The Real L Word Cast: Where Are They Now?
Friends, do you remember? The slouchy beanies, the vests, the forearm tattoos, the creamed corn wrestling, the feather earrings, the clam power, the hated wind, the shower sex, the debs, the cursed strap-on — do you remember The Real L Word? I personally could never forget, because I recapped every episode of this g-dforsaken program when it aired, beginning in 2010 and up until it mercifully concluded in 2012. Not only that, but we made very popular parody videos, featured cast members in our Autostraddle Calendar, and, well, it sure was a weird time to be gay and alive and in your twenties and bopping between New York, Los Angeles, and Oakland!
In the years immediately following the program’s airdates, most of its cast members enjoyed healthy careers as professional lesbians — showing up at parties and Prides as “hosts.” They were primed to become influencers before the term “influencers” even existed and indeed, many of them now are. We’ve also got a lot of babies and real estate licenses!
It’s been over ten years since the final season of this cursed show gave its final bow on Showtime. One thing that’s terrifying for commoner Los Angeles residents is that with enough wealth in this town, you can pretty much look 25 forever and indeed, they all look exactly the same as they did on the show. That aside, however, major changes abound!
The Real L Word cast: Where are they now?
Whitney Mixter
Legendary ladykiller Whitney Mixter was the primary focus of The Real L Word‘s entire run, notorious for her clam power, problematic hairstyle and habit of asking herself questions and then answering them. She dated myriad women who often resembled each other and had a particular amount of drama with Romi in Season One, a side-character who was then upgraded to main cast for the second and third seasons. But of all her many paramours, it was Sada who truly stole Whitney’s heart.
Whitney Mixter and Sada Bettencourt married on the series finale of The Real L Word in 2012 and appeared on Vh1’s Couples Therapy in 2014 to work through the myriad problems that had already threatened the sanctity of their marriage. After their tumultuous ride on Couples Therapy, the couple decamped for the Bay Area to be closer to Sada’s mother, who was ill. While in Oakland, Whitney worked in real estate and Sada began her career as a personal trainer. Following the death of Sada’s mother, they returned to Los Angeles, and in September 2016, Mixter filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences. “At the end, I think we just got to a point where it was exhausting, and it was time to call it quits,” Mixter told Go Magazine in 2017.
After returning to Los Angeles, Whitney continued working as a party promoter and doing some acting and production work, as well as moving forward in her real estate career. But, as the erstwhile conceptual leader of a strap-on that squirts sperm into a vagina, Whitney Mixter’s number one life dream was always to have kiddos — so, at the age of 37, she embarked upon her solo motherhood journey.
She gave birth to her first child, Mecca Silas Moon Mixter, in October of 2020 and is currently in a relationship with “heartworker” Nina Grae, who has devoted her life to using her “speaking, written and singing voice to liberate, heal and inspire folks from all walks of life.” Whitney remains pals with many of her Real L Word co-stars, including fan favorite best friend Alyssa.
Sada Simone
Sada has continued offering fitness training as well as working as a hairstylist and makeup artist at Hairbae Beauty Bar. She’s in a relationship with musician Troy Spino. They have one child together, and Sada is currently pregnant with their second.
Romi (Klinger) Imbelli
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cpu-d6Yumlh/?hl=en
Romi had a pretty unforgiving initial journey into the spotlight as a major player on all three seasons of The Real L Word, including her infamous strap-on sex scene with Whitney. She also appeared as an Autostraddle Calendar Girl in December 2010. Romi ended the series by marrying her boyfriend Dusty, legendary composer of the song “Dirty Knees.” The show made it seem like Romi and Dusty tied the knot in Las Vegas on the same day as Whitney and Sada’s ceremony.
By the spring of 2013, Romi and Dusty had separated and divorced. She later married a chef named Charles and had a baby girl, Frankie, with whom she moved to Texas, though she and Charles later divorced. Romi is now a “social media builder,” makeup artist, brand ambassador, and life coach. She hosts a podcast called The Eff It Madres with her best friend Carla M Zuniga. Romi appears to be currently dating filmmaker James Haven, who is Angelina Jolie’s brother! They’ve known each other since Romi was 20 years old.
Nikki & Jill Goldstein-Weiss
Nikki Weiss and Jill Goldstein were planning their wedding for much of the first season, and they indeed married in a private ceremony in Malibu in October 2010, which was featured on the cover of Curve Magazine. Their first son was born on their two-year wedding anniversary in October 2012, and they now have two sons. Nikki beat breast cancer in 2013 and is now an activist for breast cancer awareness. Jill gave birth to their second child, Adler, a few years later. Through Nikki Weiss & Co, Weiss continues to manage leading directors in the feature and commercial world. Jill remains a writer — she does treatments for commercials, music videos, award shows and NBC Universal’s branded entertainment group.
Mikey Koffman
https://www.instagram.com/p/Ck6SUuVvUCT/?hl=en
Iconic LA Fashion Week promoter Mikey Koffman was best known on the program for LA Fashion Week and also for her delightful girlfriend Raquel. These days, Mikey remains the CEO of Endless Road Entertainment, a firm that “leads the way in Creative Event and Video Production and Event Medical Services.” Also Mikey is an EMT? Mikey married their partner Stephanie in November 2022, and she remains pals with Rose Garcia.
Tracy Ryerson & Stamie Karakasidis
https://www.instagram.com/p/CX-fiGQrbhQ/
In The Real L Word’s first season, Tracy was a 29-year-old former model who’d realized she liked women in her mid-twenties, and she’d been dating 38-year-old stand-up comic Stamie Karakasidis, who had three kids with her ex, Julie.
Tracy and Stamie are still together! They grew their family in 2018 when Tracy gave birth to baby Milo! Tracy works as a Film & TV Producer for Wayfarer Studios. Stamie identifies as a Los Angles Real Estate Wealth Advisor and is a co-founder of mewd vitamins (Multi-Vitamins for Teens.) They’ve also produced 20 episodes of a podcast called The Stamie & Tracy Show.
Tracy and Stamie remain friends with Nikki and Jill.
Rose Garcia
In The Real L Word’s first season, Rose was presented as a “player” full of edit-friendly catchphrases about seducing and dating ladies. She was often fighting with her then-girlfriend, Natalie, and also had a cute dog!
I actually ran into Rose at a Generation Q premiere event in 2019 and she was quite honestly a delight. Predictably, Rose remains a boss bitch, heading up the Garcia Real Estate Group and working as a “crowd motivator” and “living the Real L Word life everyday.” She hosted parties at Dinah and appears with her hot girlfriend Sofia at power lesbian events across Los Angeles. In February 2023, Rose revealed she had been diagnosed with Late Stage Ovarian Cancer the year prior and had undergone surgery in January, and was now approaching chemo with optimism, hope, and the support of her family and friends.
Kacy Boccumini
Kacy & Cori’s difficult experience trying to have children was the emotional core of the second and third seasons of The Real L Word, and they experienced a brutal miscarriage in 2012. The couple broke up in 2017.
43-year-old Kacy Boccumini came out as a trans man on Instagram in May of 2021 after the pandemic enabled him to get in touch with himself through writing and Zoom Al-Anon meetings. He also thanked Nikki Weiss-Goldstien for her help and support through his coming out process! Kacy was diagnosed with with MS in 2013 and was working with a doctor to ensure physical transition that won’t worsen their MS. He told The Advocate that the doctor he visited to get his hormone treatments was in the same building where he used to take Cori for her fertility treatments. He works as a writer, director and the host of the podcast “The Stories We Tell,” which is about the way we read movies.
Cori McGinn
Since her time in the reality television spotlight, Cori has taken a step back from the public eye but she has a super-adorable dog, knits a lot, and works for Warner Brothers Entertainment in Los Angeles. Her personal Instagram is private, but she has a public account for her knitting projects.
Sajdah Golde
https://www.instagram.com/p/CY4Gx94lreZ/?hl=en
Sajdah Golde joined the cast in Season Two. She worked as a field organizer for political campaigns, dated a girl named Chanel, had a fantastic best friend named Marissa, and said funny things about girls and dating. She also notably tweeted during the project that she regretted getting involved at all!
Sajdah launched a magazine called Black Out for Black LGBTQ+ folks in 2013, which possibly only did one issue. She graduated from law school again in 2016, this time with a Masters of Law in Taxation. She’s now the president of taxation Law Firm Goldemind.
