Maybe All Real Housewives Are Bisexual

There comes a time in every Real Housewives franchise, it seems, when one Housewife asks the rest of the Wives whether they would ever be with a woman. It’s presented as a hypothetical, a safe way for mostly heterosexual-identifying women to imagine their sexuality in a different light. Some Wives take the question seriously and open up about past sexual experiences or relationships with women. Some double down on their straightness explicitly by saying never or implicitly by regarding queerness as some costume to try on. The latest instance of this social tradition occurs in this week’s episode of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. While at an outdoor wine tasting in Ojai, longtime cast member Kyle Richards asks the group if they’d ever date a woman. It feels important to note the women aren’t talking about anything remotely related to this. It’s completely and totally out of nowhere.

Garcelle Beauvais says she indeed thinks about it sometimes, which doesn’t really surprise me. She has talked about hooking up with women in the past. Kyle, meanwhile, also says she is open to it. It seems like the whole reason she posed this question was so she could answer it. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it Kyle coming out necessarily; after all, it’s still couched in the hypothetical. But that’s also why it really does seem like she’s trying to say something real about her sexuality. By doing so in the context of just a fun little party question, there’s a layer of distance there.

It’s also made more interesting by the fact that rumors have been circulating behind-the-scenes about Kyle being in a relationship with country singer Morgan Wade. Neither woman has commented publicly on her sexuality, and Kyle and Morgan have dismissed the rumors while also cheekily leaning into them in a music video for one of Morgan’s songs.

Next, Kyle and fellow cast member Dorit Kemsley, for some reason, decide to…demonstrate scissoring? And now with their hands like normal people but quite literally on the ground, scissoring with their clothes on.

Suddenly, they’re back to seeming super straight with this one. But Kyle bringing up scissoring in the first place, especially against the backdrop of these Morgan rumors, which some of the other women including Dorit and Garcelle seem to believe on some level, does make it seem like she’s trying to tell us something here. If nothing else, she at least seems to have some curiosity about lesbian sex!

This moment does support my theory that all or most Real Housewives are bisexual. The homosocial environments the shows often place these women in often lead to homoerotic physical intimacy. And sometimes it’s played for a cheap joke, like this scissoring scene, but other times there’s also something deeper there, the intense bonds between the women sometimes existing in a more nebulous realm than mere friendship. Real Housewives of Beverly Hills in particular is no stranger to dyke drama; Denise Richards left the show because of it.

So many of these reality shows are about performing femininity in specific ways, and it’s fascinating that the longer a franchise has been on, the more we see the Housewives start to question some of the roles and expectations they’ve been slotted into. It remains to be seen if this is building to a late-in-life coming out storyline for Kyle, but I really think it could be! I’ll be tracking closely and reporting as Bravo Dyke when needed.

Also, I mean, did anyone see the way Kyle and Morgan were feeding each other fruit?! 👀

Monica Gave the Gays Everything They Want in the “Salt Lake City” Finale

Over here at Bravo Dyke HQ, I tend to mostly focus on covering any Sapphic happenings in the Real Housewives extended Bravo universe, even when those happenings are somewhat of a stretch. Every once in a while though, this Bravoverse delivers a moment so fork-tender juicy, so delicious that it breaks into larger cultural discourse beyond my group chats and social media. This was certainly the case with Scandoval, the Vanderpump Rules affair that even people who do not watch any of these shows heard about, perhaps against their will, but inspiring some to go back and watch all ten seasons for the first time just to understand what all the tomtomfoolery was about.

This latest slice of group chat-exploding Bravo drama, though, I personally find more entertaining than Scandoval. It has similarly inspired those behind on Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, which has largely been a snooze following the explosive moment of one of its cast members going to federal prison for scamming elderly people, to catch the fuck up. Vulture has created an entire mini-section on its homepage dedicated to coverage of the season four finale where it all went down. And as our intrepid Bravo Dyke, I must weigh in, because that was one of the best edited and crafted episodes of Real Housewives we’ve seen in a minute.

The structure of the episode brings to mind…How To Get Away With Murder in its nonlinear approach that defies logical conventions of time and space. We open on a stormy sky. Heather Gay stands on a beach, saying she has something important to tell the other women. We then jump into a foreshadowing montage of moments to come at episode’s end, brief bursts of decontextualized dialogue shouted by each of the women around a table. Then we jump back to eight hours earlier. Most of the day unfolds like a regular episode of Salt Lake City. There’s some processing of the evening before’s outburst, which had given us this Heather Gay gem:

We move linearly for a bit. The women go shopping. When they’re done, the stormy sky appears again. We then do a one-hour time jump into the future, when Heather receives an apparently Very Important Phone Call. This scene was teased at the very beginning of the season. It basically features producers and the camera crew scrambling into Heather’s room in the Bermuda vacation home where this is all going down, and Heather promptly kicking them all out. We catch snippets of disbelief from Heather over whatever she’s hearing on the phone but not much else. Heather kicks the crew out of her room. Then the screen reads FOUR HOURS LATER. This episode could be used as a word problem on a math test teaching children how to track time. WOULD YOU PASS?

At this point, the women are sitting down for the dinner teased at the beginning of the episode. In the words of Scheana Shay, it’s all happening. But what IS it?! Because at first, the dinner is pretty regular Housewives fodder. Someone proposes a game, as these women are wont to do. There are two kinds of games played in the Housewives universe: games where everyone is supposed to reveal how they like to fuck and games where everyone tells each other what they dislike about each other. Both are equally erotic if you ask me. This game is of the latter category. Heather has placed effigies resembling each of the women in front of everyone. They have to take turns asking the person whose effigy they have to answer an “unsolved mystery” about them. These women have a very loose grip on what a mystery is.

But it doesn’t really matter, because this is all ruse! When it’s Heather’s turn, she turns to Monica. Monica was Salt Lake City‘s latest rookie Housewife this season, and she honestly made quite the splash throughout, unfiltered in her testimonials, frequently coming for the more veteran wives, introducing who might be the new reigning Bad Mom of Bravo via her mother, and down for a fun time. But oh how that splash was about to become a tsunami.

We then jump to TWO HOURS before this, back to Heather on the beach like the episode’s opening. So that places us two hours before dinner and two hours after Heather received that phone call I think? Math has never been my strong suit. Heather, wearing what I can only describe as an Ancient Greek toga and very large sunglasses, summons the cast members who have been on the show since season one: Meredith, Lisa, and Whitney. She reveals to them that Monica is the person behind Reality Von Tease, an Instagram gossip account that was used to take down former cast member Jen Shah but that also has spread rumors about all of these women. We’re treated to a series of flashbacks as Heather, Sherlock Holmes of our time, details how she was able to unravel this reveal. Parts of Monica’s story didn’t add up. She used multiple last names at Heather’s med spa salon Beauty Lab and had unpaid balances. She also seemed to use information on the other Wives as currency (to be fair, they all do that, so this is hardly a damning allegation). Things came to a head when Heather’s hairstylist Tanesha, also apparently part of Reality Von Tease, turned on Monica and exposed her, resulting in that phone call. Flashbacks within flashbacks! Oh, we’re cooking.

The whole scene looks like Big Little Lies, the wind and Meredith’s oversized shawl practically supporting characters:

Now, we’re back at the dinner. The setup. All the women (minus newcomer Angie, who Heather didn’t include in the beachside convention) know the truth. And Heather is about to expose it. She accuses Monica of being Reality Von Tease. She initially denies it, before admitting it’s true but not entirely true. Housewives and their semantics. She claims to just be one of the people behind Reality Von Tease; it’s a collective. She also claims she only contributed to the takedown of Jen Shah, scammer of the elderly, and did not participate in any ridicule or rumor-spreading when it came to the other women. Heather suggests Monica infiltrated the group, applying to be on the show so she could further dig up dirt and humiliate the rest of them.

The whole time, Monica largely keeps her cool while the women hurl words of disdain her way. Real Housewives franchises often have villain arcs for characters, but I cannot recall any other instance of a SECRET VILLAIN. And that’s exactly how all this unfolds: Monica is giving secret villain! She’s giving Evil All Along! Certainly, there have been Housewives who have turned out to be Very Bad, like the aforementioned scammer of elders as well as others with unsavory business liaisons. But someone who has specifically haunted the Housewives themselves in secret and anonymously for a long period of time? This is a new type of villain reveal for these shows.

As a villain hidden in plain sight, she’s really channeling my favorite Erika Jayne quote of all time:

Monica likens herself to Gossip Girl (I need a hat that reads “Even Gossip Girl couldn’t stay Gossip Girl forever” STAT), but the women react to all this as if she’s actually Ghostface removing her mask after a killing spree. Housewives live and die by their reputations, by their social status. Plenty of gossip accounts exist around the periphery of the shows, and while they aren’t really supposed to break the fourth wall while filming, the veil of reality TV is a fickle shroud as wind swept as the shawls worn by the women at this dinner. Sometimes, and increasingly recently, the veil lifts. By arguing about Monica as Reality Von Tease, the Real Housewives are arguing both about artifice and about something that feels very real to them. They’re appalled that someone who has participated in the gossip about their storylines on the show could somehow work her way into living amid that gossip.

I said earlier that this hits better than Scandoval, and I mean it. I think there’s a key different in production. Scandoval news broke outside of filming. In fact, the season was pretty much wrapped when it was leaked to the press that Tom Sandoval cheated on long-time girlfriend Ariana with fellow cast member Raquel. Production then picked the cameras back up to film the cast reckoning with the aftermath, and while it was raw, unbridled drama, it was also largely reactionary to viewer discourse that was already happening. We knew what was coming before we watched. Editing tried to heighten certain moments, but it was all, well, ultimately a little flat and contrived! There were juicier moments from earlier in the season, filmed before the news broke but airing after so that there was a level of dramatic irony. When Raquel asked Ariana about her sex life with Tom, we all recoiled, knowing Raquel was already sleeping with him even if Ariana didn’t yet.

Monica’s identity as Reality Von Tease, however, stayed in the vault rather than leaking to the press mid-season. None of us knew what was coming. The construction of the episode — from the camerawork to the editing — is genuinely thrilling. All those flash forwards and flashbacks! Dramatized storm effects! The WIND and the SHAWLS.

behind the scenes pic of Martin Scorsese on set, filming the #RHOSLC finale pic.twitter.com/nJxoPoKCvA

— Ryan (@ryanntweets_) January 3, 2024

The times when the Real Housewives shows are the most thrilling are the times when they’re most narratively evocative of soap operas. Much like daytime soaps, when it comes to Housewives, we’re following the same “characters” for a very long time — over a decade, in many cases. Salt Lake City is in its nascent stages compared to more long-running franchises, but it has resembled a soap from its start, from the weird lighting everywhere in Utah seems to have to the fact that it opens with a Housewife who is married to her step-grandfather. A secret villain reveal is the stuff of soap operas. So is a mysterious black eye, which was one of Heather’s unsolved mysteries of last season. That finally gets answered here in the season four finale, too. When confronting Monica, Heather finally comes forward and says she spent over a year on book tour protecting Jen by not telling people it was her who gave Heather the black eye last season. A flashback (another flashback!) here reveals just how obvious that truth was all along, but I think we were all understandably in denial about the fact that one Housewife would literally assault another during filming…even if it’s technically something we’ve seen before. The Monica reveal is entertaining; the black eye reveal is disturbing. And not even just because the incident happened in the first place but because Heather has indeed been adamant she didn’t remember how it occurred.

If you’re reading this and don’t watch these types of shows, maybe the drama of the Monica reveal sounds inane; maybe it sounds confounding; maybe it sounds thrilling. I think all are correct responses. Watching reality television, as I write about frequently in these Bravo Dyke missives, is a complex viewing experience. People are exploited; their worst tendencies come out; whole lives are ruined. On the one hand, it’s easy to be sympathetic to the other women on Salt Lake City who have been unknowingly fraternizing with a woman who has, either directly or passively, spread rumors about them online and perhaps even surveilled them prior to joining the show herself. On the other hand, their reaction is so outsized, too, so myopic. To them, the greatest crime a person can commit is trolling anonymously online. To them, interpersonal betrayal is akin to being a killer in a slasher movie. They accuse Monica of invading their privacy, but how much privacy does one really have when signing up to be on a reality television program?

Real Housewives is supposedly slice-of-life reality television, but it’s viewed best when viewed as a game. Monica easily won the season, though I’m sure the other women would prefer the narrative that they banded together and briefly put their differences aside to confront an infiltrator. The truth is, this season would have been nothing without its secret villain click clacking her acrylic nails to fire off anonymous posts in the shadows. This drama is juicy precisely because it’s kind of silly! There’s no affair, no criminal conspiracy. This is Gossip Girl fluff, but it has ruffled their feathers in such ways so as to make it feel as if the stakes are mob-movie high.

There is no real-life counterpart for this drama, not really. I guess it’d be as if someone who was anonymously spreading negative rumors about your friend group then suddenly became a member of your friend group? Has that happened to you? If so, I want to hear about it! But in general, I think the Salt Lake City finale’s villain reveal entertains because it doesn’t feel real, because it’s something so specific to reality television and the secondary texts like the blogs, social media posts, and tabloid headlines it spawns. The words “Reality Von Tease” don’t hold much meaning for anyone on the outside. But to the women, it’s the boogeyman who has haunted them.

While it seems like every other Bravo show is scrambling to participate in the spectacle of affairs that made Scandoval so appealing to viewers, this is a twist that cannot really be replicated. “Housewives is camp” gets thrown around a lot, oftentimes erroneously. But I think it’s difficult to deny the camp of this finale.

How Many Sapphic Scandals Will Be in the New Season of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills?

TWO Bravo Dyke posts in one day? How did I get so lucky?! We dropped by Real Housewives of New York earlier today to cover Jenna Lyons’ trip to Henrietta Hudson, and now we’re moving across the coast to Beverly Hills.

Real Housewives of Beverly Hills has had its fair share of homoerotic imagery and subtextually queer conflict throughout its more than a decade of drama, but it wasn’t until season 10 of the series that we got an explicitly queer storyline in the form of a…rumored love triangle involving the actress Denise Richards? Former Housewife Brandi Glanville came out as bisexual during that season as part of this storyline, claiming to have had a sexual relationship with Denise, which eventually led to Denise leaving the show. After stepping out of the spotlight a bit — and continuing to deny Brandi’s version of what happened between them — Denise is back for the 13th season of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, making quite the entrance in the season’s trailer, which dropped yesterday. Take a look:

Denise will just be a “Friend of the Wives,” Bravo fandom parlance for a supporting cast member rather than a fulltime Housewife. It’s unclear exactly how or when we’ll pick up the threads of the dyke drama between her and Brandi over the course of the season, but it’s likely it’ll be addressed at least tangentially since it played such a huge role in Denise’s final season. We’ll always have “Bravo Bravo fucking Bravo.”

