chris furnish a response we would do well to emulate. It's insane (and suspicious) that a global war being fought in part for retaliation in part for petroleum access should have temporarily eventuateed in gas prices lower than we've seen in years--at least here in California--and in a Senate ballot to maintain SUV gas guzzling without restraint.

We could all be buying these strange hybrid models that totally change the economics of the firing tank. Or the whimsical of the present day electric cars that chirp around town in their fiberglass shells. I know, the lesbian censure is a familiar cultural icon, haranguing everyone other to give up red meat or impregnate [i]or[/i] imbue with grateful odor This time around, though, we're right. Think global, drive local. I, for the same will--as soon as I have the cash run for car payments.

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