Claire Campbell Moseley
Claire appeared on The Real L Word’s second season as an entrepreneur who wanted to “start a website about lesbian life” and move to Los Angeles, leaving behind her girlfriend Vivian in favor of seeing “what’s there” with her ex-girlfriend Francine. Upon landing in Los Angeles, they immediately began fighting. Claire once memorably noted of her cast members: “It’s cool, I look good. You all look fake and crazy. Bye.”
Now, Claire has left these halcyon days behind her. She’s the founder of custom pocket square shop O’Harrow Clotheirs, which she launched in 2013 out of her Silver Lake Blackhouse. Claire and her new haircut look fantastic on Instagram, traveling the world in curated outfits. She currently works as the marketing Manager for vape kings PAX. In 2017, she was listed as one of Elle Magazine’s Hottest Singles, but she appears to now be dating a girl named Anna.
Francine Beppu
Aforementioned ex of Claire, Francine, modeled for the Autostraddle calendar while being filmed for The Real L Word‘s second season, in which she had a nice storyline with her mom and some big fights with Claire!
In 2015, Francine moved back to Hawai’i and soon thereafter began working with the Hawai’i LGBT Legacy Foundation, eventually becoming its president. She currently lives in Honolulu and works as the VP of Network Strategy for the NMG Network.
Kiyomi McCloskey
The third season of The Real L Word introduced dueling Los Angeles / New York storylines, but the New York cast was basically just Kiyomi McCloskey’s band, Hunter Valentine, and mostly focused on Kiyomi, with some screentime for temporary bandmate Somer and a sliver for additional bandmates Vero and Laura. Hunter Valentine lost Vero in 2013 and then Aimee in 2014, while the band was a part of Make or Break: The Linda Perry Project. Hunter Valentine released its last EP in 2016.
Kiyomi began the show with one girlfriend and ended the show with a new girlfriend: castmate Lauren Bedford Russell. The duo stayed together for four years before parting ways — although they remain friends!
In 2019, Kiyomi married her girlfriend of five years, model Meghan Garland, at Whitney Houston’s former estate in New Jersey, which was written up in Brides magazine and amazingly did include a custom bottle of Smirnoff with their actual faces on it. The couple parted ways in June of 2022. Kiyomi is still living in New York and working as a real estate agent as well as doing a bit of Influencing.
Somer Bingham
Local favorite Somer Bingham was briefly a member of Hunter Valentine and thus was shuffled onto The Real L Word, but by the time the show aired she’d returned to focusing on her own band, Clinical Trials.
After The Real L Word, Somer attended noted event A-Camp, where she created an independent campaign to be recognized as A-Camp Intern Somer. She and her wife, Donna Rizham, had a daughter in 2014, and Somer still makes music and is currently a producer-songwriter-musician “trying to balance nihilism, creativity & motherhood.” She wrote a very important piece for Autostraddle about how to remain punk while having a kid.
Laura Petracca
Hunter Valentine’s drummer, Laura, followed up her time with the band by returning to Toronto and the culinary career she’d begun there, working as a sous chef at Leña before taking the lead as Executive Chef at The Rabbit Hole in Toronto. She also has a girlfriend, and they look very happy!
Vero Sanchez
The former bassist for Hunter Valentine now identifies as an artist/songwriter and runs The Bowery Vault in East Nashville, “an inviting space where people can explore fashion along with creating a great sounding room where artists and audiences can connect.”
Lauren Bedford Russell
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cgcq7_3vOuS/?hl=en
The L.A. crew for Season Three contained series mainstays Whitney, Sada, Romi, Cori, and Kacy, as well as newcomer Lyon Jewelry CEO Lauren Bedford Russel, who was “best friends with benefits” with Amanda Dunn, who was moving to Los Angeles to live with Lauren when the season opened.
Lauren is now an ambassador for environmental platform OnlyOne and owns Design & Renovation firm Bedford Renovations. She’s pretty withdrawn from social media at this point, but from what is out there it would appear that she really enjoys being underwater!
Amanda Leigh Dunn
In 2013, Amanda was part of the team that started Brooklyn lesbian bar The Dalloway with America’s Next Top Model star Kim Stolz, which unfortunately closed a year after opening. Amanda is the head of Design & Development for House of Rolison, a real estate development firm that promises to “create avant-garde and innovative housing projects” and “transform places into real living spaces.” She’s in a relationship with House of Rolison’s Managing Partner, Taylor Hahn.
The Real L Word’s Kacy And Cori Break Up, Love Is Both A Lie And Not A Lie At All
As our dying earth spins closer and closer to an inevitable fiery armageddon, the Vapid Fluff department at Autostraddle HQ were devastated late last week to learn of the breakup of Kacy Boccumini and Cori McGinn, stars of the ill-fated reality experiment The Real L Word.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BWgU1VGnuFm/
As the only two characters to escape The Real L Word with their reputations intact, Cori and Kacy captured our hearts with their charmingly earnest love story and their difficult, ultimately unsuccessful efforts to start a family together. After eleven years together, the pair appear to have separated amicably.
In a devastatingly sweet Tumblr post, Kacy explained:
We don’t owe anyone an explanation, but it felt irresponsible to pretend as if Cori and I weren’t used as pins to some of your hopes as proof that love does exist and that it’s real. Despite this news, I can tell you whole-heartedly, that if love didn’t exist, I wouldn’t be writing this. If we hadn’t loved each other for 11 years, we wouldn’t have been able to let each other go when we knew it was causing the other pain.
When you promise to love someone forever, it doesn’t mean you get to keep her. It means you know they are free and in the world and that knowledge fills you with joy. Rings are symbols of her existence – a circle of life. You wear it because you have chosen to be a witness to that life. That’s all. It’s not a cuff. It’s not ownership. It’s proof.
I think you all loved and championed us because, no matter what we faced, we faced it together with grace. We are anything if not consistent. We have separated as quickly as we joined. Life is easy to untangle when your foundation is intact. We’ve done so gracefully, respectfully, as you should do for those you love.
I hope you continue to follow both of us separately, to see what life looks like when you’re brave enough to say the words “I want more” out loud. If I’ve learned two things in my time on earth it’s this: life is short and hurting those you love because you’re afraid of being alone is the greatest sin you can commit.
These lovely people deserve much better than to be forever known as reality television stars, and we genuinely wish both of them the absolute best.
10 Potential L Word / Empire Crossover Plots That Would Definitely Blow Up The Chart(s)
When I got into Empire earlier this year, I was fascinated to learn that L Word executive Svengali Ilene Chaiken was at the helm – mostly because unlike most of The L Word and the entirety of The Real L Word, this show was actually good. I greedily inhaled the entire first season in about two days, and hated myself a little for how much I loved “Drip Drop.” The show was crazy melodramatic, but kept the intrigue level high; I rooted for Jamal and fell deeply in love with Cookie. I couldn’t wait for the story to pick up this fall; if season one was this amazing, the next season would be even better!
Sadly, this was not the case. Reviews of season two have not been kind – the show has fumbled its attempts at political relevance, the storylines are convoluted and make little sense, and some characters appear to have switched personalities overnight. Sound familiar to anyone? All of the problems viewers had with The L Word after its impressive Season One are beginning to manifest themselves in Empire, which is disappointing but seems inevitable. From Anika’s constantly switching personality and Jamal’s dark turn to Mimi Whiteman (a perfect amalgamation of Dawn Denbo, Season Two-era Helena Peabody and Helena’s terrible poker girlfriend), this show has Chaiken’s fingerprints all over it. As far as I can tell, we’re just a few episodes away from Max Sweeney’s Willy Wonka-themed baby shower.
So where do we go from here? Can the Lyons survive the Chaiken curse, or are they doomed to live out the rest of their days playing weekend shows at The Planet?
We’ve taken the time to compile some possible scenarios that the writers of Empire might consider.
1. Now that Vernon is out of the picture, DA Ford starts threatening Lucious with a new star witness — Jenny Schecter. Lucious cackles and evilly twirls his mustache like Snidely Whiplash, then fires his crooked lawyer in favor of Joyce Wischnia. Obviously Joyce flirts shamelessly with Cookie, who eats it up with a spoon.