But Denise’s appearance in the trailer is actually NOT the most sapphically charged moment. The trailer opens with the tabloid headlines about a separation between Mauricio and Kyle (Bravo really is leaning into these dramatic headlines opening post-Scandoval…I have a feeling it’ll eventually get old, but for now, I’m living for the drama). When those headlines first surfaced earlier this year, rumors also started swirling about Kyle — who has been on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills since the beginning — and the country musician Morgan Wade. Kyle and Morgan have subsequently leaned in to those rumors (while vaguely denying them), with Kyle appearing as the hot MILF next door in Morgan’s latest music video.

“How did you guys meet?” someone asks Kyle when she introduces Morgan. “She stalked me,” Morgan jokes. Indeed, Kyle initially became obsessed with Morgan’s music, followed her on Instagram, and then Morgan initiated a conversation.

“You put the first letter of your name on her body?” Dorit asks Kyle in the trailer before we indeed cut to Kyle tattooing her initial onto Morgan, a detail some of the Bravo investigator girlies had already clocked earlier this summer.

“I’m just glad it’s you out there having the affair,” Kyle’s husband says in the trailer, presumably joking and trying to make light of the situation. “For once, it’s me,” Kyle says, alluding to past instances of there being tabloid rumors of Mauricio having an affair.

I genuinely can’t tell how much weight to give the rumors of this relationship, but I do think we’ll learn a lot more once the season starts airing. Regardless, the new season looks spicy.

Real Housewives of New York Goes to the Dyke Bar

It feels like there’s never been a better time to be a self-described Bravo Dyke. Sapphic scandals among the Housewives have really ramped up in this universe in recent years. And, notably, we have the openly gay Jenna Lyons dyking up the rebooted Real Housewives of New York. Jenna is being pretty private about her personal life, so we haven’t had a lot of explicitly queer content outside of her recounting her well known coming out story. But in the most recent episode, Jenna goes to the iconic Henrietta Hudson, the NYC queer bar that has been around since the early 90s. Housewives! They’re just like us! (Okay, fine, Jenna Lyons’ extreme wealth is not relatable, but her social anxiety, tendency to be perplexed when thrust into gatherings with primarily straight women, and nostalgic attachment to Henrietta Hudson very much are.)

One of my favorite Manhattan past times when I lived in New York was sitting at the bar across the street from Henrietta late at night and witnessing various dramas unfold just outside Hens. I saw many a tearful hailing of a cab and literal breakups occur on that small stretch of sidewalk. Henrietta has a long and storied history, and now it can add this accomplishment to its hallowed homosexual halls: appearing in an episode of Real Housewives of New York.

In the episode’s opening act, we watch Jenna walk up that very familiar stretch of sidewalk and enter the recently rebranded Henrietta, where she meets fellow castmate Brynn Whitfield, who has been very flirty with Jenna all season.

“Henrietta Hudson’s was a place I went when I first came out, so it holds a special place in my heart,” Jenna shares in testimonial. She suggests she brought Brynn along as a wingwoman because she’s so shy and has never actually picked up someone while out. Brynn is…doing a little too much throughout the scene. She puts on fashion gloves at one point and says she’s “ready to fingerbang.” Jenna says Brynn is “obviously straight,” but Brynn recently said something on Watch What Happens Live that could suggest otherwise.

Brynn thinks Jenna should date someone significantly younger than her as a typical NYC love story, and I agree!!!!!!!! Jenna indeed as a result flirts with a much younger woman and wonders in testimonial if perhaps she’s looking for a MILF. Yes, Jenna! You’re basically the ultimate Mommi! Embrace it! (Jenna is currently dating photographer Cass Bird, who is close in age to her.)

It is very funny to watch these two glamorous reality TV women exist in the same space where I’ve chased shots of well tequila with Bud Light before taking to the sweaty dance floor. There’s some burlesque happening, and Jenna jumps right in, giving her dollars to dancers and then taking to the stage herself to give a little strip tease. She has a head start in the sense that her shirts are quite literally always unbuttoned as much as possible, part of her signature power dyke look.

Perhaps my favorite gay easter egg of these Henrietta scenes is the fact that the co-hosts of the Dyking Out podcast — comedians Carolyn Bergier and Melody Kamali — are visible in the background throughout. They posted this behind-the-scenes pic after filming:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Dyking Out 🌈 (@dykingout)

I am extremely jealous!!!!!

As annoying as I’m sure some of the other women would be, I super wish this had been a full cast outing to Henrietta Hudson. Unfortunately, the episode is a bit of a dud post-Henrietta. Also, y’all, WHAT is going on with Jessel and her husband Pavit???? I feel like they’re both always joking about him cheating on her? It’s very cursed heterosexual energy!

I think Jenna and Brynn should make the gay bar rounds and go to Ginger’s (my personal fav), Cubbyhole, and the new Mary’s Bar. And I’d love to see Jenna in more dating contexts and wonder if we’re going to see her relationship with Cass Bird unfold in-season. Less superficial fights, more gay shit please!

Bravo Dyke Obsessively Breaks Down the Lesbian Fantasy Morgan Wade/Kyle Richards Music Video

Bravo Dykes, assemble!!!! Perhaps you have been wondering why I haven’t yet wandered into the waters of the ongoing rumors about queer country music singer Morgan Wade and Real Housewives of Beverly Hills OG Kyle Richards possibly being in a relationship together. Listen, I’ve left these rumors to the Bravo gossip accounts to obsessively document and try to prove. Over here at Bravo Dyke Headquarters, we try to stick to things that unfold in the main text — a.k.a. on screen rather than the secondary text of social media. If Morgan shows up in the next season of Beverly Hills, you better believe I’ll be all over it.

But now, I simply must dive in. Because a full-length music video for Morgan’s song “Fall in Loe With Me” starring Kyle Richards as her MILFy next door neighbor who she has a torrid suburban summer affair with? Yeah, we’re gonna count that as main text.

As a brief overview: When Morgan started showing up more and more in Kyle’s Instagram life earlier this year, certain queer viewers went…hmmmm. But Kyle’s marriage to Mauricio has always seemed like a bedrock of heterosexual stability — easily one of the last Bravo marriages anyone thought would ever change, up there with Lisa Vanderpump and Ken Todd. Then, there were shocking reports of a potential separation between Kyle and Mauricio, reports the couple denied.

Kyle and Morgan then went live on Instagram to shoot down rumors of their courtship. Kyle says she became obsessed with Morgan’s music, listened to it on repeat, followed her on Instagram, and then received a DM from Morgan asking why she’d followed her. From there, an intense friendship was sparked. Morgan and Kyle then further denied the dating rumors by saying that actually they are merely going to play lovers in an upcoming music video of Morgan’s.

Well, that music video is here. And I’m here to break it down for you beat by beat. I gotta say, even though it does seem like Kyle and Morgan are leaning into the rumors for playful effect, it doesn’t really work toward making it seem like there’s NOTHING going on?!?!?! While they are “playing characters” in the video, I shall refer to them as Morgan and Kyle below for the sake of clarity.

We open on Morgan quite literally UNLOADING A U-HAUL. Do we think Kyle already knew jokes about U-Haul lesbians prior to hanging out with Morgan or did Morgan have to tell her? Also, it’s hard to make a shot of a U-Haul even gayer, but Morgan has accomplished exactly this by making the first box she lifts be the one labeled BARBELLS.

There’s a lot of Desperate Housewives-esque horny suburban voyeurism happening in this video, starting with this opening sequence of Kyle watching Morgan unload her U-Haul from afar.

Apparently, she likes what she sees. Because next thing we know, Kyle is click-clacking in her red gloves on the keys of a vintage typewriter, presumably writing a love note. The crumpled pages around her suggest she has gone through many drafts of said love note. She has to get this right! She spritzes it with perfume, seals it with a kiss, draws on a heart on the envelope with lipstick. She wants this letter to smell and taste like her. She’s also wearing a lock on her neck, and I have a feeling a certain new gay next door might hold the key to unlocking it.

Let’s go directly from sending and receiving one love note to taking a bath together SURE WHY NOT. The whole point of this video is fantasy, right?! The neighbors bathe together and also blow bubbles…while IN a bubble bath? Seems like too many bubbles if you ask me.

Now Morgan must simply take to the page and pen a song about taking a bubble bath while blowing bubbles with her new neighbor. I assume the song is called “Bubbles.” But what is Kyle doing next door whilst this songwriting sesh is transpiring?

WORKING OUT SENSUALLY IN 80S GARB AND HIGH HEELS. Obviously. Now it’s Morgan’s turn to watch.

And it seems Kyle likes to be watched, as she makes direct eye contact while tipping her workout visor (?) in Morgan’s direction. She’s also in the splits, which as anyone who has seen early seasons of Beverly Hills knows, is Kyle’s go-to move when she’s wasted (along with swinging her ponytail around).

Next is the part of the music video where EVERYONE IS WET.

Just, like, literally wet. Water everywhere.

Then Morgan pulls Kyle in for the first of several almost-kisses in the music video. Can I get didactic for a moment? I think that if there’s a rumor you’re dating someone and you want to be cheeky about those rumors by starring in a sexy lesbian fantasy music video together then…why not just go for the actual kiss at that point? The fact that they just let their lips HOVER over each other instead of actually committing makes it seem, to me, like the rumors actually have MORE validity? And to actually kiss would be to enter the space of the “real” affair (if it really were happening). DOES THAT MAKE SENSE? AM I OVERTHINKING THIS?

Now we’re in the kitchen, but I don’t think any cooking is going to happen! Nope, just an array of fresh fruit fed to each other. Brings on a whole new meaning to GIRL DINNER. Also, more almost-kissing.

I, too, love fruit.

Then Morgan wakes up on her couch, implying this was all a dream? But also is surrounded by kiss-sealed envelopes? So was it a dream or was she just really tired from all that fruit-feeding they did together and therefore needed to take a quick nap at home????

Kyle comes over in a chest harness, and Morgan winks at the camera. And yes, I GET it. I know they’re both trying to squash the rumors by literally playacting the rumors out in the fantasy space of a music video steeped in fantasy. I know the wink is meant to tell us we’re all very silly for thinking any of this is REAL.

But tell me if I’m wrong: It really feels like it’s accidentally doing the opposite! I’ve seen Kyle in the Halloween movies; she’s not that good of an actor! And yet…here she is…acting…quite…awards worthily. And even if this is just an extreme version of queerbaiting, it works! I’m baited! And not even mad about it because the country camp laced with homoerotics feels made specifically for me! And if Kyle (54) and (28) do end up in an IRL gay age gap relationship, that’ll just be the cherry on top. Speaking of top, Kyle once said she’d be one if she were in a gay relationship:

this is the best thing that has ever happened to me!!!!!!!! pic.twitter.com/9EWq5YICRk

— kayla kumari upadhyaya (@KaylaKumari) December 13, 2015

(If you’re wondering if I have an archive of Gay Things That Have Happened or Been Said on Bravo Shows on hand at all times, I do. I do indeed.)

And if the rumors ARE true, I’ll have to admit Kyle wasn’t even on my Housewives Who Might Have a Late in Life Queer Awakening bingo card!!!!!!!!!!!!

You can watch the full video here:

Jenna Lyons Opens Up About Being Outed on Real Housewives of New York

Hello Bravo Dykes, and welcome to another recap of the new Real Housewives of New York. I figured it was only a matter of time before we delved into Jenna Lyons’ dramatic coming out story, which involves being outed by the New York Post, and sure enough, it’s only episode two and we’re going there!

The episode takes place in the Hamptons during the off-season, Erin having invited the other Housewives to a three-night girls trip. Resident gay Housewife Jenna Lyons is immediately perplexed by the concept of a girls trip. She has never really been on one, has never had a “sleepover” with other adult women who she was not sleeping with. But girls trips are a staple of Real Housewives life. In fact, they are the locus of most of the homoerotic activity that occurs on these shows. Jenna is perhaps correct to be trepidatious about a weekend away with a crew of ostensibly straight women. I would be, too, even if I would also be fascinated by it from an anthropological standpoint.

Why is it that straight women asking for your coming out story hits so different than fellow queer women? I mean, I know the answer to my own question, of course. Lines of inquiry about “coming out” and “discovering you’re gay” and “what it’s like to sleep with women” that come from straight mouths — even the most well intentioned among them — from a place of voyeurism and exotification. When queer people ask queer people the same exact questions, it comes from a place of relation and connection. I know the whole point of these early girls trips on a Housewives show is so the women can get to know each other better. And Jenna does seem to be the most inscrutable of the new cast, overshadowed by her public-facing persona. So it makes sense that her fellow Housewives want to get to know her. But still, I bristled at the ways they asked her about her coming out story and could sense her discomfort as well, even though I do think it’s important for her to be able to tell her side of things after having her own narrative scooped and packaged for her all those years ago.

In testimonial, Jenna says that something clicked in her when she turned 40 and realized just how unhappy she was in life. She was married at the time to her ex-husband, and they had a young son together. She says she knew she couldn’t live another 40 years in the same place she was. Around that time, one of her best friends was a queer woman, Courtney Crangi, who Jenna once asked casually about what it’s like to be with a woman. Courtney told her, and Jenna immediately became hot and bothered.

The RHONY girls ask Jenna if she ever came out, teeing her up to talk about the New York Post story, which the Housewives all pretend not to know about, but surely they all Googled each other before filming?! Then again, maybe not. Reality television attracts famously incurious, self-centered people. In fact, NONE OF THESE WOMEN KNOW WHO BILLIE JEAN KING IS????? Jenna tries to explain that she had no access to lesbianism at all for much of her life. Growing up, she knew men could be gay, but she didn’t even know women could be. Erin is perplexed by what Jenna’s saying: What do you mean? she asks when Jenna says gay women “weren’t a thing.” Jenna responds that the only widely visible lesbian when she was growing up was Billie Jean King, and the women are like who, and yes they’re all about a decade or more younger than Jenna, but WHAT! Yeah, I think Jenna is going to have a hard time explaining the confusing and sometimes illogical aspects of queerness and especially coming out to these women who don’t even know who Billie Jean King is and who also of course don’t even know the right questions to really ask about all these things. They want the juicy details, the same fodder the Post capitalized on when first outing her.

It really is a wild coming out story. Jenna had only been three weeks into her relationship with Courtney and was beginning the process of her divorce when a reporter from the Post called her work at J.Crew headquarters and asked her to confirm or deny whether she was in a relationship with a woman. Jenna confirmed it, and the story ran, thrusting her private life into the public eye. She tells the Housewives she’s seeing someone new but doesn’t want to share details about who they are. Some of the other women don’t like this; it’s always a little controversial when someone on the show starts dating someone who doesn’t want to be a part of the show. It also historically makes those relationships untenable. But it makes sense that Jenna would be wary of sharing too much on camera given her history. Her coming out was turned into a media story, so it never really was her own.

