Used in psychoanalysis to designate the psychological phenomenon of adopting an expected social role or persona that conflicts with an inner desire. It is a way of maintaining appearances and deflecting attention. It was first used as a concept by the British psychoanalyst Joan RiviĂšre in a paper entitled âWomanliness as Masqueradeâ (1929), which explores a phenomenon she described as common in which men and women who are mainly heterosexual display characteristics typical of the opposite sex. She was particularly interested, though, in the more complex case whereby women---her main focus---who desire masculinity, by which she seems to mean a masculine position of power, feel they have to exaggerate their femininity in order to mask their ambition out of fear of retribution from men who would perceive that desire as castrating. On this view of things, as Mary Ann Doane has theorized in a widely cited essay published in the film studies journal Screen, âFilm and the Masqueradeâ (1982), women use the masquerade of exaggerated femininity in order to disguise their own misaligned femininity, i.e. a femininity that is composed of a greater than ânormalâ amount of masculinity. In cinema, Doane argues, this type of femininity is aligned with the character type known as the femme fatale and is generally treated as evil or, at best, ambivalent.