2. Struck by a sudden burst of inspiration, Lucious decides to produce an album with fellow Philadelphia native and R&B legend Kit Porter. He’s particularly enthusiastic about recording Kit’s legendary ode to menopause, which he thinks will be a big hit on Apex Radio. Kit has known the Lyon family since waaaaayyy back and is a totally weird aunt to the boys. She can’t figure out how to use her iPhone, but Jamal offers to teach her how to set up her email because he’s a pretty nice guy. At some point, the attention Lucious is paying to Kit pisses off Cookie, so she looks up Ivan Aycock and signs him in an attempt to steal Kit’s limelight. Shenanigans ensue.
TRAAAAAANSFORMATION. DEEEEVIATION.
3. Hakeem and Papi run into each other at Leviticus. They’re both wearing the same outfit, and it’s mega awkward. After they size each other up for roughly half an episode, Hakeem buys Papi a beer, hits on her a little and ultimately tries to recruit her for Mirage a Trois. Papi goes home with Freda Gatz.
4. Cookie finally gets Hakeem into the studio, but Somer is late.
5. Mimi Whiteman shows up in the boardroom, shoulderblades a-blazin’, with her Lover Cindi on her arm — you just knew this was coming. BooBoo Kitty has a secret business lunch with Season Two-era Helena Peabody in an effort to steal back the company, but like everything Anika does, it’s a failure.
Leviticus gets bought by Shebar, it’s a whole thing.
6. Romi styles Tiana for a video shoot. Before you know it, everybody at Empire is wearing a single feather earring. Alternately, Shane styles Tiana for a video shoot, and is aghast when she learns that the song features one DJ Carmen de la Pica Morales. In true Shane form, she responds by sleeping with literally every woman in the building besides Becky, who mostly just rolls her eyes.
Drip drop, drip drippity drop.
7. Cookie’s new venture Lyon Dynasty is successful primarily because of its primary silent investor, Peggy Peabody. You just know she’d have some choice words for Hakeem, but get a real kick out of Cookie’s moxie.
8. Jamal meets Billy Blaikie through that insufferable blanket-wearing artist and Jamal is quickly sucked in to Billy’s appetite for drugs and outfits. Billy tries to blackmail Jamal with a sex tape. Lucious arranges for Billy and the Artist to “disappear,” and sells the portrait to Bette Porter’s gallery for an undisclosed sum.
9. Extended storyline about Valentina’s ultimately futile attempts to join Hunter Valentine.
10. Nobody can figure out who signed Betty or why they’re always at Empire. It eventually becomes a company-wide blame game, tearing the Lyon family apart. Literal shots are fired. In the end, we discover it was f-cking Rhonda (of course it was). She and Andre concoct some kind of convoluted, sinister plot that nobody cares about, and then they have very creepy, self-congratulatory sex about it.
Please Go Watch “The L Word Mississippi: Hate The Sin”
I expect Ilene Chaiken’s work to be a voyeuristic playdate that transports me from my poorly lit bedroom into a magical lesbian environ. Without question, The L Word was about fantasy. The Real L Word was also about fantasy, albeit a fantasy where severely eyebrowed orange toddlers cried and threw things at each other in the wilds of Los Angeles. I have to come to expect that kind of technicolor Sapphic unreality in all of my Chaiken programming, which is exactly why I did not expect The L Word Mississippi: Hate The Sin. And I’m glad I didn’t, because this is a documentary worth seeing on its own terms. It’s excellent, and I want everyone in the community to see it, because it’s important and it moved me and I think it’ll move a lot of other people, too.
Hate The Sin is not about fantasy. On the contrary, it’s a very grounding, humbling experience. Reality in this documentary is bleak, at times heart-breaking. It’s self-aware of its place in the Chaiken omnibus: Hate The Sin opens on the documentary subjects reflecting on The L Word and its reality component, and the extreme contrast between the lifestyles of those shows and the way the Mississippi lesbians have been forced into a more closeted and fearful existence. From there, though, the film takes us to a much darker and ultimately deeper place than its predecessors.
The subjects of this documentary are all women who have been irrevocably shaped by their geography. Some are estranged from their families while others are maintaining struggling relationships with parents and cousins. Their sexuality has cost them their businesses, their reputations, and even their senses of self-worth. One woman continues to pray to God that she will be changed into a heterosexual for the better, even while she loves her wife and raises their children. It’s strange and frightening to see so many layers of self-hatred and internalized homophobia even among the very active love and happiness of their lives, lives that involve their spouses, girlfriends, children, and families, lives that are worth celebrating even if they’re viewed as sinful.
There are so many important stories of love being told: BB and Susan’s endless support for each other even after BB has lost her family, her congregation, and her place in the community; Dannika’s attempts to share her life with her homophobic mother, and the love and trust she shares with her girlfriend Jana; Cam and Amber’s beautiful family, both at home and with their Per2yon family; LB and Sara awaiting the birth of their son while navigating LB’s transition. In the face of so much hatred and ignorance, it’s beautiful to see these relationships flourish regardless.
I do want to talk about Rene, though. From the bottom of my butch and gender non-conforming heart, her story absolutely destroyed me. Rene is the butchiest country butch to butch, but she is a reformed homosexual who looks back on her past as something placed in her by the Devil. Her family is happy to help her dress in more feminine clothing, as her cousin says that “it is a sin for a woman to look like a man.” Rene believes that her inner struggle to give up her identity and orientation is justified by her release from Satan and her heavenly salvation. Rene’s son is gay, and her confidence in her identity and presentation was what gave him so much pride and confidence growing up. To see her rejecting her homosexuality and simultaneously trying to cure him is just as hard for him to accept as it is for us to watch.
I think what ended up being the most difficult for me was watching people build their own self-satisfaction off of encouraging others to hate themselves, to consider themselves broken, weak, and unworthy of love. At one point, Rene’s constant audience of cousins and friends who support her rejection of her homosexuality sound like they are so enthusiastic about her life changes only because they were uncomfortable with her before, and this is an easy relief to them. They’ll feel better about themselves by making her feel as though she has been wrong and sinful all this time, and it won’t take much effort on their part. It was impossible not to be disgusted at these so-called moral people.
This documentary may bear the same name as the show that brought us those uncomfortably long sex scenes and Romi’s Vegas wedding, but there’s nothing shallow about Hate The Sin. It killed me to see people suffering over something we take for granted in so many of her metropolitan communities. It reminded me of the rural queers where I grew up, especially the ones who never want to make the exodus to the city because they believe that if they leave, who’ll stay behind for the next generation? There’s a scene in this documentary where BB is organizing for her new outreach program, and there’s a discussion about why none of them have moved out of Mississippi. “If we just leave, it’ll never change,” someone says, and they all agree. This is a documentary about people who choose to stay, not because they don’t know better, but because they’re brave. It’s a reminder that wanting to exist in your home shouldn’t have to be the brave choice.
What Do You Do With A Problem Like Romi Klinger: On Bisexuality, Biphobia and Media Representation
Recently, GO Magazine published an interview with Romi Klinger of The Real L Word regarding the current state of her relationships, her career, and the controversy surrounding her sexuality. In the interview, Romi reveals that she and and her husband Dusty Ray (of dubious Tumblr fame) have separated and are moving forward with divorce proceedings. The interviewer then pushed Romi to declare her sexuality as an absolute percentage, and Klinger actually went as far as to partially blame her marriage’s collapse on her bisexuality. “I would say that half of the divorce is because it wasn’t working out and we weren’t happy. And the other half is because I want to go back to women,” she explains.
Look, I haven’t eaten an animal product in nearly a decade, but when I see PETA campaigns that make all vegetarians look petty and insane, it embarrasses me on a personal level. As I read Romi’s explanation of her current situation and her incredulity at the public’s reaction to her prior relationship drama, I couldn’t help feeling personally betrayed in some (possibly unrealistic) way. I’m an actively queer woman who does not identify as a lesbian, and I date people of all genders without worrying too much about giving myself a label. It would be easy to gloss over all the difficulties I had in reaching this level of acceptance with my sexuality, but the truth is that from time to time, non-monosexuality can be a pretty lonely place to be. Ever since I found my predilections shifting towards this current state of affairs, I’ve been very keen to find others who understand my point of view, and it can be enormously upsetting to see someone who has a major international platform making us all look crazy.