I wish we could have stayed in this conversation long enough for Jenna to be able to get into some of the other details of what it’s like to come out later in life and realize you’re gay from within a straight marriage, but the show much go on. And while cheese was the source of drama in episode one, episode two’s conflict swirls around…lingerie. The thing about Real Housewives girls trips is they’re always GAY AS HELL. I wrote about this recently when Taylor Armstrong came out as bisexual during a girls trip on Real Housewives of Orange County. Take these women out of their regular lives/contexts and place them in close quarters to each other, and they just immediately get horny! Jessel seemingly has wanted to come out the gate this season with the storyline of “I don’t have sex with my husband anymore,” and you know what? Good for her for making this her storyline. She should talk about it! The other women are shocked by the lack of sex in Jessel’s marriage, and Sai uses it as an excuse to get very flirty with Jessel, playing with her ponytail at dinner. Real Housewives franchises really do make it seem like straight women just looooooove to flirt with each other and say extremely sexual things to each other! I want to know everything Jenna is thinking in these moments!

To spice up the trip, Jenna gifts all the girls lingerie, but Jessel hates hers, an opinion she is not at all shy about sharing as she verbally and repeatedly trashes the gift Jenna gave her. It’s very uncomfortable! The social dynamics of this group are cursed! I’m hoping the arrival of Brynn — who missed out on day one of the trip because she was sick — injects a little more fun into this girls trip, which starts fine but could definitely use a little more chaos. I really hope Jenna does eventually come out of her shell a bit, but I know that’ll also require the other women to actually want to get to know her on a deeper level rather than just asking about the drama of her coming out story (though I am glad it’s talked about). I am, at least, pleasantly surprised that the other women aren’t as invasive and presumptive about Jenna’s sex life as the Miami Real Housewives are about bisexual Housewife Julia.

Jenna has existed in a lot of super hetero spaces, so I’m sure she’s used to being one of the only queer women in a room, but I am interested to see how it continues to play out and how often her queerness becomes a topic of discussion among the other women. I’m also fascinated by the slightly competitive vibe that has cropped up in terms of which other Housewife is closest with Jenna, which might have less to do with her being gay and more to do with her being the wealthiest and also most famous. But truly, throwing a gay woman in her fifties into this group of younger straight women is a dynamic I’m very uhhhhh interested in!!!!!! I just think Jenna needs to get a little more comfortable in the group and on camera before we really start to see anything super compelling from her.

P.S. Are any of my fellow Bravo Dykes watching Crappie Lake? I can’t be the only one who thinks there’s something je ne sais queer about it????? I know a core element of the premise is Luann and Sonja picking up younger guys, but there has always been something v gay about the Luann/Sonja dynamic, and I don’t think Sonja has been “joking” all these years about wanting to hook up with Lu! Anyway, maybe I’ll write something about it. But I’ll definitely be touching down periodically on RHONY so long as gay stuff keeps coming up!

Jenna Lyons Kicks Off Real Housewives of NYC Strong by Extolling Virtues of Gay Sex

Real Housewives of New York has returned after its long hiatus in its new form. Season 14 introduces us to six brand new Housewives who have never been a part of the franchise before, effectively rebooting the series and bringing a lot of its drama downtown and even into Brooklyn (not since the days of Alex “While You Are In High School, I Am In Brooklyn” McCord has a New York Housewife lived in Brooklyn). And the very first episode of this new endeavor has it all: chaotic talking heads, a gargantuan shoe closet, cheese-based drama, a sex game, and a brief celebration of gay sex.

As I’ve already reported on as the resident Bravo Dyke, queer fashion mogul Jenna Lyons is part of the cast this year. And while we don’t quite get any explicit Gay Drama yet, much of the second half of the episode takes place at her very fancy, fashion-filled apartment where we get a quick hit of what I’d call gay mischief. But before that, I simply have to comment on the fact that so far all of the drama in this franchise is food-based???? There are two fights in the premiere: one about a restaurant and one about cheese. The restaurant fight concerns an evening where one new Housewife, Erin Lichy, invites the other girls to a night at [REDACTED]. Two of the girls lie and say they’re busy and instead go to the restaurant Cipriani, which is eventually discovered by the Housewife they dipped out on (yes, “dip out” is now part of the Bravo lexicon, iykyk). Why am I redacting the name of the restaurant? BECAUSE BRAVO BLEEPED IT OUT EVERY TIME!!!! The women who lied to get out of the dinner read this restaurant for absolute filth, claiming at one point that it’s not 2004 and at another point it’s not 2012, suggesting this restaurant is out of style but out of style from WHICH DECADE we cannot be sure! I’m siding with Dame Brian Moylan, who theorizes they’re talking about Catch NYC, which would add a certain artistry to Brynn Whitfield’s line: “I wouldn’t be caught dead at [REDACTED].”

The other point of contention in the episode? That one Housewife was talking shit about another Housewife’s cheese plate, drama complicated by the fact that the shit-talking Housewife claims to have never even said this in the first place. Whether people are hating over cheese or lying over cheese, I actually fully embrace the mundanity of this argument! Cheese plate-based drama is, for once, relatable conflict to transpire on this show as it is not about, you know, private jets or Valentino blouses.

Jenna Lyons, in her gay mischief, hosts a party at her place where the theme is basically Cheese. She serves cheese fondue, and she serves a massive cheese plate — one that, ironically, I talked shit about! There were just so many uncut, unsliced HUNKS of cheese thrown upon that platter! Where is the effort! Where is the design? This is not the J.Crew of cheese plates I expected and craved! I do, however, covet her massively tall taper candles.

I also appreciate her commitment to gay mischief, quite literally embedding the source of tension in the group of women (which, again, is cheese) into the fabric of this girls night. She takes the mischief one step further by introducing a game, and there are only really two types of games played by Real Housewives: ones that are inherently geared toward stirring the pot or ones that are inherently geared toward sex. Real Housewives simply love to ask each other sexual questions! I think it’s devilishly chaotic (complimentary) of Jenna Lyons, a queer woman, to have a group of ostensibly straight women (crossing my fingers that at least one of them comes out as bisexual over the course of the season, because they all already seem quite drawn to Jenna, but they might just be turned on by her wealth) share their sexual preferences and desires. One of the questions on the conversation cards she distributes to each of them asks whether each of them identifies as more dominant or submissive in bed, and I wish she had just gone all out and asked ARE YOU A TOP OR A BOTTOM just to see how these women would malfunction in the face of the question.

Jenna bizarrely skirts around the question herself, saying something about how one does not necessarily need to choose when it comes to sex between women, which I guess can be true for some switches and more fluid folks but is not really true, Jenna! Just tell me if you’re a top, bottom, or switch, Jenna!!!!! My guess is top, though, based on what she says next which is that when it comes to lesbian sex, all parties finish every time. If she believes this to be true in her heart, she is a top, right? That is the delusional confidence of a top, right? It is true that queer sex is often less focused on who is getting off when and also does center the pleasure of both partners in a way that’s not intrinsic to heteronormative sex, but that also means that the orgasm does not have to be the be-all, end-all marker of good sex when it comes to queerness, and Jenna is sorta missing the point there. I agree with her; gay sex is great! Love it! I’m sure she has indeed had a more satisfying sex life than her fellow Housewives, which she again seems to believe with toply confidence. But is she saying EVERY time she has sex, BOTH partners come? EVERY time? EVERY TIME? I mean, good for her and for her lovers. But it just seems statistically unlikely.

Then again, I would not admit that to her fellow straight Housewives, so perhaps this is an issue of audience. She wants these straight women to believe queer sex is god-tier all the time always, and I support that platform. I just cannot figure out if she legitimately thinks lesbians never fake orgasms, because they do! Or maybe she just thinks they don’t with her.

So yeah, again, I don’t think she needs to come out and tell us she’s a top. It’s all right there in the text.

Programming Note: I won’t be covering every single episode of New RHONY, just the moments I’m compelled to write about because they feel sufficiently gay and/or sufficiently messy. Thanks for joining me on what is sure to be a wild ride!

Jenna Lyons Is Here for a More Queer Real Housewives of New York City

feature image of Jenna Lyons by JP Yim / Stringer via Getty Images

Finally, after many years of me declaring that the Real Housewives universe is inherently queer, we are living in a golden age of openly LGBTQ+ Real Housewives. I’m living my wildest Bravo Dyke dreams. The latest entry into this growing pool is Jenna Lyons, set to be a main cast member in the upcoming rebooted version of Real Housewives of New York City, a franchise that has been long in need of an overhaul. Season 14 of RHONY will introduce a slew of new (and absurdly wealthy) Housewives, including Lyons, the queer former creative director and president of massive fashion brand J.Crew. Here’s a quick primer on who Jenna Lyons is, why there was a media frenzy around her sexuality, and what we might expect in terms of Gay Drama from the upcoming season of RHONY.

In the above trailer for RHONY’s upcoming 14th season, a fellow new Housewife asks Lyons if she came out, and Lyons replies: “That was done for me by the New York Post.”

Indeed, in 2011, the New York Post outed Lyons in a tabloid piece about her divorce from her ex-husband and father of her child, Vincent Mazeau. The piece detailed rumors about Lyons falling in love with a woman and caused a flurry of media coverage — including significant conservative backlash. At the time, Lyons was the 43-year-old creative director and president of J.Crew, making her a hugely visible person in the global fashion industry. Her fashion influence at J.Crew was huge, particularly known for its impact on Michelle Obama’s closet.

Tabloids gobbled up the news of her being in a relationship with a woman like it was a capital-s Scandal. And while I don’t really think exceptionally wealthy white women like Lyons are at the top of the list of folks who shouldn’t be outed, it was a veritable shitshow.

A decade later, Lyons has been able to reclaim her narrative and the way she talks about her own queerness. In a piece for The Cut in 2021, she opened up about her journey and the lasting impact of that New York Post piece. She talks about falling for her good friend Courtney Crangi, the other half of all those tabloid pieces from 10 years prior, who was largely responsible for Lyons’ queer awakening, which was sharply interrupted by being outed. “Meanwhile, I had no idea what was going on with me,” Lyons says in the piece. “Was I straight? Was I gay? Was I bi? I was tumbling into love with a woman and it was all new and I didn’t have any guideposts. I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t make any definitive decisions for myself around the whole situation.”

She continues:

I was 43 years old. I was the head of a huge company and a very American, classic brand. We had an intercom at the office, and I was running a pretty large meeting. I was standing in front of the room, and I get a call over the intercom. The heads of marketing were on the other end, and they said, “We have a call from New York Post. There’s a report that you’re seeing a woman — should we confirm or deny?” You have to imagine: I’m standing on the phone with a whole room full of people and I can feel their eyes on me. And I’m like, literally six weeks into this totally new relationship. I heard the word “confirm” come out of my mouth. It wasn’t like I was confirming that I was gay or that I was bi. The truth was, I was seeing a woman, so yes, confirmed. I wasn’t going to lie about it. And then it just kind of snowballed.

There’s a special place for the person who took it upon themselves to make that decision. I hadn’t told my mother, I hadn’t told any of my friends, really. I hadn’t told my ex-husband. I had a child.

The story that outed her wasn’t the first time Lyons had received conservative backlash in the media. Earlier in 2011, she had transphobic bloggers in an uproar because of a photoshoot and interview she did in which her son was seen wearing pink nail polish on his toes. Unfortunately, it’s very easy to see the same kind of backlash happening today as anti-trans, anti-gay policing of children only continues to intensify under the current political climate.

While details of Lyon’s and Crangi’s relationship were initially divulged without their initial permission, Lyons publicly acknowledged their relationship for the first time in 2012 when she thanked her girlfriend while receiving a Glamour Women of the Year award. Lyons split from Crangi in 2017 and has been a queer single mom in recent years.

While no longer at the helm of J.Crew, Lyons remains a massively powerful figure in fashion design and business. Now, she’s taking on a whole new role by joining Bravo’s ever-expanding Real Housewives universe. She’s being billed as the first openly queer woman to join RHONY (which I guess is true if we don’t consider Sonja Morgan bisexual, but Morgan has on many occasions implied she is bisexual even if she doesn’t say it in the most explicit terms!), and as the trailer suggests, we’re going to get storylines that touch on her queerness.

In fact, the origin story of how Lyons came to join Real Housewives is very gay in and of itself. According to a recent profile in the New York Times, in 2021 Lyons was being interviewed as a guest on the popular queer podcast Dyking Out (which I’ve also been a guest on — perhaps the closest connection I have with a Real Housewife) when co-hosts Melody Kamali and Carolyn Bergier pitched that she should join RHONY and Lyons replied: “I’m down.”

Then, in February 2022, Lyons reposted a gay podcaster who had photoshopped her face onto a RHONY promo in her Instagram story and wrote “Who do I need to call?? I am available.” In a very “haha jk…unless” moment, she called it a joke but also forwarded the post to Andy Cohen, Bravo’s Daddy in Chief (okay, fine, his relevant official title here is executive producer of the Real Housewives franchise) whose Christmas parties she’d attended before. Fast-forward several months, and Lyons was hit with a call asking her to screen test for the rebooted RHONY. Andy’s official review of her? “When she comes on the screen, you want to see more of her,” he said, according to the NYT profile.

It’s a bit of a surprising turn for Lyons, given that she has been laying low for the past few years. It’s also surprising that someone with as much baggage about celebrity press as she has would step into the realm of reality television, which puts one’s life under the microscope in an extreme way. Gossip magazines cover reality fodder with reckless abandon. But perhaps Lyons sees this as an opportunity to put herself in the public spotlight in a way that ultimately feels on her own terms.

Already, her personal life is in the spotlight again. The official Bravo site published a piece discussing who she’s currently dating, which comes up in the NYT profile. In June, she confirmed she’s dating her prior crush, photographer Cass Bird. The show filmed this past winter, so I’m not sure how much of that we’ll see play out on screen, but I for one am looking forward to the prospect of a single openly queer Housewife in the mix this season. Would love to have some good queer dating-around and flirting storylines! And look, will any of it be relatable? Probably not! The new RHONY cast seems overall even more wealthy than previous iterations of the cast. A moment in the trailer includes a fight about flying commercial.

RHONY returns and Lyons makes her Queer Real Housewife debut on July 16, and you better believe I’ll be covering all the juiciest tidbits right here on Autostraddle.

Bravo Dykes, We’ve Got Another Queer Real Housewife! Taylor Armstrong Is Bisexual

feature image photo by Bravo / Contributor via Getty Images

Hello, Bravo Dykes! I can’t believe I’m here to talk about something that isn’t Scandoval! In the July 28 episode of Real Housewives of Orange County, longtime Bravolebrity Taylor Armstrong came out as bisexual, telling the Housewives about a five-year relationship she had before her marriage to her late husband Russell.