Obviously nobody is denying anybody the right to love who they want – that’s sort of the whole point of this community, right? It’s what we’re here for! However, Romi’s comments about the role her sexual fluidity has played in both her on-screen vilification and her ever-changing relationship status left a bad taste in my mouth. According to the Advocate, who named “bisexuals” (all of them, apparently) as one of their 10 choices for 2013’s Person of the Year, there’s never been a better time to be open about one’s “in-between sexuality” in the media… So why does it still feel so distinctly uncomfortable? Romi’s often branded herself as a representative of the bisexual community, but her statements about what it means to be a sexually fluid person do nothing to paint her as any sort of role model – in fact, she drives home a number of unfortunate stereotypes.
In the beginning of Season 3 of The Real L Word (a real television show that actually exists), Romi is shown “coming out” to her friends as dating a man. She is frightened of the reception she may receive from her lesbian friends, and this is a valid fear that many non-monosexual women know all too well. The risk of being judged or excommunicated for “going straight” or somehow betraying one’s community is a very real issue among bisexual women involved with male-identified partners, as though these relationships somehow invalidate one’s queer identity. However, Romi laughs to her friends that she started dating a guy because she “got tired of [her] strap-on not working,” and it’s here that she began to lose me. I watched the rest of the season with my jaw on the floor, aghast at one of the worst and most disappointing representations of bisexuality I have ever seen on television – which is really quite a distinction.
In terms of media visibility, our options have been pretty limited for quite some time. Remember all the way back in season 1 of The L Word, when Alice was portrayed as the only bisexual in The Planet, not to mention the whole wide world? By the end of season three, her awkward journey along the Kinsey scale was unceremoniously concluded with her admission that “bisexuality is gross. I see it now.” As Maria San Filippo explains in her book The B Word: Bisexuality in Contemporary Film and Television, Ilene Chaiken’s decision to abandon this aspect of Alice’s storyline squandered the opportunity to tell stories that a significant chunk of her audience could relate to, leaving behind a world where the most outspokenly bisexual woman left on television was Megan Mullally’s character Karen Walker on Will & Grace. Bisexual visibility in media has long been a touchy subject, with many characters hesitant to openly refer to themselves as bi (see: Chasing Amy, Piper from Orange is the New Black). Our other options tend to be poorly-developed, problematic representations like A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila. These murky examples don’t do very much to demystify or enhance public perception of those of us who fall somewhere in-between. It would have been lovely to see a sympathetic portrayal of a complex bisexual woman on television, but instead Ilene Chaiken did it again – we got Romi, who threw temper tantrums about not receiving the treatment she felt entitled to as a “celesbian” and lied to her girlfriend about her obvious attraction to her ex-boyfriend before unceremoniously ditching her to marry him.
Any criticism of her behavior, even when valid, was written off by Romi as biphobia, and while I don’t doubt that much of it was rooted in biphobia, the problem of biphobia in the lesbian community is too pervasive and important to be dubiously employed on national television. Like other forms of oppression, biphobia and monosexism are systemic and institutional, propped up and perpetuated by larger systems that have a vested interest in maintaining rigid narratives about sexual orientation. Biphobia and monosexism aren’t just feeling dismissed by lesbian friends; they’re why bisexual women have disproportionately high rates of mental illness, substance abuse, sexual violence, intimate partner violence, and poverty when compared to both straight and lesbian women, just for starters. What Romi experiences is interpersonal; the feeling of someone being mean to her. While it’s undoubtedly hurtful for her, and would be hurtful for anyone who had to experience it, it’s only the tip of the iceberg when talking about biphobia. A refusal to look beyond Romi’s experiences — whether that refusal is Romi’s or the media’s — helps us avoid looking at the institutional ways in which bisexual women are disadvantaged, and encourages us instead to continue bickering about whether bisexual women are “slutty” or “greedy.” Focusing the discussion in this way means that all that gets discussed is Romi as an individual. Even if Romi is a bisexual or sexually fluid individual, there’s an invitation to imagine Romi’s personal life as representative of what bisexuality is, and even worse, the negative experiences Romi complains about as representative of what biphobia is. And that’s just objectively incorrect.
via the Williams Institute
Of course, all we can go by is what we’ve been shown of this person’s public life; we cannot know what happened when the cameras were off. The GO Magazine interviewer does push Romi to quantify her sexuality in a very specific way, and she expresses some frustration with the way viewers of the show received her shifting sexuality. After three persistent questions on the topic, Romi seems to submit to the pressure to identify as “90/10,” more attracted to women than to men. She qualifies with “I don’t care what you want to call me or where I am on the scale, if I’m gay or bi or a fucking idiot.”
She is disheartened by the reactions she’s received from the lesbian community, and rightfully offended by the notion that by opening herself up to dating women, she’s suddenly “back.” Sexual fluidity is real and it can vary with time, especially with women – I’ve chronicled this within myself over the course of the last several years, and it’s certainly ebbed and flowed over time. For some reason, people do often tend to ask me to define my sexuality with percentages, as though it were a pie chart I could draw up in PowerPoint for them to use as a handy guide to my relationships. What feels right for a person today may not be the same thing that feels right a year or even a month from now, but this doesn’t decrease one’s ability to love or commit to another human being. It’s frustrating that Romi’s reported experiences with a fluid identity are being parlayed into a common misconception about non-monosexual people: that they can’t “make up their minds” about what gender they’d like to be with, and that any committed relationship represents a clear choice between hetero- or homosexuality. Undoubtedly, she should be able to pursue the kind of person who makes her happy, but the myth that bisexuals are unable to make a longterm commitment to a single person of any gender is both unfair and unnecessary.
The language that implies Romi has “returned” to an attraction to women (or that she “gave it up” when she married Dusty) is indicative of a larger problem with how bisexual women are perceived in relationships. Regardless of however one personally identifies, we do tend to be defined to an extent by our current relationships. A pair of female-presenting individuals holding hands will almost always be perceived as a homosexual couple, and both members of a heterosexual-appearing couple are generally assumed to be 100% straight. It’s upsetting to have to explain time and time again that an individual’s sexuality is not always defined by the gender of one’s present partner, and the nagging perception that long-term monogamous relationships can somehow erase one’s sexual preference. To use a pair of famous examples, compare the media’s reactions to Cynthia Nixon’s marriage to Christine Marinoni with the reaction to Evan Rachel Wood’s marriage to Jamie Bell. Whereas Cynthia Nixon found herself forced to explain her sexuality in great depth to a public convinced that she had suddenly become a lesbian, Evan Rachel Wood was criticized for marrying a man, as though her previously much-discussed bisexuality was no longer accurate or valid. “Bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night,” Woody Allen once quipped, but he’s not necessarily correct. The misconception that sexually fluid people are able to move effortlessly between the queer and heterosexual worlds seems awfully rosy, but it’s rarely accurate. Bisexuals often report feeling alienated by both sides of the coin. In straight society, bisexual women are often seen as promiscuous, sexually indiscriminate, up for anything; sexual relationships with women are portrayed as being almost entirely performed with the male gaze in mind (see: Katy Perry’s debut single, most mainstream girl-on-girl porn). On the other hand, there’s also a widespread misconception that bisexuals are all insatiable, inevitable cheaters who use so-called “bisexual passing privilege” to allow themselves access to heterosexual privilege without having to commit to life as fully-fledged lesbians.
This idea of the bisexual as part-time queers or somehow not fully committed also lends itself to the perception that non-monosexuals are less qualified to be active in LGBTQ organizations, that they are traitors, merely allies, or have less of a right to feel strongly about causes directly affecting their own lives. It’s unfair, and it’s terribly discouraging. Rubyfruit Jungle author Rita Mae Brown spoke for a lot of people who reject bisexual women when she said, “You can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can’t be tied to male privileges with the right hand while clutching to your sister with your left.” In Sex and Sensibility: Stories of a Lesbian Generation, Arlene Stein explains that early bisexual feminists were seen as “undermin(ing) the struggle against compulsory heterosexuality” and as “an inherently sexual category, while lesbians, feminists suggested, transcended sexuality.” This dismissive attitude creates a hostile environment for bisexuals seeking to form a queer political identity, or even to establish an inclusive community outside of the heterosexual world.
This is not to suggest that Romi or anyone is doing bisexuality incorrectly; obviously as long as nobody’s getting hurt, there’s certainly no right or wrong way to pursue sexuality. Even if Romi does in real life fulfill every stereotype of bisexual women, that doesn’t make her any less of a “real” bisexual, or a person whose sexuality isn’t valid and deserving of respect. That said, when we see sexually fluid individuals in film or television, they’re often unfortunately edited to fit the mold of the clichéd “bad bisexual,” a promiscuous, greedy person who is inconsistent and selfish with partners. Newsflash, guys – there are bisexual people who behave this way, but there are also people of every sexual orientation who behave this way, and if we had more nuanced, fleshed out characters representing non-monosexuals, these characteristics could be seen simply as individual personality traits and not representative of an entire community. To pretend otherwise is wearisome at best, and biphobic at worst.
This may be the time to wonder why Romi is a primary person we are paying attention to when we talk about bisexuality in the first place. Why are these kinds of stories that are so often amplified to reach us, instead of more nuanced, empathetic accounts of bisexual life? As a queer woman who does not exclusively date women, it would be enormously validating to see something even vaguely resembling my story told in film or television. Instead, bisexuality has mostly been shown as a cry for attention, a phase, or an excuse to dodge commitments and treat partners badly – which is bad for business no matter how you identify. The character of Romi who exists in front of reality TV cameras is indecisive, flighty and impulsive. When she enters into a new relationship, she makes broad statements about how her new partner’s gender is the gender that’s been truly right for her along, and then often backtracks when said relationship doesn’t work out. Here we have a person whose public persona seemingly defines all the misconceptions that the non-monosexual community are tired of, and yet it’s a story we’re told all too often.
Bisexual women have been doing and saying wonderful things for a long time, and certainly there are far better examples to be found out there. Recently, Maria Bello’s beautiful coming out piece in the New York Times’ Modern Love column discussed her past and current loves in a matter-of-fact, straightforward manner, being clear about relationships with people of different genders without invalidating any of them or making essentialist claims about gender in the process. She certainly isn’t the first sane, secure person on Earth who’s ever been capable of loving more than one gender, and yet her article’s wonderful reception was a pleasant surprise – finally, someone was getting it right (sort of — the number of headlines that claimed she was “coming out as gay” were disheartening, but not surprising). These are the kinds of stories we need to be telling. I hope that Romi Klinger finds someone who makes her happy (Instagram suggests that this person is currently Kelsey again, so mazel tov, you two!), but we also need to start presenting more three-dimensional and simply MORE examples of sexually fluid humans — so that one complex, flawed, vulnerable woman doesn’t have be our most visible public understanding of that community. I am hopeful that perhaps in 2014, we can begin to make positive changes necessary to start seeing a more balanced representation of the bisexual community in mainstream media.
In order to make sure that the comments section on this article is a healthy and welcoming place for our bisexual readers, please note that any comments that question the validity of bisexuality or sexual fluidity as a sexual orientation, question Autostraddle’s decision to publish pieces discussing bisexuality, or make essentialist claims about bisexual people (ex. bisexuals are cheaters, bisexuals turn out to be gay) will be swiftly deleted.
Couples Therapy 401: A Veritable Goldmine of Beautiful Garbage
VH1’s show Couples Therapy is exactly the kind of trashy television that gives me life. It pumps the blood in my veins, it is the air that I breathe. If I was a raccoon or maybe a bear, I would flip over the garbage can that Couples Therapy is concocted in and I would roll around in it for hours. That’s how I feel about this show. I want to rub this nasty piece of trash show all over my body and reek of it for days. Anyway.
If you were sleeping on this show, wakey-wakey, because alums of Ilene Chaiken Sucking The Last Sour Drops From The Diseased Teat of Her Dead Show – and by that, I mean The Real L Word – Whitney and Sara are here and they’re ready to process their baloney “issues” on television. Insert supercut of Whitney and Sara fighting outside of clubs and having sex on camera set to George Michael’s “Careless Whisper.” But seriously, if you missed the season with Courtney Stodden, you missed something amazing.
Saint Courtney Stodden
As the recapper for this show, I want to be 100% upfront: I do not dislike these people. Like, at all. I probably should, because all the other homosexuals I know straight-up loathe The Real L Word and everything that is even slightly related to it, but I ate that shit up like a goddamned Kraft Dinner. If you think reality television at its pure cheesiest is “ruining” modern media, that’s fine. Go watch Masterpiece Theatre and read your Dickens. I’ll be here enjoying the literal goldmine of hilarity that is C-to-D-list celebrities being paid to pretend-cry and stir up sloppily edited drama!
Speaking of C-to-D-list celebrities, let’s meet everyone who will be living together in this fake house. The cast of players is made up of Ghostface Killah and a “model/actress” who is not his main partner, a lady with gigantic lips I have never heard of because the ONLY Real Housewives that matter are in New Jersey, the lady with gigantic lips’ personal assistant, her milk toast guy, Jon minus Kate and 8 and the woman he is hooking up with, Our Ladies Whitney and Sara, Farrah from Teen Mom, and Farrah’s Chin Implant. Farrah’s Chin Implant is probably the most active player in this show, as it moves around her face and then absorbs itself a number of times throughout the forty minutes. I don’t know what it says that by the end of this episode Whitney and Sara were the most well-adjusted and “normal” and barely had any screentime. When I say they barely had any screentime, I mean their talking heads were about the other housemates’ issues. They dragged Whitney out to comment on Ghostface Killah’s resistance to therapy, since she is clearly the expert on a complete stranger who she had dinner with once’s feelings about vulnerability and the therapeutic process.
Part of this therapeutic process is living together in a fake house, having group therapy sessions with other D-listers, and being recorded while you cry. You’d think people would question the professionalism of this whole system, but Dr. Jenn Berman is like, “Of course I’m a professional! That’s why I’m treating my patients on a fucking reality show.”
Just cash those checks, Jenn. Cash cash, bang bang.
Highlights of the straight people introducing themselves include Ghost referring to Kelsey as “Kelly” and having to correct himself, Kelsey describing herself as a “model, actress, singer, songwriter,” Big Lips getting excited about the size of her closet in the fake house, and Big Lips’ Man saying that Ghost has “hip-hop flair” and he is “very anxious to get on the Internet and listen to some of his music.” Big Lips’ Man fucks with Tupac but he doesn’t fuck with Wu Tang? Well, at least he skis.
Then Whitney and Sara show up! We get a supercut of them fighting outside of clubs and a shot of the bathroom where they first banged on New Years Eve.
Whitney: Happy New Years to this guy.
Yo, let me switch to Tenth Grade Sleepover Mode and whisper a confession in my cami and pajama bottoms: I am all about these two. I was Team Sara all through The Real L Word, since Day Numero Uno. I cried at that goshdarn wedding. I was Team Whitney Get Your Shit Together because Whitney is a people pleaser and I am a people pleaser and sometimes I was like, wow, I get her. I love these ridiculous fuckers because they are ridiculous. If I laugh hysterically when Sara says she knew she loved Whitney from the moment they fucked in a bathroom, it’s because that’s AMAZING and I find it super entertaining and if these two want to make their money from entertaining me, I am all about it.
Also, Sara’s new bangs. DAMN, GIRL.
Whitney says they are both trying to be king of the jungle but they haven’t figured out who the king of the jungle is. I’m not sure why that was the metaphor for their relationship that Whitney picked, but maybe they like to fuck to The Lion King soundtrack, I don’t know.
We try to time our climaxes to the first chorus in Hakuna Matata.
Their other major issue is that their clothing company, which is apparently t-shirts with pictures of them on it, is not doing great. Since I’ve only heard of this brand through Sara and Whitney’s Instagram accounts, this was not a shocking piece of information. Look, I’m a twenty-something in the creative field. We’ve ALL got friends who started their own “company” by writing their brand name in a black shape and printing it on some beanies. The non-success of the Sara-Whitney endeavor is only slightly sadder because they technically have a bit more weight, having been on some reality programming and all.
They don’t immediately hit it off with the other housemates, since Ghostface Killah thinks they’re going to jump his girlfriend (??? Should we even call Kelsey his girlfriend? We are all in agreement that he is really not into her at all, right? Like, she is clearly blackmailing him, right?) because obviously all lesbians just want to fuck all women, always, as we are absolute FIENDS for it. Kelsey says that would never happen because a) Whitney doesn’t want to have sex with a cockatoo and b) Kelsey does not believe in gay marriage, or gay people. Can’t wait for the homophobic drama to be as forcibly stirred up as possible!