Taylor is a “friend of the wives” for this season of RHOC, a tier of Real Housewives casting that essentially means she isn’t a main Housewife but still appears in a lot of episodes, including cast trips. Wednesday’s episode features the beginning of the cast trip to Montana, where Taylor opens up about her dating history and sexuality.

After the women participate in the casual and totally straight group activity of riding a mechanical bull for each other, cast member Tamra Judge asks Taylor to share something the rest of the group doesn’t know about her so they can get to know each other better. Without hesitation, Taylor says: “I’m bisexual.” Tamra says she knew this already and asks her about the woman she was in a relationship with before. It does seem like Tamra and Taylor pre-planned this conversation to happen on camera, which makes me wonder if it’s going to come up in some other way as the season progresses.

“Most people are surprised to find out that I’m bisexual,” Taylor says in testimonial. “Probably because just, like, stereotypes. I mean, it’s not something I broadcast, but I’m open to all people that have great souls and that you can love.”

I wish we got more, but that’s pretty much it! I would love to know the specifics of Taylor’s relationship with this woman, why things ended, and how she views her own bisexuality. Does she ever talk to any of the other bisexual Housewives? Do they have a secret club called THE REAL BI WIVES? If not, they should. Taylor is currently married to her second husband, attorney John Bluher.

This is, I believe, the first time an original Real Housewife has explicitly come out as queer. Real Housewives of Miami‘s Julia Lemigova is bisexual, but she didn’t join the series until it was rebooted, and the Real Housewives themselves are all very particular about who counts as an OG, and Julia doesn’t make the cut. RHOC‘s Braunwyn Windham-Burke came out as a lesbian, but she didn’t join the series until season 14. Similarly, Brandi Glanville of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills is bisexual but is not an OG. Even though this is Taylor’s first season of RHOC and she’s only a friend of the wives, she is indeed an OG Housewife, because she started her Bravo journey as an original Housewife on Beverly Hills. After departing that show for a bit, she returned for Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip, which is basically like a Housewives version of All-Stars, mashing up Housewives from different franchises. Then, she joined RHOC for this season, confirming my long held belief that Housewives should be traded between cities like pro athletes.

I have long believed that cast trips on every franchise of Real Housewives are where we especially see homoerotic and straight-up gay behavior on these shows. These women leave husbands and boyfriends and children behind for a homosocial environment where the booze is flowing and the drama is bubbling. They often have to share beds or rooms, and they love to play games on these trips that are very sexual! It’s the perfect environment for a little bit of dykey activity. In fact, I once snapped a pic of Brandi and Taylor — who we now know are both bisexual but who weren’t out publicly at the time — kissing on one of the Beverly Hills cast trips for a very important tweet thread I was compiling:

This RHOC Montana trip reminisces of the Montana trip taken by the Real Housewives of New York in season six, which may not have had an explicit moment of queerness but nonetheless…pinged:

watching season six of Real Housewives Of New York like LOOK AT ALL THESE LESBIANS pic.twitter.com/iMidKt33Tz

— kayla kumari upadhyaya (@KaylaKumari) July 8, 2017

Even though the moment does feel very produced, the fact that Taylor comes out on a cast trip absolutely tracks with my theory that these trips provide a liminal queer space in the lives of the Housewives. I like that she gets to come out completely on her own terms, which is not often the case on these shows. Taylor has had a lot of things about her personal life disclosed very much not on her terms in the past (“but now we said it”….iykyk). Also, Taylor outright saying she’s bisexual stands out, as a lot of Housewives in the past have alluded to past queer relationships and experiences without ascribing labels to themselves. Across franchises and through the seasons, many have used the phrase “taken a dip in the lady pond” to describe these histories, and while I suppose anyone can technically use any language they wish to describe their own sexuality…why LADY POND! NO THANK YOU!

After the episode, Taylor went on Watch What Happens Live, and Andy Cohen said he was surprised by the reveal, confirming he hadn’t previously known she was bisexual. Taylor said it was probably a surprise to a lot of people, including her mother.

We officially have a lot of openly queer Housewives! I think it might finally be time for me to put together a Bravo Dyke history/timeline of sorts.

Revisiting Iconic Pride Scenes From Film and Television

Pride month is nearing, and I thought it might be fun to look at on-screen depictions of Pride through the years. It turns out…there aren’t that many? I thought perhaps there was just a gap in my knowledge, but even when I tapped other queer film/tv critics to assist with this list, it didn’t get much longer! I thought surely there’d be DOZENS? Where is the 200 Cigarettes-esque multistory, sprawling cast Pride comedy we deserve?! Actually, don’t take that idea. I might wanna do that idea.

Also, I’m hoping the Billy Porter-directed teen comedy set at Pride being made by Gabrielle Union’s production company is still in the works, but I feel like I haven’t heard any new information about it in a couple years.

I do think part of the reason it’s rare to find Pride scenes is because of budget reasons! It’d be expensive and difficult to film a Pride parade or major event in a way that feels realistic. It makes sense to me that Sense8 is on this list twice given the sheer size of that show’s large-scale production budget! Also, it makes sense to me that a lot of Pride scenes film at actual Pride events rather than staging them. Some shows have referenced Gay Pride even if they don’t explicitly show Pride events, like Pose and Generation Q.

Here are some of the (rare!) moments from film and television that explicitly depict Pride celebrations. I’m sure I missed some though, so be sure to shout them out in the comments!

Pride docuseries

Okay, this is an obvious one to include, but the 2021 FX docuseries Pride documents LGBTQ+ resistance and activism from the 1950s to the 2000s. It’s worth a watch! I’m skipping over some documentaries on this list, because I’m going to do a separate Pride piece that centers docs, but this series feels right to include on this list as a starting point.

Pride (2014)

This movie really captures the political and activism aspects of Gay Pride, focusing on the group Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, which advocated for a Welsh mining community. Collective action! Protesting! Being loud and proud and fighting the system! This is what Pride’s all about.

The Truth About Jane (2000)

Ah, yes, the time Stockard Channing plays mother to a teen lesbian coming out the closet and does not take it well but then eventually goes to a Pride parade as she learns to accept her gay daughter! I wish this very 2000 movie hadn’t made me cry when I watched it the first time, but ALAS!!!!!! We get to see the parade from young Jane’s POV, and it got me. She’s taking it all in — the signs, the shirts, the smiling and cheering queers living out and proud. The movie is free to stream online.

BPM (2017)

Set in 1990s France, the French movie BPM follows ACT UP Paris activists. There’s a lot to love about this movie, and I in particular am drawn to the tension within the group about how to best show up for Pride. Some members want to take a more serious approach to mourn lives lost, but some of our central characters want to take a more joyful and cheerful approach to celebrating queer lives. I think this tension and plurality ties very well into the theme of Autostraddle’s Pride package this year, which will be revealed soon 👀

South of Nowhere, “Gay Pride”

The third season of South of Nowhere indeed featured an episode literally called “Gay Pride,” which saw the return of the show’s popular ship “Spashley.” Just typing “Spashley” awakened something dormant in me.

Queer as Folk, “Pride”

The Pride episode of Queer as Folk aired in 2002 and is centered on the characters attending Pittsburgh’s Gay Pride parade. It has it all! Pride ex drama! Baby gay first Pride fears! Dykes on bikes!

The L Word, “Loud & Proud“

Given the subject matter and scope, it’s a little surprising we don’t have like…75 episodes of The L Word to choose from when it comes to on-screen depictions of Pride. Instead, we pretty much just have season two, episode 11, “Loud & Proud.” We head to West Hollywood Pride in the episode, and I’d say that the most Pride thing about this episode are the outfits that make you experience a full spectrum of reactions. Alice at one point is in a red terrycloth romper and a rainbow boa, and it all makes you go “huh” but also “could be cute?” What is Pride if not perplexing fashion-wise!

Harlem, “Pride”

In Harlem‘s second season, Tye takes Quinn to her first Pride after coming out — she comes dressed wig-to-toe in a homemade outfit! —  and the comedy of errors of one of the longest days on the queer calendar is not quite what Quinn expected. Meanwhile, Tye ends up on a journey of self-discovery, confronts her past, and grapples with what her legacy means as a queer small business owner in service of her community. It’s joy-filled but also nuanced look at the range of feelings queer people have about Pride, and is also one of the only depictions of Black community celebrations of Pride on television.

Boomerang, “Family”

Like Harlem, Lena Waithe’s Boomerang stands out by focusing its depiction of Pride on voice and celebrations that are often otherwise left at the margins — this time on Atlanta’s annual Black Pride festival. This is what Carmen had to say when the episode first aired in 2019:

“Most striking is that we not only see Tia and Ari comfortable in their own Black queer skin, but that the director chooses to highlight – via portrait style close ups – a variety of festival goers. Black trans women and men, Black studs and butches, Black femmes of all genders, Black drag performers, Black masc gay men – the whole family is accounted for. And we’re happy, we’re smiling, we’re…. Proud. There is not a single second in the episodes 22 minute run time where Black queer folks are asked to check any part of ourselves at the door. It’s unforgettable and, quite frankly, revolutionary.”

Vanderpump Rules, “Your Pride’s Showing”

While I won’t include every single Bravo Pride moment (because a lot of them center straight women!), this Vanderpump Rules episode from season eight is important, because it was the first Pride episode of VPR that main cast member Ariana Madix was out as bisexual for. In fact, I wrote about it when it first aired. Newer (and short-lived) cast member Dayna (pictured above) also came out as bisexual at Pride that year. Now is when I must confess that my fiancé Kristen and I have a deranged annual Pride tradition — that we do on the morning of Orlando Pride, which doesn’t happen until October — of watching all the Pride episodes of Vanderpump Rules. Yes, Pride episodes are an annual tradition for this show (though they’ve sadly stopped doing them recently), and yes they often focus way more on the straight cast members’ drama than the actual queer ones, but they still just really capture the vibe of Pride.

Real Housewives of Atlanta, “The Float Goes On”

My favorite thing about this episode is that it airs one episode after Cynthia Bailey’s daughter Noelle opens up about being sexually fluid to her mom in a really sweet scene. Then just one episode later, we get to see them going to New York for World Pride together! There are some classic Housewives shenanigans that go down on the float unfortunately, but I like that it’s also a touching mother daughter moment between Cynthia and Noelle!

Southern Hospitality, “Pride and Peanut Butter”

This is one of my favorite Pride episodes on Bravo, because it’s the one that manages to center LGBTQ+ cast members the most. There are still some straight shenanigans (I won’t even explain what the “peanut butter” in the title means, but you can Google it”), but for the most part, this episode really is about Mikel and TJ, the show’s queer main cast members — who also are kind of frenemies but still come together in this episode to throw a killer Pride party. Mikel’s coming out journey is documented across the season as he reckons with his religious upbringing and familial relationships. TJ opens up in the episode about how he never really formally came out to his parents. It’s a really moving depiction of a range of queer experiences in the South, and the whole time I was watching it, I was mumbling “Vanderpump Rules could never.”

Sense8, “Isolated Above, Connected Below”

The sixth episode of Sense8‘s second season features the previously closeted Lito making the boldest public declaration of his own queerness by participating in São Paulo’s Pride parade. The scene was filmed at São Paolo’s actual Pride celebrations!!!!! It has all the hallmarks of a big, spectacular Sense8 set piece while also being…real! It’s such a celebratory and fun scene that it would easily be one of my favorite on-screen Pride moments of all time if it weren’t for the fact that Sense8 had already topped it a season before, which brings us to…

Sense8, “Limbic Resonance”

I have saved the best for last. This is easily my favorite Pride scene of all time as well as the moment I first fell in love with Sense8. It happens in the first few minutes of the show’s pilot. Amanita fucks Nomi with a rainbow strap-on, takes it off, and wishes her gorgeous girlfriend a happy Pride. It’s a lovely, hot, wet scene of intimate and joyful queer and trans sex. Happy Pride indeed!!!!

Later, we see Nomi and Amanita out and about celebrating Pride, and they reflect on their first Pride together. It’s really sweet and sweetly real! This is why I’m surprised Pride doesn’t crop up in film and television more often! Sure, there are plenty of individuals and couples who don’t make a point to attend designated Pride events on the regular, but it’s a big part of a lot of queer people’s lives! Even just complaining about [corporate] Pride is a big part of being queer! Nomi and Amanita always felt like a strikingly realistic lesbian couple to me, and the fact that we meet them on Pride and they reflect on their first Pride together actually heightens that!

Some Bravo Dyke Thoughts on the Vanderpump Rules Finale Trailer

After it leaked online, Bravo had to move faster than DJ James Kennedy running from Pump to SUR with his DJ equipment between gigs to get up a full version of the season 10 Vanderpump Rules finale trailer, which teases some of the most explosive Scandoval moments yet.

If you’re like “what the fuck is Scandoval and why does it sound like a mid alt pop music group”, well, it is a portmanteau of “Sandoval,” one of the SURnames of the two Toms who are part of the Bravo reality television series Vanderpump Rules, and the word “scandal.” The scandal in question is, in short, that Tom Sandoval cheated on his longtime girlfriend Ariana Madix with fellow castmember Raquel Leviss. I’ve written about the sordid details before. And if you’re like “okay but why is the managing editor of Autostraddle following this so closely and writing about it here”, I’m sorry but this is taking up an untoward amount of my brain space and is the only television show lately that feels like a genuine escape. I don’t know how to explain the potency of this drama to the uninitiated!!!! It’s somehow the most engrossing reality television twist of recent years! If it sounds very stupid to you, just don’t read this!

Plus, I have a column called Bravo Dyke, so it just feels right to keep touching down on Scandoval, which is also a frequent topic of discussion in my very lesbian household. Also, Ariana is bisexual, so that makes this narrative relevant to this website for lesbians, bisexuals, and queer people, okay?! In fact, Ariana recently had to defend her own bisexuality when a fan responded to the false rumors that she was in an open relationship by asking if she’s no longer bisexual, prompting Ariana to say something that goes without saying here at Autostraddle: “bisexual ≠ polyamorous.” These are not interchangeable words, people!

The season 10 preview is indeed very juicy but sadly does not include as many Bad Hats as the midseason trailer did. This is especially a personal affront to me, because when my preferred way to watch straight people on television is for them to be wearing Bad Hats.

Take a look at the Vanderpump Rules finale trailer:

We see Sandoval telling Scheana he was planning to break up with Ariana, and Scheana pointing out that he didn’t though and instead chose to cheat with Ariana’s friend. I do think this line would have been better delivered in a comically large hat, but I digress, Scheana is correct here. We also finally see the conversation between Sandoval and Ariana that results in her screaming “I don’t give a fuck about fucking RAQUEL,” a line we’d previously only seen delivered without audio in the midseason trailer.