But hey, how could I forget Farrah and Farrah’s Chin Implant? Farrah is introduced with clips from her sex tape, and then shows up without her boyfriend, whose name is bleeped out because he is trying to erase every single aspect of himself that could possibly be attached to Farrah in the future. Actually, rumor has it that Farrah hired a fake boyfriend to get on this show, and he’ll probably show up at the last minute for an extra juicy finale. This would not surprise me in the least, and it would be AWESOME. Farrah cries about how Bleep is not there and everyone stares at her uncomfortably, except for Whitney who is a Grade A People Pleaser and seems really upset on her behalf. Sara looks at Farrah with all the enthusiasm of someone attending a sixth grade violin recital following a pap smear. Also, let’s be honest, the real victim here is Farrah’s Chin Implant, who had no choice but to take center stage in this sad downward spiral.
FREE ME FROM THE CONFINES OF THIS FLESHY PRISON!
Well, until next time, kids, when Jon minus 8 and Kate will bring his bloated carcass into the spotlight, when Ghost trots out another member of his harem, and when Whitney and Sara will continue to somehow be the most normal people here.
Brittani’s Video Party: Tracy Ryerson is Lesbros with a Hooters Girl
Greetings. This is Brittani’s Video Party, where I bring some of the “best” videos from all over my internet together so we can clap, cry or deconstruct. Have you ever gotten to a video and it already has 33 million views and you wonder where the heck have you been? Well I’m here to help you so that you see it when it only has 32 million views. Aim low, world. Aim low.
Header by Rory Midhani
Someone had a really new and daring idea about a lesbian being friends with a straight dude. Crazy town. This episode of Lesbros is about the changes the lesbian character undergoes when she gets a butcher haircut.
Satirical web series Kiss Her I’m Famous follows two best friends (The Real L-Word’s Tracy Ryerson and Ilea Matthews) as they try to make a fake sex tape to catapult them to fame. Episodes 1 and 2 premiere March 25, 2013, on Tello Films. This two minute trailer features Tracy Ryerson getting more action than they showed in an entire season of TRLW.
The tile for this video is Hooters Ballgirl Picks Up Live Baseball And Tosses it To Crowd. I was laughing before I even watched. I had so many questions. Why is there a Hooters ballgirl? Was she trained in the art of ballgirling? Has this happened before? Why didn’t anyone yell at her to drop the ball? Is she getting paid? Was she fired? I just hope that whatever slap basket decided having scantily clad women on the sidelines was worth the integrity of the game feels like an idiot. It’s just unbelievable that this is considered family friendly but two women on a Kiss Cam means the end times are upon us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXjHSbyJuPY
A new After Earth trailer is out. Will Smith is making a lot of serious faces and they are speaking with weird accents and Jaden Smith is training to be the next Will Smith. This movie is directed by M. Night Shyamalan which means it’s either gonna be really good or so dumb that it makes you feel dumb for not realizing how dumb it was until the end of it. I can’t wait to see it. Bruce Willis gives me hope that the Fresh Prince will be making action films for another ten years at least and even then it will seem feasible that he can roundhouse kick a dozen dudes at once without taking his afternoon nap.
If you have a video you think everyone should see, tweet it to @bishilarious for consideration. And of course feel free to post your favorite videos from the week below.
The Real L Word’s Saj Golde Launches Black LGBT Magazine
Brittani’s Team Pick:
Shows end, time goes on, and people keep living their lives. While some members of The Real L Word go on to be professionally gay and others continue their jobs (whatever those were), others are still finding their way and figuring out how they want to use the small followings they’ve garnered from being on television. I’m sure the first person you worry about is Sajdah “Saj” Golde. While it’s unknown whether she has continued dry humping people in laundromats (no judgment here, I love laundromats), she has definitely started a magazine called BlackOUT which is a collection of short stories about lesbians’ war against nite lites.
Just kidding, it’s a magazine geared towards black LGBT folks! When Elixher asked Saj why she created the magazine, she said,
“After being a part of The Real L Word, I learned of many other young LGBTQ people of color who were also in need of LGBTQ role models, a role I certainly couldn’t take on alone. So I wanted to create BlackOUT as a space were LGBTQ individuals can see themselves, people like them, experiences like theirs.”
If you’re not one of those people that refuse to buy magazine based solely on the little paper cut factory subscription cards that fly out of them every two seconds, then you’ll be pleased to know that the magazine is currently available in the Amazon Store. It’ll be available in the Apple App Store soon enough. Subscriptions are going for $20 a year which seems like a good deal to me, although I don’t usually have twenty dollars to my name so I have no real concept of money.
Real L Word’s Cori & Kacy Are Pregnant, 5 Months Away From Adorable Baby Photos
via accordingtocori.com
If you watched Seasons Two and Three of The Real L Word, you probably fell head-over-heels for Cori and Kacy, the ultra-cute lesbian couple who could do no wrong. Cori and Kacy’s season two storyline revolved around their attempts to get pregnant, which is apparently super-complicated and expensive and definitely elevated by biological clock’s road towards panic, and season three dealt with the heartbreaking aftermath of losing their baby at five months.
At the season’s end, they decided to take a break from baby-making and just live, which hopefully enabled a lot of fun for Cori’s alter-ego, Coco.
Well, yesterday the couple announced the good news on their blog (Thank you to reader Isabelle for the tip!):
This time last year, we were in a different place. The news we delivered was heavy, and difficult, but you helped us through: sharing our pain, sharing your stories, but mostly, with overwhelming heaps of positive and encouraging wishes and thoughts for our family.
Today, almost a year later, we have some very different news to share. It is my absolute pleasure to announce that my gorgeous wife, Cori, is pregnant!!!!!!!
I am sure you have questions, so here are the stats:
– She is – 4 months pregnant
– She is – on bed rest for the duration of the pregnancy
– She is –scheduled for her cerclage today
– We are – ecstatic!!!!!!!
We don’t know the sex yet, but we know that there is a healthy baby kicking around in there, and she (or he) is roughly the size of an avocado.
It’s been so hard not to shout this from the rooftops, but given our difficulties in the past, we wanted to wait. Well, the wait is over. We are pregnant!!!!!
My heart feels so warm for Kacy & Cori, and I bet yours does too. Plus, this definitely opens up a supreme opportunity for Kacy & Cori’s offspring to team up with Nikki & Jill‘s son, Adler Scot Goldstein, for a Muppet Babies-esque spinoff from the original show. Hopefully it’d involve babies dressed up as animals, like lobsters or jungle animals. It’s so cute when people dress up their babies like tigers.
Real L Word To “Repackage” Itself As Doc About Lesbians In “Not So Easy” Areas, oh god
Well ladies, it looks like your second-favorite way to access Whitney Mixter‘s quadriceps, The Real L Word, probably isn’t coming back for a fourth season. Instead, it will evolve into a “documentary.”
At Showtime’s TCA situation today, Showtime entertainment president David Nevins called The L Word “an important franchise” and said that they’re looking into a way to exploit —I mean EXPLORE — “lesbian culture where it’s ‘not so easy.'” We should all thank our lucky stars that it’s taken nine years for the franchise to realize where the genuinely compelling story is and send Ilene Chaiken out there with her camera to capture it.
In full, David Nevins delivered the following news:
“I want to keep the franchise going and want to change up the show. It’s probably not going to continue in exactly the same form. I’ve been talking a lot with [executive producers] Dan [Cutforth], Jane [Lipsitz] and [creator] Ilene [Chaiken] about exploring L Word culture — lesbian culture in places not New York, L.A. — where the subculture is not so defined and it’s not so easy. I think we’re likely to make a documentary that will feel like a Real L Word documentary. We did the scripted show, we did the ensemble reality show and it’s probably going to become a documentary this year.”
This ambiguous situation has no definite form or structure, as Nevins noted it could possibly appear in one part or, alternately, two entire parts. Two parts! I assume each part would air on a different week, which could really spice things up. You’d have to wait an entire week between parts! So much could happen between those weeks. You could get a new car, or stub your toe, or hang cymbals from your earlobes. Furthermore, Nevins declared: “There’s a few different ways we could do it. They’re diving in doing research right now.”