She says this in response to Sandoval saying he and Raquel just became really good friends, and you know, I actually find a lot of peace in the fact that his words sound familiar. My friend said she doesn’t usually like cheating/affair stories — whether they’re in scripted or unscripted series, books, etc. — because they’re boring. She’s right! There’s not a lot of new ground to break there. It’s definitely why, when it comes to scripted series in particular, cheating as a plot device can seem so lazy. But there’s something about the mundanity and cliches in the way Sandoval talks about “why” he cheated that’s oddly soothing. It’s like, yeah, these people are unoriginal! They think they found something special or are uniquely tortured individuals, but they’re not! They’re just like everyone else who chooses to cheat rather than break up because it’s the “easier” thing to do.

There are a lot of reasons why I think Scandoval feels like such a riveting moment in reality television, and perhaps at the end of the season I’ll dig deep into all of them, but I do think part of it is rooted in the same reason Kelsey McKinney’s podcast “Normal Gossip” is so popular. Scandoval is packaged explosively, and the reality television context adds a few layers, but at the end of the day, the drama is pretty commonplace, and we can view it without opening ourselves up to any scrutiny or drama ourselves.

Anyway, the trailer ends with a genuine jumpscare by revealing the owner of a pair of strappy sandals ominously approaching the camera to be none other than Kristen Doute, Sandoval’s ex girlfriend who accused him of cheating on HER with ARIANA back in the day. But Kristen and Ariana are now friends, because the relationship dynamics in this friend group are impossible to predict and as unstable as they come.

Bravo Dyke Reacts to the Vanderpump Rules Midseason Trailer

As far as my gay ass is concerned, the only two appointment television shows for the foreseeable future are Yellowjackets and Vanderpump Rules. The latter released its midseason trailer yesterday, and after dissecting it with multiple group chats, watching it approximately 35 times, and huddling with my fiancé to discuss, I am now here to perform my duties as our resident Bravo Dyke. The midseason trailer is a work of art, full stop, and just a glimpse of the melodrama that’s about to shatter this friend group, who are decidedly not in the best days of their lives atm, despite what the theme song might claim.

A couple weeks ago, I broke down “Scandoval,” the brilliant nickname given to the ongoing affair drama between Tom Sandoval, his longtime partner and bisexual icon Ariana Madix, and Raquel Leviss. Long story short: Sandoval and Raquel have been having an affair. The second this came to light, the cameras were rolling. We’re going to watch this play out in real-time, which is reality gold. The past two episodes of Vanderpump Rules were shot, edited, and finalized before the scandal came out and were not altered after the fact. But moving forward with the season, we’re going to get the affair and its aftermath. The filming crew, producers, and editors have basically reworked whatever was originally going to be the back half of season 10 to now focus on the Scandoval. Give them Emmys, give them Pulitzers, give them Nobel Peace Prizes.

Just take a look at the trailer. As my Bravo Dyke Colleague Christina Tucker puts it: “This is A24.”

The #PumpRules midseason trailer is here! pic.twitter.com/flcCTqi8eS

— Queens of Bravo (@queensofbravo) March 20, 2023

Just like the Yellowjackets season two trailer, there is a lot to unpack here! Sure, maybe no one is getting eaten, but we do have Katie Maloney saying she wants to “light the both on fucking fire” (presumably talking about Sandoval and Raquel). I have no doubts she wouldn’t hunt them down, Yellowjackets-style.

We also get a glimpse of who I assume is Katie’s much younger post-divorce actor boy toy. We see Raquel make out with TOM SCHWARTZ, who is the Tom we assumed she’d be getting with this season when really he is a Decoy Tom meant to distract from the indiscretions of Tom Sandoval. It is unclear how long Schwartz knew about the affair between his bestie and Raquel, especially because the cast seems to be under a gag order by production until the season’s over — even Investigative Journalist Andy Cohen hasn’t been able to get many explicit answers out of them on Watch What Happens Live. We also get Ariana swimming naked in a pool, which seems kind of rude for the editors to include when it’s just an innocent moment of fun between her and her gay guy friend. Even though it’s just a quick moment, depicting her as promiscuous or like there was an open relationship when there wasn’t has a whiff of biphobia to it!

We also get some of the first interactions between Ariana and Sandoval immediately following the affair’s surfacing. Sandoval seems to be playing some sort of “we only had sex four times a year” card. You know what you can do when you’re unhappy in a relationship, bud? BREAK UP! But people stay thinking cheating is the easier route.

And now, some pertinent annotations of the Vanderpump Rules midseason trailer, which somehow devolves into Vanderpump Hats.

you know what I like to drink when my life implodes after bad choices I’ve made? Diet Squirt

a dispatch from colleague Christina: “incredible to include a shot of Lisa crying, Mommy is disappointed and y’all better fix it!!!!”

“I just wish you would compliment my hats more”

“YOUR HATS ARE STUPID”

“I like my hats like I like my men: secondhand”

“is anyone gonna say something about MY hat?”

“YOUR HAT’S BAD TOO”

With soap operatic flair, the Vanderpump Rules midseason trailer ends with melodramatic music playing under Sandoval asking Ariana if she wants anything and her responding, calmly: “for you to die.” Chills!

Now, can someone please convince other folks on the Autostraddle senior team to start watching the show so I do not feel so alone in our virtual office!!!! I simply need someone to water cooler chat with this about!!!

Bravo Dyke Weighs In on the Ariana, Sandoval, and Raquel “Vanderpump Rules” Scandal

Photo of Ariana Madix by Paul Archuleta / Contributor via Getty Images

In the words of one Bethenny Frankel……….it’s about Tom. And not the Tom we might have expected.

If you’re even half as invested in the Bravosphere as I am, then your phone was likely ablaze with notifications heading into the weekend, multiple group chats spread across multiple platforms simply agog and aghast by the breaking news coming out of PageSix: Raquel Leviss and Tom Sandoval of Vanderpump Rules are rumored to have been enmeshed in a months-long full-blown affair, unbeknownst by Sandoval’s longtime girlfriend Ariana until this week. And if actions by the show’s cast and crew in the past 48 hours are any indication, I’d say those rumors and anonymously sourced reports are very much likely true.

In case you’re here out of mere morbid curiosity and not one of those among us whose weekend was derailed by this news, here’s a bit of background, from recent history: There has been a lot of lead-up to the currently airing tenth season of Vanderpump Rules (a show I’ve aptly described as being about beautiful liars through the years in my brief bursts of coverage here) following a mostly mid ninth season of the series. But anticipation and intrigue accumulated following rumors — and subsequent cast confirmation — of illicit makeouts between Raquel, who got engaged last season but was broken up with DJ James Kennedy by the time of the reunion, and Tom Schwartz, the show’s second Tom. Now, these makeouts were technically above board, because between the ninth and tenth seasons, Schwartz and his wife Katie Maloney got divorced. What made it illicit was that Katie made it very clear to Schwartz that if they were to remain friends post-divorce, he could not hook up with a member of the friend group, making all cast members off limits. She also tells Raquel repeatedly over the course of the first few episodes of season 10 that it would very much hurt her feelings if anything were to happen between them. We’re now four episodes into season 10, and while no makeout has occurred, we know it’s coming, and we’ve seen Raquel proposition Schwartz for a makeout drunkenly at the concert of the truly atrocious cover band self-funded and fronted by the show’s other Tom, Tom Sandoval.

And apparently the Schwartz scandal is just the tip of the iceberg or a deflection or a chaotic tangent to what is otherwise the real scandal, because PageSix says Raquel and Tom SANDOVAL not Schwartz have been basically sexting for months and also want to be together????? Which is very much not above board, because Sandoval has been in a monogamous relationship with Ariana Madix (despite rumors of opening their relationship up, which recently circulated and Aria squashed) for many years now, and all reports and rumors suggest Ariana didn’t know about Raquel until this week, so basically until the rest of us knew, too. A bit of background, from more distant history: Ariana started as just a guest in season one of Vanderpump Rules ten years ago, but she became recurring in season two when scandal swirled around the possibility that Sandoval was cheating on his then-girlfriend Kristen Doute with her (which turned out eventually to be true). She became a regular in season three when she and Sandoval started dating officially, and they’ve been together ever since. Now, the reports on the affair allegations are all saying she has already kicked Sandoval to the curb.

Now, you may be wondering why I’m writing about this for Autostraddle specifically, where we focus on queer pop culture. Well, to start, Ariana is bisexual. She made a point to come out in season eight, going through some of the specific struggles of internalized biphobia that can occur when reckoning one’s bisexuality while in a relationship that can be perceived as straight by heteronormative standards and even stigmatized within parts of the queer community. Sandoval appeared to be a good partner during that journey, but we are truly not hear to pat any Toms on the back!

I suppose we should have seen this coming after rumors surfaced last year that Raquel had been seen making out with Tom at Coachella. We just had the wrong Tom. Everyone assumed it was Schwartz, not Sandoval! A practically Shakespearean incident of mistaken identity!

I’d love for my reaction to all this mess to simply be “I hope Ariana gets a girlfriend after all this!” and I certainly would love that for her. But what I actually feel is that I just hope Ariana is okay! Having been through a situation where someone I was dating was cheating with someone I knew and trusted, I cannot imagine the day I found out and its immediate aftermath being captured on television for people to consume, dissect, and form instant opinions about. Because, oh yeah, cameras are apparently very much rolling. I’ve seen some unconfirmed reports that Bravo cameras were actually present at the concert where Ariana first learned about the affair. But I’ve also seen credible evidence that the cast were all rounded up for emergency testimonials to react to the news, with cast member Lala Kent posting on her Instagram story while getting glammed up that she received permission from Ariana herself to torch the Toms.

Yes, I am using one of the affected players in this scandal’s bisexuality as a way in to write about it for Autostraddle, but I’m also just interested in the overall experience of watching Vanderpump Rules as a lesbian viewer. Vanderpump Rules is heterosexuality gone off the fucking rails. It’s the most compelling argument against heterosexuality — or at least traditional, monogamous heterosexual structures — I’ve ever seen on television!!!!!!

It’s straight camp, if there is such a thing. Remember how I said Raquel got engaged last season to a maniacal DJ? Sandoval helped that DJ with the proposal, gifting thousands of dollars to his efforts. The affair reportedly started very soon after that engagement resolved. People who rarely watch reality television love to pretentiously point out it’s all scripted, but you cannot script THIS!

The circus of machismo I’ve seen on this show is staggering, but the selfishness across the board — regardless of gender! — is unnerving. And for me, this often feels like a chicken vs. egg conundrum. Does reality television attract people with poisoned personalities or does it do the poisoning? Supposedly, this cast really does consider itself a friend group when the cameras aren’t rolling (which cannot be said of all Bravo shows these days), and like a lot of friend groups, they often refer to themselves as a family. Well, you know what? Vanderpump Rules is stark proof that chosen families can be just as toxic as given ones, something I’ve witnessed in real life, too, and often in queer circles!

I’m also just thinking a lot about how the nature of reality television means people not just inside the friend group but also everyone on the outside, everyone who watches these people for entertainment, must now pick sides. People will be labeled villains, victims, etc. It’ll all get narrativized and packaged, and it’ll make me think something I often think when watching these shows, which is that reality television ruins lives. At the same time, I’d be lying if I said I’ve never experienced some form of catharsis or release in watching relationship drama or cheating scandals play out not just on reality television in general but on this exact show (because yes, this is far from Vanderpump Rules‘ first infidelity storyline, though it is easily its most shocking). This show has relatively low turnover for a Bravo show — some main players have left, but many remain and have been here since the beginning, which means we’ve followed them for a decade. For fans, there’s extreme parasocial investment in their relationships, as reality television tends to engender in general. It is hard to remember that these are real people with real emotional stakes, because most of them are really good at their jobs, and their job is to entertain us and turn their conflicts into storylines. Yes, I do wish I could approach Bravo with a smooth brain, not thoughts just vibes energy, but I can’t. Part of engaging this deeply with reality television means having to think about all these things. MY CROSS TO BEAR!

Surely I’ll continue to go down the rabbithole of fan theories and speculation in the coming weeks, but above all else, I just hope Ariana emerges from the other side of this with her sense of self intact. She’s no less or more queer now that she’s single. Being with Tom didn’t erase her bisexuality. But wow, I would indeed love if we got some bisexual casual dating and hookup scene content out of her now joining Lala and Katie as single women on the show. But it feels very much too soon to even be thinking about that, because whew, this rumor mill and scandal cycle is moving fast. I can barely keep up, and I’ve been home alone all weekend obsessively tracking things! Cameras are rolling, a phrase I find myself repeating a lot this weekend, so we should know even more as to what this means for group dynamics and the future of the show very soon.

Do you watch Vanderpump Rules? What are your thoughts on all this? Did you merely read this as an outsider, and if so, have I sufficiently convinced you the viewing experience of this show as a queer spectator is interesting or are you like wtf Kayla why would I watch this nonsense? My fiancé is out of town, please talk to me I’m bored!

Two Bravo Storylines Explore Paths to Queer Parenthood and Their Complications

Hello Bravo Dykes, Bravo Bisexuals, Bravo Brethren, et al. Today, we’re going to touch down on two different Bravo shows whose current seasons both happen to have queer couples looking to have kids by different means. On Family Karma, now-husbands Amrit and Nicholas are exploring surrogacy, bumping up against the cost and their low sperm counts along the way. On Real Housewives of Miami, Julia Lemigova, who has been the single mom of two daughters who are now teenagers, wants to adopt a baby with her wife and faces her own obstacles along the way as well.

I do want to start by acknowledging that Julia’s wife, the tennis player Martina Navratilova, has repeatedly engaged with, disseminated, and participated in transphobic language and fear-mongering on social media. I will briefly be discussing Julia’s storyline on Real Housewives of Miami but do not endorse her wife’s actions or Julia’s silence on the matter. It’s especially frustrating (though unsurprising) that Martina’s behavior goes unchecked on Bravo (she is not a main cast member, but she appears frequently), because there has been a lot of focus on Julia speaking out against Don’t Say Gay initiatives in Florida on the show, which would indeed seem meaningful if it weren’t coupled with this silence. But Bravo has a track record of leaving transphobia unaddressed, so again, I’m not surprised by this hypocrisy.

Julia indeed worries about what the process of adoption might look like in Florida given she’s married to a woman (Julia identifies as bisexual, btw). She ends up searching for an agency that specializes in LGBTQ+ adoption after having some issues with other agencies regarding her age; she wants to adopt an infant, but some agencies don’t let women over 50 do so, and Julia is 50. She faces another obstacle when she realizes she won’t be able to adopt a Russian baby even though she herself is a Russian immigrant. The country has had a gay adoption ban in place for a while now.

Over on Family Karma — which is the most underrated show on Bravo right now — gay men Nicholas and Amrit have been spending all season preparing for their wedding, which finally kicks off in the most recent episode. Amrit and Nicholas have been mix and matching traditions and also modern rituals of their own making, though the wedding skews way more toward Amrit’s cultural traditions (which becomes a source of festering tension in really interesting ways for me to watch as someone who is half white and half Indian). Because no one on the show or in their communities has been to or seen a gay Indian wedding, Amrit and Nicholas have chosen to make their wedding hyper visible. This yields messy tension but also really inspiring queer imagination, and I definitely view it from a place of complicated ambivalence. In any case, I think it’s a big deal the wedding and its lead-up are being aired on television, a very intentional stance on their part, especially because it comes at a very direct cost: Nicholas’ evangelical parents agree to attend the wedding but refuse to be on camera. Their cultural differences might be the surface-level tension for Nicholas and Amrit, but this is where the real conflict resides deep down; Amrit’s parents are enthusiastic — if imperfect — in their support for their wedding, and Nicholas’s parents are very much not.

Throughout the season, Amrit and Nicholas have displayed a ton of vulnerability, showing not only the joys of their queer partnership and wedding plans but also the obstacles and more complicated parts. A recent argument between Nicholas and Amrit’s mother (Lavina Auntie, who might be my favorite of the aunties along with Dharma Auntie) is brutal to watch, mainly because both people are coming from an earnest, meaningful, imperfect place and reach a point of deep empathy after a truly messy scene. This is the good kind of reality television fighting.

Amrit and Nicholas also getting really vulnerable and honest about the process of starting a queer family. In an episode earlier this season, they’re rattled by the cost of surrogacy ($150,000 to $170,000). They also allow cameras to film the tough moment when they get a call from their doctor to tell them about their sperm samples, which they’re planning on freezing until they’re ready to begin the process. The doctor informs them that they both have significantly low sperm counts that would make it difficult to begin the fertility process. The doctor asks if they’re taking any supplements, and they say yes. They both agree to go off the supplements and make some changes to see if they can get their counts back up.

As an aside: They also end up in a strange argument about whose last name the baby will have, which at the surface is presented like a culture clash issue but to me reads as internalized heteronormativity from them…it sounds so straight and rooted in patriarchal masculinity to fight over such things! Just give the kids two last names?! Anyway…

The current seasons of Real Housewives of Miami and Family Karma are still airing, and these storylines are somewhat on pause at the moment as other ones take centerstage, so it’s unclear as of now exactly where each will end up. If there are any significant developments in future episodes, I’ll be sure to update this article, but regardless of what happens, I’m interested in what we’ve already seen in these stories, in what is already clear even as they’re incomplete: Paths to queer parenthood are varied, and they’re also difficult — even for the most privileged members of the LGBTQ+ community. Julia is wealthy and has a lot of access, and Nicholas and Amrit don’t seem nearly as rich, but they do seem financially secure, have jobs, and have platforms reality television stars. And yet even for people with a lot of access and power, it’s still hard.

The sheer cost of surrogacy rules it out automatically for a lot of queer couples, much like IVF is cost-prohibitive for queer couples, too. Parenting is, of course, costly for couples regardless of sexuality, but even more so for LGBTQ+ couples. Financial burdens limit options when it comes to both adoption and fertility treatments. We’re also living in a time when queerness is under attack throughout the country, especially when it comes to families and anything having to do with children. As reproductive rights are rolled back, LGBTQ people are significantly harmed. Wealth absolutely makes it easier for folks to start these paths and also easier to ignore or overcome some of the obstacles. Andy Cohen wasn’t aware surrogacy was illegal in some states until he began his own path toward parenthood as a single queer father.

It used to feel like a lot of queer pregnancy storylines on television were just lazy jokes about turkey basters or “stealing sperm.” I’m glad we’re seeing two distinct storylines play out, especially on reality television, which is, you know, supposed to be real. Both shows also happen to take place in Florida, which means a lot to me personally as a queer person living in this state where state-sanctioned homophobia has been ramping up. And the tensions between Amrit and Nicholas and their own parents are a part of this meaningful storytelling, too, because often our relationships with our parents impact the ways we approach starting our own queer families.

I get a thrill every time I see queer celebrities getting pregnant or becoming parents, like earlier this week when Da Brat announced a pregnancy at 48-years-old, an announcement that also included information about Da Brat’s wife Jesseca Dupart experiencing a miscarriage. Because yes, I love to see these queer paths to parenthood, but I also find it really meaningful when people are upfront and real about the obstacles they face along the way. It doesn’t do anyone any good to make it seem easy or to obscure fertility processes, as scripted television sometimes does like when Micah says in the recent season finale of The L Word: Generation Q: “Can you believe that? It goes from a canister to a baby in nine months?” Prompting our intrepid recapper Riese — who has been through this herself! — to write in her recap as a response: “‘I cannot,’ I yell at the skies. ‘Because with at at-home insemination there is only a 10%-15% chance of this sperm becoming an actual fetus, let alone an actual baby!'”

Reality television is far from real, but when it does manage to capture realities like this? It does things even scripted television doesn’t do.

Quiz: Tell Me About the Drama in Your Life, and I’ll Tell You What Bravo Show To Watch

As a self-proclaimed Bravo Dyke, I spend an alarming amount of time immersed in the drama of people from reality television who I have never met. And even still, I often fall out of the loop on the between-seasons drama and have to be brought up to speed by my girlfriend because there is SIMPLY. TOO. MUCH. DRAMA. AT. ALL. TIMES.

You do not have to be fixated on Bravolebrities to appreciate some juicy drama in life. Or perhaps you think of yourself as largely drama-free. Either way, if you’ve been wondering about where to start in the wonderful world of Bravo, I’m here to tell you which show you should watch first based on the type of drama you tend to attract and observe in your actual life. Or, if you’re already a converted Bravo Dyke or Bravo Dyke ally, consider this a personality quiz that determines which show from Bravo’s lineup best matches your dramatic energy.

“Winter House” Brings Another Bisexual to Bravo

Is Bravo the most bisexual network on television? MAYBE SO.

Welcome to another very important Bravo Dyke report. Today, we’re taking a trip to the vacation nightmare series Winter House. For those who have yet to foray into this particular sector of Bravo, Winter House is an crossover offshoot of both Southern Charm and Summer House, featuring cast members from each as well as a few randos. Winter House was a Covid creation, a way to produce a reality show contained to one location (Summer House indeed had the easiest time transitioning in 2020 of any of the Bravo shows). It’s about people getting fucked up in a vacation house for many days and nights on end, playing drinking games and throwing haphazardly themed parties, the single folks also playing a game of Whomst Shall Hook Up With Whomst. If it sounds like a barely there premise, that’s because it is!

One of the randos thrown into the mix this season is Jessica Stocker, whose actual “job” is in realty………..in the Metaverse. Every time the chyron underneath her says “Metaverse Entrepreneur,” a small part of me dies.

In episode four, Paige asks Jessica if she’s bisexual, and Jessica replies in the affirmative but also says she’d never necessarily date a woman. She just likes to hook up with them, and she tells the group she has slept with about ten women. Amanda, in classic Leo fashion, wants to know which girl in the group is Jessica’s type. Jessica replies without any hesitation: Ciara. Who immediately wonders if they should make out. They don’t, but they do do a quick little kiss. I’ll take it!

My first thought upon meeting Jessica was the first thought most of the cast members have upon meeting Jessica: She looks a lot like Lindsay. And as it turns out, there’s more than just the physical alikeness! Lindsay has also talked about hooking up with girls before on Summer House, opting to use the truly upsetting phrase “I have munched a box” to do so. Lovebirds Lindsay and Carl aren’t part of the main cast of Winter House this season, but they’ll apparently be coming on as guests at some point as the season unfolds.

As thrilled as I am to welcome yet another bisexual to the Bravoverse, I’m way more interested in Jessica’s storyline that comes before this casual reveal. The first couple episodes of the new season show Luke steadily pursuing Jessica. At first, she’s into it. Then, she’s not. Suddenly, Winter House finds itself wading into really serious territory regarding consent and boundaries. Jessica should have never been put in this position, and here’s too where the ethical murkiness of making reality television comes to the forefront, because at what point would a producer or cameraperson have finally stepped in? Though she never should have had to do this, Jessica ends up very clearly and directly addressing what was wrong about Luke’s behavior when he failed to ignore her body language (and verbal cues! the first time he asks to kiss her in the hot tub, she says no). She reiterates that it’s completely her right to change her mind about him, that consent once doesn’t mean consent forever, and that a lot of times straight men will ignore these things, will assume that when a woman says she’s interested that means it’s fair game to flirt and touch.

Luke ends up leaving the house after Craig calls him out for being creepy around the girls. But he comes back the next day and wants to sit down with Jessica to apologize. She doesn’t let him. She says that she’s going to talk about how she felt and that she doesn’t want him to respond at all. She doesn’t want him making excuses or attempting to rationalize or downplay his behavior. It’s honestly a powerful display of agency and self-advocacy on her part. She doesn’t want a dialogue. She wants to explain the harm and then rebuild from there. She’s uninterested in punishing Luke; she never even asked him to leave the house. That a decision he made himself that seemed to come from a place of playing the victim. Rather than retribution, she seeks genuine growth from Luke, wants him to understand how she felt and then move forward from there. The other housemates follow her cues. When Craig — who previously said he’d throw Luke through a window if he kept being a creep — sees that Jessica is able to be on okay terms with Luke, he decides to move forward with Luke, too.

This is not reality television drama. This is real-life conflict. When Luke rubs Jessica’s shoulders without her consent, there’s a violation here on multiple levels, because they’re also technically coworkers on this show together. Luke will also see all of this play out for himself now that the show is airing. Jessica is forced to relive it by watching (which you can tell has an effect on her based on some of her emotional reactions in testimonials). Again I’m left wondering at what point — if any — anyone would have stepped in to mitigate the situation. The cast members try in little ways, like Amanda asking Jessica if she’s alright when Luke sits down next to her. But the presence of the cameras makes everything much more difficult to navigate, and the onus ends up falling on Jessica to handle the situation, which is far from fair, even if she does ultimately handle things completely on her terms and in a very empowering way.

Reality television can both expose a person’s bad behavior and also obscure it by turning it into drama. We see that over and over again on these shows. This is not the first time Luke has pursued a woman who wasn’t interested in him, and even though we never saw him cross a boundary as blatantly before as he does now, there’s a very clear pattern here. But Summer House long framed him as just some Midwestern bachelor with bad luck in the past, perhaps obscuring what’s really a troubling pattern of behavior with women. This time, there’s no room for ambiguity. And Jessica makes sure this doesn’t become dramatized or turn into her storyline for the season, which would be gross and unfair. She shuts it down, communicates what she needs to, and moves along. She has the final word, and that’s how it should be.

Anyway, if any other Bravolebrities would like to come out as bisexual, it’d be great for me personally and professionally.

Like All the Best Reality Shows, “Real Girlfriends in Paris” Was Ultimately About F*cking Up in Friendships

When I first told y’all about Real Girlfriends in Paris — which is, unfortunately, NOT a show about a lesbian polycule living in Paris but rather a group of “girlfriends” in the same way my mother refers to going out with a group of women as going out with her “girlfriends” — I wasn’t quite sure what I thought about it. New reality series in this style of the genre where it’s just about a group of people living their lives vs. a competition or something more structured often take a while to find their footing, especially when there isn’t a built-in hook like some of the cast already being famous. Indeed, Victoria, Anya, Margaux, Emily, Adja, and Kacey are people you’ve never heard of outside of the context of this show. But while it takes time to get to know them — and for them to get to know each other — by the back half of the show’s first season, Real Girlfriends in Paris finally taps into what makes it fun to watch regular ass people live their regular ass lives. The drama, scenarios, and stakes are all analogous to real life situations, but the lens of reality television makes it so that the characters — yes, I do refer to reality television casts as “characters” because they are indeed performing personas — are acting completely and entirely from the id. Impulsive, rash, self-destructive, manipulative actions rule reality television.

Perhaps you clocked me saying that Real Girlfriends in Paris takes a while to find its footing not just because we have to get to know the characters but that they have to get to know each other, too. Another thing that makes this Bravo style of reality television precarious is that it is often not as simple as Bravo cameras parachuting into the dynamics of an existing friend group. These shows go through casting processes just like scripted television. These girls weren’t hanging out every day prior to filming; they got to know each other through the process of filming, becoming friends and coworkers all at once. It’s a strange realm. Their literal job is to be friends. Even the show’s so-called besties Victoria and Margaux didn’t know each other for very long before production began; mutual friends put them in touch shortly before they both learned they were cast.

(Ever wonder why the early seasons of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills were soooo much better than more recent seasons? I think it has a lot to do with the presence of sisters Kim Richards/Kyle Richards as well as Lisa Vanderpump’s legitimate longtime friendship with Kyle — these relationships interpersonal histories were already baked in. Instead of having to be invented by the show, they were there already and then transformed by the show. And that makes for better reality television imo!)

That might sound like a lot of context and preamble, but it matters when looking at what does and doesn’t work about Real Girlfriends in Paris. We’re basically watching a new friend group form in real-time. In the beginning, the various intergroup relationships feels forced. But the nature of filming a reality series together ends up bringing them all genuinely closer together. And the closer they get, the more they’re able to hurt each other, increased comfort giving way to malevolence. It’s much easier to be upset with someone you know vs. someone you don’t. Or, at least, the stakes of that upset feeling are much higher.

Indeed, the first several episodes of Real Girlfriends in Paris feel not unlike the speed dating session that the girls go on. The Girlfriends are figuring out how they fit together, where the storylines are, what reality roles they want to slot into. And the most dramatic moment of the first half of the season goes down not between two of the Girlfriends but between one — resident bisexual Victoria — and her friend and coworker Yoanne who she clearly has known for a while before filming. In fact, the turning point of their fight is when Yoanne brings up something from her past regarding her tumultuous divorce from her ex-husband. Victoria flips a switch, throwing wine in his face, leaving, and then COMING BACK to dump french fries on him.

There are a lot of physical altercations involving thrown drinks on reality television (I mean, so much so that it has become a trope and easy fodder for parody, as with the iconic Jenna Maroney line in 30 Rock‘s “Queen of Jordan” line “I drank all the throwing wine!”), but there’s an extra layer of mortification and discomfort to this one. It’s too real. Here are two actual friends. Yoanne knows exactly what to say to hurt her feelings; Victoria has a frightening anger problem that makes her spin out of control. Sure, it’s unkind of Yoanne to bring up her divorce, but it’s also easy to see his unkindness as a symptom of reality television. He’s likely embarrassed by Victoria calling him out for being late to work on camera, so he’s trying to get back at her and is being mean in a way people believe they’re supposed to be mean on reality television. I really think he thinks he’s giving good drama. Victoria’s reaction, meanwhile, reads as something else. I don’t think she threw the wine and fries because the cameras are there but rather in spite of them, which is all the more unsettling. For both of them, the stakes are incredibly high, because they’re real friends and collaborators. The cameras just make everything worse.