The good news is, if there’s no Season Four of The Real L Word, I’ll be granted an additional 30 hours a week in June and July to devote to doing the kind of literary writing I actually care about! I’m sorry, much like the characters of The Real L Word, I can really only think about myself right now. AHAHAHAAHAH!!!!
[Yes, I’ll recap the motherf*cking documentary, Intern Grace couldn’t be more jazzed]
Hunter Valentine’s Vero Sanchez: The Autostraddle Interview
You know Vero Sanchez as the bass player of Hunter Valentine and the Coolest Cucumber on season three of The Real L Word, but did you also know that she began her music career as an 11 year-old mulleted hip-hop artist? Maybe you would’ve, if Vero’s screen time on TRLW hadn’t been limited to interviewing about everyone’s story but her own.
Since the show’s end, for Vero it’s been onward and upward; Hunter Valentine released a new album, Collide & Conquer, toured it in multiple countries, and Vero has some solo projects in the works, like a new album and a clothing line, which will probably be pretty fucking hot.
We caught up with Vero soon after she touched back down in New York, having just wrapped up the Collide & Conquer tour in Japan.
What have you been up to?
I’ve just completed the “Collide & Conquer” tour with Hunter Valentine. Holy Mother of patience! I’ve never done anything like this before. It’s been a drama series within itself. We drove around the US and Canada for the past three months and played about 65 shows including one in Japan! I’d like to consider this a lifetime experience. It was epic and absolutely intense at the same time. Our fans have multiplied enormously and meeting each and everyone of them took a primal role on this tour. I think my face has frozen into a huge smile from all the photographs.
On the downside, we had some complications with our van, gear and Laura’s ankle was injured badly. She taught herself instantly how to play with her left foot and rocked out the majority of the tour this way. It was a challenge not being home with my loved ones when Sandy hit. However, we’ve made it back in one piece and everyone here seems to be stronger than ever. I’m excited to have my own bed and and space for the time being.
It must be tough spending that long on the road, in terms of getting personal space and time.
There were five of us sharing a van, hotel room, bathroom and stage. I’d like to say it’s “Rock & Roll” but at times I’ve thought to myself, fuck Rock & Roll, now I’m in survival mode! Here are some of my basic thoughts regarding tour: “Hmm..when we stop for gas, do I use this time to go to the restroom or smoke a cigarette. This is my side of the mirror, step the hell back before I smear this on your face. I wish I could turn this ‘Baconater’ into a chimichurri skirt steak with mashed potatoes. I need to fart right now. Should I warn them or see if they notice.” Luckily, they never did.
Let’s talk about The Real L Word for a sec. Did you watch all the episodes?
I don’t have cable but I did manage to watch the whole season. After the second episode I was hooked and became just like every other viewer out there; plastered to the screen crying or laughing. But also being weirded out because I just lived this not long ago and now I was reliving it with the rest of the world.
How did you feel about your own portrayal?
I don’t know why but when there’s a camera rolling, it sometimes helps instigate drama. We are all responsible for every action and word that comes out of our mouth so I kept that in mind. Even when I felt I had nothing interesting to offer I told myself, “It’s okay, just be yourself.” Although I had very little face time, it turned out there was a whole world out there who wanted more of my story. That was well worth the experience of being on a reality TV show. Your recaps labeled me the ‘Coolest Cucumber’ (don’t think I wasn’t paying attention) and because of my portrayal in TRLW, I’ve met so many people that come to me for advice. Good lord, I hope I don’t disappoint.
Oh so you read the Autostraddle recaps, then?
You guys are too much. Good Lord, I just fucking loved them; they’re hilarious. In my opinion, reading the recaps is much more entertaining than watching the TV show.
On TRLW you were kinda this cool cat that popped up every now and then to diffuse band problems, and I was left wanting to know more about you and your life. Were there any parts of your story cut from the show that you wish TRLW would have kept?
There were actually a quite few touching moments throughout filming. I had my mom surprise me from Argentina. She stormed into our rehearsal room, shocking the crap out of me. That was definitely a tear jerker moment considering I hardly ever get to see her. Along with my mother comes another person I rarely get to see, my girlfriend Katie Murphy.
I would have liked to have seen that. How did you meet Katie?
I met her on my first tour with HV last year, The Lady Killer Tour. Her band, Sick of Sarah was one of our touring bandmates and there I was, checking out their hot lead guitar player every night. Had I known she was also checking out HV’s awkward bass player, I would’ve not made an ass of myself with the obvious stage stalking. Little did I know that this tour crush would end up in one of the strongest relationships I’ve ever had. She lives in Minneapolis and I live in New York. She tours, so do I. She’s 29 and I’m… yeah you know. But here’s the thing, we’ve set three phones on fire so far and when we do see each other (once every 3 months) it’s all at the same time familiar and brand new.
TRLW spent a decent amount of time filming when Katie came out for her birthday. We always get nervous seeing each other every first time and having cameras around, didn’t help remove any butterflies. We may not have kept the camera rolling after hours but that part of our relationship we wanted to keep between us. However, all of our hot steamy make-out moments that were cut I’m sure exist somewhere in the archives.
You guys sent us some backstage footage from the Lady Killer tour, it looked like a blast. I recall there being some wrestling…
Yeah the Lady Killer tour was pretty wild. Wrestling after that show seemed to put things into perspective with who’s on top. I was the new girl on tour and although I have a prior undefeated food wrestling belt, I was afraid of tearing another ligament. I believe Laura got a bloody lip that night from Vanity Theft.
You could’ve really messed up your rock stance.
I NEED my rock stance.
Someone else I enjoyed watching on TRLW was Somer. Do you miss playing with her?
I had a connection with Somer and wished things could’ve been different, but her heart was elsewhere. Somer was torn between HV and her own projects, something I definitely can relate to. I also put my own band aside to play bass with HV but I’m slowly working on balancing both bands because they are very meaningful to me.
Tell me about your own band, and music.
I’m a singer-songwriter and play guitar/ukulele with a four-piece band. It all began with hip-hop. I was 11 years old when I wrote my first rap; mullet, flat chested and rocking pink chucks. As years went by I began performing and the music gradually evolved into what I call gypsy folk-rock. Storytelling and writing dark ballads with pretty melodies is mostly my thing. I’ve always been inspired by singer-songwriters like Leonard Cohen, Chrissie Hynde and Ray LaMontagne, just to name a few.
I would really love to hear one of the songs where you rap.
Well, I just finished a song called “Girls Tale” and was actually looking for some feedback. Feel free to give me a buzz and I’ll give you a private performance. However, I will be posting it soon on www.reverbnation.com/veromusic.
© 2012 Leslie Van Stelten
Have you released any recordings?
In 2007 I released an album named Christopher, under my prior name Mahogany. I soon after changed to “Vero”. Now I’m about to hit the recording studio for my next album which should be released by next fall. Music is pretty much my everything. I will always continue to explore different avenues and that’s what helps me continue to grow as a musician. Bass is by no means my primary instrument, so when I joined HV last fall as their bass player, I guess I sort of surprised myself.
How did that happen?
One day Kiyomi came up to me while I was bartending and asked me to play bass, which totally caught me off guard. I said, “Kiyomi, I don’t play bass” but she insisted that she had a feeling I was the right person for it. She asked me to check out their music as they were going on tour the following month and that totally overwhelmed me. But I was challenged, so I went home fixed up my old shitty bass and practice my ass off. Kiyomi believed in me and kept pushing me hard. She told me that the person I needed to win over was Laura. When the audition day came I had the songs down and I showed Laura my boobs. The rest is history.
And you played on the new album, Collide and Conquer?
Yes, I am thrilled to have collaborated with the girls. We all brought songs to the table and co-wrote other songs together. It was different for me to write songs for somebody else’s voice. When I showed them “Lonely Crusade”, Kiyomi took to it and perfected it with her own style. I was impressed with how hard they worked and how determined they were to make every song the best version of itself. You can still hear the original Hunter Valentine grit but I feel this album has a thicker more mature sound.
What’s your favorite thing about living in New York?
I’m a native New Yorker and live in the East Village. My favorite thing about living here is the community of friends I have. Everyone is a struggling starving “something” but we all have a way of inspiring and helping one another without any hint of competition. It’s a beautiful thing. Well, either that or the hot dogs.