It’s also impossible to ignore some of the racial and power dynamics at play here. It is established throughout the season that people are very drawn to Victoria’s (thin, white, femme) beauty. Strangers approach her even with cameras up. She’s the most popular Girlfriend by far at the speed dating event, and when Adja complains about that, it’s not out of jealousy but rather the very valid frustration that of course these Frenchmen chose her over everyone else. I’m left wondering how Victoria’s outburst would have been perceived by her employer if she were not a pretty white girl, if the tables were flipped and Yoanne had been on the other side of that wine glass and plate of frites. The show doesn’t go there, and it’s in those moments of obscuring certain realities that Real Girlfriends in Paris — and really, most of Bravo — fails to tell a deeper, even more honest story.

The fight is too real, but then, so too is the eventual reconciliation between Victoria and Yoanne. Victoria correctly realizes that she can’t blame other people for triggering her. She has to take responsibility for her own actions and control the ways she reacts to things from her past. That’s a tremendous amount of self-awareness for reality television, the place where self-awareness typically goes to die. I’m not defending Victoria even a little bit here, but I do think the arc of this fight is riveting, simultaneously sincere and heightened by its reality television context. I do think Victoria would have thrown the wine and fries even without cameras around, but she wouldn’t have had to reckon with its aftermath in such a transparent and intentional way. Watching people grapple with the consequences of their actions in real-time and for the consumption of others is part of the strange allure of reality television. Imagine having a call time for a friendship apology. It’s wild!

As the rest of the season unfolds, we start to see more and more moments that are — if not quite as volatile and soap operatic as Frites Gate — closer to this kind of real friendship drama. Nothing accelerates intimacy like traveling with other people, and when the Girlfriends (minus Kacey, who ends her tenure on the show early due to visa issues) take a trip to Margaux’s family’s summer house in Cannes, the group dynamics start to solidify — and molder.

Some of the most interesting tensions on the show are rooted in class and money. There’s a clear line between the Girlfriends who appear to have significant inherited wealth (Margaux, Emily, and Kacey) and those who seemingly don’t (Victoria, Anya, and Adja). When Kacey has visa issues, she thinks someone else will just fix it for her instead of taking action herself. Emily comes to Paris hoping to expand her mother’s interior design company overseas and instead trips and falls right into a coveted fashion internship. Margaux’s central storyline is her desire to become financially independent from her father, but instead of getting a normal ass job as a starting place, she keeps making and remaking new entrepreneurial pursuits she has difficulty following through on. In Cannes, Anya talks about her tendency to live way beyond her means and the financial precarity she always feels without a safety net. Margaux chimes in to say it’s actually quite hard to be a trust fund baby which, lol. But also, these feel like real, tense, non-performative conversations and dynamics. Margaux’s point about her father’s control over her life is valid, even if her defense of inherited wealth is more than a little eyeroll-inducing.

But something really shifts in Cannes. Whereas the Girlfriends start out being a little careful about the ways they talk about each other in the beginning, by now, they’ve been filming together long enough to take off the reality television kid gloves. Margaux calls Emily out for flying with literal fucking Covid, which Emily claims is untrue, but Victoria and Margaux later speculate that she’s still lying and also expose that she continually took her mask off on a flight. Victoria feels left out one night when she hears Adja and Emily laughing together after claiming they were going to sleep. When Victoria and Margaux stay an extra day in Cannes, Adja thinks it’s rude — not because of the decision to stay longer itself but because of the way they went about telling the rest of the group, making up some excuse about the cost of flights. (Adja, for the record, is my favorite Girlfriend. Anya is a close second because she is so committed to her Paris persona and being the Mom of the group that she’s almost like a caricature, and I live for that level of theatricality.)

In other words, they’re starting to fight about the things real friends fight about — ranging from very serious things like the Covid stuff to more petty remarks, like when some of the Girlfriends make snide comments about Victoria’s fashion show. The closer they get, the more their conflicts have teeth to them. The more they start fucking up in these friendships. And the structure of these reality series requires that those fuckups be faced head-on. And because of that pressure to resolve things and the fact that none of these conversations are being held privately but rather for public consumption and dissection, people end up acting straight from the id, feral and without filter or time to let things simmer.

As Autostraddle’s in-house Bravo Dyke, I promised to keep you appraised of any bisexual ongoings. Victoria does indeed come out to her mom near the end of the season, and it goes well! Emelle, the girl who lives in London who Victoria has been talking to on a dating app, flies in for the finale in the very important, age-old queer ritual of traveling long distance to stay with someone you’ve only had online flirtations with. Their first official meeting feels very true-to-life — giggly and awkward, made all the more uncomfortable by the presence of cameras. Hilariously, when Emelle realizes that a Realty Television Argument is about to happen on the boat she, Victoria, and the other Girlfriends are on near the end of the finale, she gets up and leaves as if to say “this is certainly not my business.” It’s a slight puncturing of the fourth wall in a way that’s genuinely funny and relatable.

It’s during that boat scene that all the arguments of the back-half of the season come to a head. Victoria becomes incredibly defensive. Adja asks her how many siblings she has to prove a point that Victoria doesn’t really ask the rest of them about themselves and talks about herself a lot. The question from Adja doesn’t come off as malicious; it’s genuine. The issue is not that Victoria and Margaux are close but that they haven’t even tried with the rest of the Girlfriends. Margaux in particular seems to have a moment of clarity here, realizing her own tendency to not ask other people questions. She says she knows its a weakness of hers and that she feels she has other strengths when it comes to friendships.

The vast majority of drama that unfolds on reality television has to do with the actual show and its making. People say they’re mad because someone didn’t ask them to go shopping with them when really what they mean is that they’re mad they didn’t get to share that screen-time. People say they’re mad because someone is being “withholding” when what they really mean is that they’re mad that they’re not being more forthcoming in front of the camera. Because of those fourth wall rules, they’re not really allowed to talk about things in this way, so they come up with other ways to talk about it, which in turn exacerbates the conflicts. Did Victoria feel excluded by Adja and Emily that night in Cannes or was she worried they were talking about her on camera? And in the end, what’s the difference?

What do we get out of watching reality television? Sometimes, that question feels endlessly complex to me, and sometimes it feels stupid. Reality television is just like any other form of entertainment. It has a lot of the same elements as scripted television. Only, the stories and the consequences of people’s actions keep going even when we aren’t watching. Real Girlfriends in Paris doesn’t feel like watching a scripted drama; it feels like being mired in a group chat with a group of friends who don’t always get along, whose drama ranges from petty to hugely consequential. Sometimes, it’s uncomfortable. Sometimes, it’s straight-up boring. Yes, reality television is heavily produced and manipulated, a simulacrum of reality of anything. But when those little pockets of genuine reality pop through — especially in the ways people reckon with their mistakes within relationships — it makes for very compelling storytelling.

I guess what I’m really saying is that even though it’s far from perfect, I already want more Real Girlfriends in Paris.

Bravo’s “Real Girlfriends in Paris” Says Bonjour to Bisexuality

Hello, Bravo Dykes! Welcome back to another exciting round of me telling you about the latest queer happenings in the Bravoverse. Today, we’re talking Real Girlfriends in Paris, which isn’t exactly of the Real Housewives galaxy per se but thematically overlaps in that it is seemingly about a wealthy group of friends and the ways they cycle through hurting each other’s feelings and apologizing for hurting each other’s feelings. But these friends are all in their twenties or early thirties. So, no, sadly the “girlfriends” in the title refers not to queer partnerships but rather to the fact that these are young women who are also friends.

After watching the first two episodes of Real Girlfriends in Paris, I’ve concluded it’s basically Emily in Paris meets Summer House. The premise is…a bunch of young American women living abroad in Paris. It’s slice-of-life reality meets dating reality, much of the “plot” revolving around who the girlfriends are dating, hooking up with, etc. Girlfriend Anya is the self-designated “mother” of the lot, sporting her finest Madeline drag in every scene so that she looks like a caricature of an American woman living in Paris. This outfit? It’s so on-the-nose? Like “Paris outfit” clipart? No notes tbh:

Now, I would have finally written a strongly worded letter to my father Andy Cohen — something I’m constantly threatening to do and never following through on — had a show with the words REAL GIRLFRIENDS in the title turned out to not be even a little bit gay. But thankfully, it won’t come to that. Of the six Girlfriends at the center of Real Girlfriends in Paris, at least one of them is bisexual. At the end of the first episode, Girlfriend Victoria comes out to the other girls, telling them she’s interested in Emelle, a woman she matched with on a dating app when she in LA. Only fellow Girlfriend Margaux seems to have previously known this information, but all of the Girlfriends vocalize their enthusiastic support for a very emotional Victoria.

Victoria’s nerves about coming out — which clearly have more to do with the cameras of it all rather than the other girls — stem from her conservative Texas upbringing and the fact that she isn’t really out to her family. She cries in the scene, and it’s one of the few emotionally authentic moments across the first two episodes. (Another involves a candid conversation between Girlfriend Adja and her aunt in episode two.)

Through testimonials during both episodes, we learn a bit more about Victoria, who came to Paris to attend Parsons Paris and is now a fashion designer. At 21, she married a man, doing what she was taught she was supposed to do. He had an affair with one of her classmates in Paris, and she immediately kicked him to the curb and has since been exploring her bisexuality. She tells a group in episode two that she has known she’s bisexual since she was a teenager. In a FaceTime with Emelle, she shares that while she has had plenty of experiences with women she hasn’t really been in a serious relationship with a woman and isn’t out to her mother. Emelle shares that the way she came out to her mother was…because she was hooking up with her mother’s friend. A lot going on there!!!!

For now, Emelle is in Manchester, so any interactions between her and Victoria have thus far been limited to this one kinda stilted but also kinda cute FaceTime call. I did some Instagram snooping, and it looks like Emelle was in Paris at SOME POINT, so perhaps more face-to-face queer content is coming.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by 𝐄𝐌𝐄𝐋𝐋𝐄 (𝐌𝐋) 🏳️‍🌈 (@emellesmith)

While I’m excited the Bravoverse has acquired a new bisexual (there are so many now!), I’m not totally sold on Real Girlfriends in Paris as a series. Almost immediately, some of the cast members have said food-shamey things in a way that evokes the the blatant fatphobia of early-2000s reality television. Any drama thus far has been tepid.

The Girlfriends’ lives are kind of boring, but they’re so convinced their lives are extremely NOT boring that it circles back to entertainment. I love my reality television with a dose of delusion and myopia. Like, yes, give me a 26-year-old whose main storyline is that her father has funded her entire life and she has never followed through on anything before and now he’s significantly reducing his monthly allowance for her so she can figure out her career (Girlfriend Margaux). Are there stakes? No! And yet, I will lap this shit up! But there needs to be some sort of playfulness to it; Margaux doesn’t need to be self-aware, but the editing should be. Where is the smash-cut sequence of her listing every project she has ever quit? Where is the overlaid chart showing her monthly allowance? Give me comedy, give me pizzazz, editors! Girlfriend Margaux’s “broken fridge” is played for an attempt at relatability when really it’s just a further indication of her privilege bubble (it turns out all she needed to do was flip the breaker switch). But the show doesn’t feel in on that point of view, so it falls flat. Again, I’m perfectly fine watching entitlement and privilege play out on television. I watch the entire Housewives oeuvre. I’ve just yet to figure out Real Girlfriends in Paris‘ point of view, and I think that’s because the editing and narrative are muddled.

Villains aren’t as common on these kinds of reality shows anymore, but you know what this show could use? A villain.

So far, the Girlfriends aren’t giving enough. I need the show to either choose full-tilt over-the-top reality glitz or be more, well, real. I want either more production or significantly less. It’s in a weird no-man’s-land tonally right now, and I’m unsure what it’s peddling exactly. It’s slightly reminiscent of the one-season Bravo wonder Gallery Girls, but New York City art scene was a more specific world than Americans in Paris and therefore incubated drama more efficiently.

I’m willing to stick with show longer and see what happens. Bravo reality programs in this style especially struggle to get the ball rolling in their first few episodes, because they rely on viewer investment in group dynamics that take a while to establish. The cast has some standouts. Girlfriend Adja is immediately fun and has the quippiest testimonials; I can see myself latching onto her as the voice of reason on the show but also still someone who’s funny and drama-prone — a great combination for reality. Girlfriend Kacey’s reaction to getting ghosted by a professional handball player in episode two makes for one of those rare genuine moments, too. And I’m curious enough about the budding long-distance/online relationship between Victoria and Emelle that I will be tuning in and reporting back if anything significant occurs. As always, I’m on the lookout for any potential dyke drama in my reality television, and I hope Real Girlfriends in Paris delivers. Or at the very least, I hope it delivers something more than the somewhat stale baguette served in its first two installments.

“Ultimate Girls Trip: Ex-Wives Club” Is Real Housewives At Its Most Homoerotic

A very happy Gay Christmas to us all, and by us all I mean my fellow Bravo Dykes, and by Gay Christmas, I mean “‘Tis The Season?”, the sixth episode of The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip: Ex-Wives Club. The last time we touched down on the ex-wives, it was to discuss the science of lesbian eyebrows. And folks, I must admit I didn’t think it’d get much gayer than “lesbian eyebrows,” but here we are, at a Christmas party so homoerotic that my girlfriend and I had to keep pausing and rewinding in order to emotionally process what we just witnessed like the dykes and Bravo Dykes that we are.

It all begins when Dorina plans a “Christmas in September” party for the gals. As a reminder, Dorinda is one of those white ladies who makes loving Christmas her entire personality. Many a Christmas trip has been spent at her haunted Berkshires mansion, Bluestone Manor. And who can forget Nutcracker Gate? Speaking of that unhinged friendship fight, the first half of this episode is spent on a fight between Jill and Dorinda and its eventual resolution. As penance, Dorinda — who basically called Jill a vapid demon last episode for having cameras at her husband’s funeral — makes a vow to hug Jill every day for the duration of the trip. Does anyone point out that she makes this vow on the penultimate day of the trip? Nay. Jill seems happy enough with this apology arrangement.

So, yes, the first part of the episode is pretty gay in the Friendship Drama way. But the final act is gay in the Wait Are They All Going To Have an Orgy???? way. Resident bisexual Brandi Glanville arrives at the Christmas party in a sparkly champagne-colored dress. She explains she was supposed to wear it to the Beverly Hills reunion she ended up disinvited from as a result of her drama with Denise Richards, drama I have attempted to explain from various angles for this very website but that when distilled down to its simplest parts basically amounts to: Brandi claims she and Denise Richards had sex, and Denise Richards vehemently denies it.

A clip of a past episode of Watch What Happens Live interjects the scene, showing Brandi talking about Denise and how she never heard from her again after revealing the hookup on Beverly Hills. Back in the present of Ultimate Girls Trip, Brandi tells the other ex-wives that she feels heartbroken because Denise essentially just “hit it and quit it.” There’s not much by way of Brandi taking any accountability for potentially outing Denise, but we don’t really come to these shows expecting an abundance of accountability now do we?

“She’s got good eyebrows, too,” Brandi says of Denise Richards. We love a Lesbian Eyebrows callback.

Tamra Judge then chimes in to say she has known Denise for ten years and that she had a phone conversation with her in which she asked her point blank if she hooked up with Brandi. According to Tamra, Denise maintained her story that no she did not and that Brandi is lying. Despite knowing Denise much longer than she has known Brandi, Tamra says she believes Brandi’s side of the story (to be fair, Brandi is sitting right there when she says this, but ALSO to be fair, none of these women really have an issue with calling someone a liar to their face).

“Something happened at Bravo Con,” Tamra then teases. (For the uninitiated, Bravo Con is exactly what it sounds like…Comic Con but for Andy Cohen’s empire.)

“She hit on me, too,” Tamra reveals, prompting this reaction from Phaedra and a chyron disclaimer:

According to Tamra, Denise was hitting on her over text message and trying to get her to come to her hotel room. Tamra said she told Denise she’s married, which made me immediately perk up because Tamra did not turn Denise down by saying “I’m not into women” but rather “I’m married,” that that feels like an important distinction in my Bravo Dyke opinion!!!!!!!!!!!! And indeed, Tamra follows this up with this:

“I feel like Denise Richards is a very sexual soul, which she should be, she’s fucking gorgeous. And I’ve had my own experience with her and you know nothing happened but if I wasn’t married, I might’ve banged her.”

The queer Christmas shenanigans do not stop there. Tamra asks Brandi which of the ex-wives she most wants to bang. Brandi replies with her top choice: Phaedra Parks. But even though she’s the top choice, make no mistake: “I like to be at the top, but Brandi is the top,” Phaedra says later in testimonial. She adds: “I’ll just stay a versatile bottom.” PHAEDRA!!!!!!

Eva Marville comes in second, and Tamra’s in third. Brandi also wants to show Vicki Gunvalson how to use a vibrator. Tamra’s order goes Eva, Brandi, Phaedra.

Jill Zarin then, completely unironically, says in her testimonial: “I’m extremely offended no one wants to have sex with me.” She’s pissed!!!! She literally doesn’t talk at dinner, which is extremely rare for Jill, who loves to talk as much as she loves fabric, fabric, fabric. “I’m hurt, I’m offended no one wants to have sex with me,” she said again in testimonial. I can’t decide if it’s Extremely Gay of Jill to be this upset the other women don’t want to sleep with her or Extremely Straight — it really could go either way.

Brandi also proposes that in order to avoid their worst fears of being alone when they’re old, she and Vicki should become friends who also *gestures eating pussy*. No really, she actually gestures eating pussy when saying she wants to be “friends” with Vicki, who then also gestures eating pussy when saying she’d rather just be friends. Brandi, frankly, needs to leave Vicki alone. Brandi often disrespects boundaries in that way that sometimes happens in queer spaces that people end up overlooking or excusing under the misguided and harmful assumption that queer people can’t violate boundaries or that it’s somehow different. Brandi, Vicki doesn’t want to sleep with you. There are at least two other women in the house who fully said they would.

And Taylor is more than happy to makeout with Brandi, which has happened before, and which feels especially erotic given that their main storyline this season is hating each other and merely one episode ago they were at each other’s throats at yet another dinner gone wrong????

Then there’s Jill, who just wants a crumb of attention. She gets a little bit from Brandi, who perhaps feels bad for no one saying they want to sleep with Jill and so sits on her lap after the gift exchange. Jill quite literally spanks her bare ass, and I really do not think I’m that far off in thinking we were like half a step away from an actual orgy going down in Bluestone Manor? I think if Tamra were single, there’d be an off-camera hookup between her and Brandi that we’d then hear about after the fact on Watch What Happens Live or ~on the blogs~ as these ladies love to say.

We’ve often seen the Real Housewives be extremely horny. In fact, one of the many reasons I love to watch these shows is because it’s rare for TV to show women in their 50s and 60s talk about sex and their desires so much and also quite literally fuck around a bunch! As Dorinda so wisely says in this episode: “When you take a bunch of middle aged women and put them in a room, it spells vibrator.” And I knew Ultimate Girls Trip: Ex-Wives Club was going to be thirsty in the sense of all of these women clamoring to get back on their respective shows. But I was not prepared for how thirsty they’d be for each other. At this point, I’m half-expecting full-on scissoring in the upcoming season finale. Or, at the very least, someone debuting a new set of Lesbian Eyebrows.

What Are Lesbian Eyebrows? A Housewives Investigation

Hello, Bravo Dykes! It has been a minute since I last delved into the queer happenings of the Bravo universe, so let’s delve in, shall we? Today, we’re talking lesbian eyebrows.

Yes, welcome to my TED Talk, LESBIAN EYEBROWS EXPLAINED. First, some context.

The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip recently returned for its second season, subtitled The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip: Ex-Wives Club, as it exclusively features Housewives who have been fired from their respective franchises. Or, according to Dorinda Medley, merely “put on pause.” She can indeed make anything nice.

Dorinda (New York) hosts the ex-wives — Phaedra Parks and Eva Marcille of Atlanta, Taylor Armstrong and Brandi Glanville of Beverly Hills, Vicki Gulvalson and Tamra Judge of Orange County, and Jill Zarin of New York  — at her Great Barrington estate Bluestone Manor, home to iconic Housewives memories like the time Sonja Morgan made it very clear that you don’t touch the Morgan letters and the time Bethenny Frankel for some reason told Luann de Lesseps neé D’Agostino neé de Lesseps she fucks everyone…as if that was a bad thing! Mention it all, baby!

Now three episodes in, The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip: Ex-Wives Club can be summed up by the following: Three Scorpios, two Sagittarians, an Aries, a Gemini, and a Virgo are trapped in a house together for eight days.

A lot of these women do not really know each other beyond being Bravo sister wives and watching each other’s shows. The ones who do know each other mostly have baggage with each other (except for Jill and Dorinda, it seems, but I think that’s because they were never actually in the cast together, and it tends to be the shows themselves that ruin friendships). So much of the first episode is spent on rehashing old drama and also introductions. Brandi wastes no time asking the important questions: Have you ever been with a woman? she asks the table.

this would also be my first question if I were at a table full of Real Housewives

No one really answers, which is not surprising, because most of these women tend to just talk at each other rather than to each other, so group questions like this are more like words whispered into the wind and then floating away. But Brandi presses on, telling the other women that yes, of course, she has been with both men and women, and while she thinks she prefers men, she is just attracted to any sexual energy. I don’t think I need to tell you she is one of the three (3!) Scorpios. None of this is new information btw. Brandi said last season on Beverly Hills that she’s bisexual.

Some of the women are surprised by the fact that Brandi has been with women, and by some, I mostly mean just Vicki, who is seemingly the only woman at the table who doesn’t watch the shows she isn’t on. Because as Tamra points out in a testimonial, Brandi was at the center of dyke drama last season on Beverly Hills, which I attempted to write about at the time even though it’s VERY MESSY.

who can forget??????

Brandi is far from the first Housewife to talk about having sexual or romantic relations with women. Across the franchises, Housewives in every city often refer to this as “taking a dip in the lady pond” and, like, is that a phrase actually used anywhere else other than Bravo?! Where did they get this from?! Why does it make dyke activity sound like synchronized swimming???? Bravo bizarrely touted Miami’s Julia Lemigova as “the first LGBTQIA+ Housewife” ahead of Miami’s reboot, but that wasn’t really true unless you added a bunch of qualifiers to it and also have a very narrow definition of queer but I DIGRESS. We’re here to talk about lesbian eyebrows, and I promise it’s coming. But it does feel like a good time to also bring attention to this clip of Luann saying she wants to take a dip in Kyle Richards’ lady pond:

chic c’est la vie @CountessLuann ✨ pic.twitter.com/o3psm7RQLp

— 𝖆𝖓𝖓𝖆 (@___adorn) June 25, 2022

In episode two of The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip, Dorinda — who is representation for those of us who like to create a physical itinerary for vacations — brings the girls to a supposedly haunted mansion where there’s believed to be a heavily perfumed ghost. They are going to do readings with a medium (DON’T WORRY IT’S NOT ALLISON DUBOIS…iykyk) and eat a chef-prepared dinner.

Upon arriving at the haunted mansion, Brandi takes one look at the chef for the evening and says to the other women, casually, “she’s a lesbian” and, mysteriously, “I can tell.”

Perhaps the moment would have just breezed on by, but Vicki Gulvanson decided to announce at the dinner table to the husband of the chef that Brandi thought his wife was a lesbian. Everyone is a little confused and also…you know that thing that sometimes happens where sometimes perfectly normal words when said by a certain kind of straight person in a certain kind of tone suddenly sounds like a FULL-ON SLUR? Something about the way “lesbian” sits in some of these women’s mouths makes me want to forbid them from ever saying “lesbian” again.

Phaedra decides to broach the topic when Brandi returns to the table. “What made you think the lady was a lesbian?” she asks.

“Her eyebrows,” Brandi replies, completely deadpan and also as if this were the most obvious thing in the world.

Now, I knew this moment was coming. It’s featured in the trailer for the season, which I immediately watched five times in a row when it first dropped specifically because of this line. LESBIAN EYEBROWS? It is something I simply never could have predicted coming out of Brandi’s mouth in this moment, and I appreciate Real Housewives’ ability to always keep me on my toes. Phaedra’s full-body cackle at Brandi’s answer is Me.

I thought perhaps that this would be the last we heard of lesbian eyebrows. The trailer made it seem like a throwaway line. But no. Lesbian eyebrows do not go away. Brandi doubles the fuck down on lesbian eyebrows. Eva tries to chime in and say that clearly, Brandi was merely making a joke and “there’s no such thing as lesbian eyebrows.” To which Brandi says, again in the most deadpan of tones: “There is, actually.”

We cut to a testimonial, where Brandi says: “Generally, I can tell if someone’s a lesbian by her eyebrows.”

A producer asks the question on all of our minds: “What do lesbian eyebrows look like?”

Brandi replies: “I will tell you when I see them. It’s different for everybody.”

Perhaps it is her Scorpio confidence, but you know what? I believe her. I believe Brandi Glanville can take one look at a person’s eyebrows and say lesbian. In fact, I think that should be a game show. I want a shirt that says Lesbian Eyebrows. As a concept, it sounds perfectly scientific. And sure, I still don’t really know what it means, but who cares!!!! Lesbian eyebrows explained? Baby, there’s no real explanation. You either know or you don’t.

But while I thank Brandi Glanville for introducing “lesbian eyebrows” to my life, it’s the other women’s reactions that are, while not surprising, frustrating, especially given that I know they’ll never really be taken to task for them. Ultimate Girls Trip doesn’t do real reunions (just Watch What Happens Live wrap-ups), but even if they did, I doubt “lesbian eyebrows” would come up as anything other than a called back joke. And hey, it’s funny! I’m here making jokes about it right now! But it’s disappointing to know pretty confidently that Andy Cohen wouldn’t go anywhere near some of the casual lesbophobia and biphobia the other women throw around during the lesbian eyebrows moment: They all trip over themselves to assure the chef she’s attractive as if lesbian is synonymous with ugly; Phaedra multiple times insinuates that “lesbian eyebrows” must mean unkempt eyebrows; Taylor like maybe has a point about it being kind of rude to just go up to a man and speculate about his wife’s sexuality, but the way she makes that point really does make it sound like being a “lesbian” is something horrible! And Taylor also calls Brandi a “part-time lesbian,” which is obviously biphobic, but also once again her tone makes it even worse, like this is meant to be an insult or a gotchya moment. It’s gross all around! And Brandi isn’t perfect by any means either. She is an agent of chaos, and I’ve had many issues with her through the years and even at times on this new season of Ultimate Girls Trip. And I really had a problem with the ways she may have outed Denise on Beverly Hills last season, even though she also didn’t deserve to be treated the way she was by other cast members and Denise. Again…messy.

But in terms of that last point, the thing I had the biggest problem with when it came to the fallout of Brandi/Denise on Beverly Hills was how the issue of outing someone wasn’t even part of the conversation at the reunion. While Andy Cohen has called out homophobia in the past during reunions, it’s usually about gay men, like when he told the Wives of Beverly Hills to stop referring to the gay men in their lives as “my gays” as if they were accessories and not, you know, people. I truly struggle to think of a single time Andy Cohen called out biphobia or homophobia against queer women or transphobia in the same way.

And homophobia happens often on these shows! And goes completely unacknowledged at reunions as anything real! On the most recent season of Summer House, Lindsey Hubbard shared that she has had past sexual experiences with women, which led Kyle Cooke to say he had the biggest boner of his life. Andy not only didn’t even hint at Kyle being kinda gross or how this feeds into the patriarchal idea that women hooking up with each other is for the benefit of men but actually joined in on the joke, thinking it was hilarious and asking Kyle’s now-wife Amanda Batula if it made her feel bad that she apparently can’t do it for him the way his fantasies about Lindsey hooking up with girls do.

Now, this is all small potatoes, I know. And I don’t mean to make this sound like a hit piece on Bravo Daddy Andy Cohen, who is my father. Bravo Daddy letting homophobia toward lesbians slide at reunions is actually very low in the rankings of Bravo’s most egregious and upsetting choices these days, including but far from limited to the decision to give Vicki Gunvalson a platform again even though she is openly an anti-vaxer and even SAYS SO on Ultimate Girls Trip!!!! I just get frustrated by how much queerness there really is in the Real Housewives universe but how it’s so often framed as scandal or salacity — not just by Housewives but by the producers, too.

Like, if I’m being honest, “lesbian eyebrows” is one of the funniest gay jokes I’ve heard in a long time, ESPECIALLY BECAUSE BRANDI DOESN’T CONSIDER IT A JOKE AND IS 100% SERIOUS. And she simply won’t explain it further, and I love that. I think she’s onto something. AND IN FACT, this is not even the first time “lesbian eyebrows” has appeared on this website. Former art and marketing director Sarah Sarwar wrote about having “lesbian eyebrows” in 2016. And the more I write the words “lesbian eyebrows,” the more I’m like, yeah, I get it. I can only hope that Brandi Glanville would take one look at the photo below and say lesbian.

I shall leave you with this image of Dorinda hand-feeding lobster to Phaedra:

Idk about Lesbian Eyebrows, but this looks like Lesbian Seafoodplay to meeeeeee.