What do you get up to when you’re not doing music and bartending?
Besides talking to my girlfriend and drinking plenty of coffee, I’m working on launching my online clothing & accessory store, Gaucho NYC by summer of 2013. My dad’s a tailor so I’ve always had an anticipated eye for style. I’ve been working on this idea for about three years and a lot of thought has gone into making sure that each piece is one of a kind and ready for stage. I call it the Rock & Roll, Urban Cowgirl look.
I’ve just realized that we’re about to run out of time. Any final thoughts?
A good friend of mine once told me that if you take an orange and roll it into the middle of a street, no one will notice it. But if you take an orange, roll it into the middle of the street and film it, everyone would say, “Hey that’s the orange that I saw on TV.” And that’s what I feel kind of happened. It’s kind of strange how someone can struggle to be a “successful” artist their whole life. They struggle to get any kind of recognition and respect but it doesn’t really matter how old you are, how many people know your full name or how many Facebook likes you get. What matters most is not giving up or comparing yourself to others. Be honest with your art. At the end of the day that’s true success.
Style Thief: How to Dress Like Kiyomi McCloskey From Hunter Valentine
Welcome to the third installment of Style Thief, where I steal the clothes off queer style icons’ backs. Metaphorically, that is. I’ll try figure out just exactly what makes queer style icons tick by breaking down their look into itty bitty bite size pieces. I get a lot of questions about how to look like different celebrities/characters, so I’m finally tackling the question “How the hell do I dress like that?”
Header by Rory Midhani
I get a style question about Kiyomi McCloskey basically every day of the week.
PHOTO NY LESLIE VAN STELTEN VIA DAPPERQ.COM
It seems that queer women across the land want to capture that rockstar something that makes girls go weak at the knees. Unfortunately Kiyomi’s style is hard to pin down. One day she’s in head to toe menswear and the next she’s wearing a women’s tanktop. It’s not that her look is gender-free, it’s that she embodies androgyny in such a way that she seamlessly blends butch and femme. But you lovable weirdos want to know how to dress like this Hunter Valentine singer/The Real L Word person, and hell, I do too. So with a little help from Kiyomi’s interview at dapperQ we’re going to steal all that black leather right off of her.
From the dapperQ interview:
I hate when people are like… they see your look being one way and then the next day you decide to wear something different, and they’re like “what the hell that’s so weird that’s not her style.” I like to be able to play with different looks and sexualities in fashion on a daily basis in whatever way that I want. So, if I want to wear like… a blazer and heavy eyeliner to counterbalance that and fuck with people then I’m gonna do that. The next day I might wear a leather jacket with a low cut shirt. I’m not afraid to play with my masculine side of my feminine side.
VIA KIYOMI’S INSTAGRAM
Generally speaking, Kiyomi’s wardrobe is one color: black. While Kiyomi certainly mixes it up with white shirts, silver jewelry and the occasional red hoodie, black is the name of the game. What Kiyomi’s look lacks in color she makes up for in texture. Her wardrobe is made up of studs, distressed leathers, worn-in tees and shiny satins. And of course, that hair.
Let’s start from the bottom. Kiyomi rocks a lot of skinny jeans. Keep in mind, though, that these are more like men’s slim-fit/skinny jeans than women’s jeggings. You want the denim to be thick and supportive instead of thin and elastic. Similarly the leg should be more tapered-straight than it is tapered-tight. It’s like a European men’s jean. So while her jeans have that tight appearance that screams rock star, it’s more Keith Richards than it is Katy Perry.
Next, you probably will need a shirt. Basically Kiyomi wears a couple of different types of shirts. First, she wears a lot of good old fashioned black tank tops. These are sometimes stylized with different graphics or cuts, but frequently they’re just regular black or white ribbed men’s undershirts. I like getting the type that are billed as men’s slim-fit because they are longer than the regular women’s but tighter than most other men’s. This is especially good if you’re a little bustier and need extra length to keep from wearing a belly shirt.
Second, Kiyomi wears a lot of soft black vintage-feel t-shirts. These tend to be solid blacks shirt or have somewhat abstract writing or graphics on them. Remember, artsy and stylized, not a shirt thats says Gap or has the Batman symbol on it. Allsaints is a particularly good company to check out. While you can certainly buy vintage feel tees, you can also make your own easily. Take any cotton shirt you have and soak it for three days in a salt water bath (1/2 cup salter per quart water). This should give it that faded color and super-soft texture you normally only get from wearing a shirt in.
I SWEAR I CHOSE THIS PICTURE TO SHOW AN EXAMPLE OF KIYOMI’S STRAIGHT LEG JEANS AND HER COOL BOOTS
Finally, Kiyomi wears tons and tons of button ups. These are usually either short sleeve or with the sleeves rolled to the elbows. Button-ups are where Kiyomi most often breaks her all black dress code and subs out for a white button-up. One of the things I like best about Kiyomi’s style is she is as unafraid to unbutton her shirt to her navel as she is to button it to the collar. It leaves a lot of room for variety when dealing with many of the same items.
One thing to keep in mind while trying to snatch Kiyomi’s shirt style, is that though she isn’t super busty, she also doesn’t bind flat. Though her look can be adapted for a variety of gender expressions, you don’t need to feel like you have to be bust-free to steal her look. Kiyomi often will go for a masculine cut shirt that low enough to show cleavage or a high cut shirt that still emphasizes her bust. People often get hung-up when they want to wear androgynous clothing but feel like can’t or don’t want to bind down flat enough. Kiyomi is a great example that you don’t need to bind or be extra small busted to rock a very hot center-of-center style.
Now that you have you base of jeans and a shirt, it’s time to really bring Kiyomi’s look home with some layering. The importance of layering is clearly not lost on Kiyomi and she nearly always has an extra layer or two on top. While she has, perhaps, the largest collection of jackets I’ve ever seen, her two most classic looks are either a leather jacket, a vest or suspenders.
VIA LISTAL.COM
When looking for a Kiyomi-inspired leather or pleather jacket, you want something with a ton of distressed texture. Basically you’re looking for a biker jacket. The great thing about textured leather jackets is that they come in a variety of price ranges. Though Kiyomi’s are likely actual leather from Diesel or G-Star, you can find a great cheap pleather jacket a place like Topshop, Forever 21 or even a thrift store. Keep the studs and zippers simple enough that it doesn’t seem like you’re trying too hard. Remember we’re trying to play it Kiyomi-cool here.
VIA KIYOMI’S INSTAGAM
If a leather jacket is a bit more than you bargained for, Kiyomi also rocks a vest like nobody’s business. While she’s occasionally seen in a denim vest, she is literally the poster child for a white shirt and black suit vest. The thing to keep in mind is that you don’t button the vest. Nope. Not even a little bit, not even at all. The black vest/white shirt look is all about wearing the vest fitted but unbuttoned.
For suspenders you want to go simple or not at all. Think classic black skinny suspenders over a white short sleeve button-up. While funky suspenders are fun, this look is about bringing suspenders back to their classic roots. You can buy suspenders at most department stores, or you can just make your own. Of course, life’s big suspender question is on top of the boobs or to the side. Honestly I say whatever you’re comfortable with. Generally speaking on top only seems to work if you’ve binded or you’ve very small-busted. Aim for a skinnier width strap so that whatever you choose this is less of an issue. For the Style Thief record, Kiyomi seems to wear them to the side.
To accessorize your Kiyomi look you’re going to need some long necklaces. Kiyomi tends to wear a cross, however I’m Jewish and would basically never do that even under any circumstances. You might also have reasons you don’t want to wear a cross. That’s totally fine! There are tons of other long silver chain necklaces you can wear. The best part is, this is the kind of jewelry you can buy for super cheap at Forever 21 or Target.
Finally, there’s that hair. The reason Kiyomi’s hair is so cool is that she can do so many different things with it. It looks drastically different when she spikes it up as it does when she wears it down. An easy option is to bring a picture of Kiyomi into your friendly neighborhood queer hair salon to get that short on the sides long on the top look. The hard part is getting that gravity defying volume. Luckily, this girl seems to know how to do it:
Once you have the clothes and the hair all you need is to slap on some heavy black eyeliner and you’ll be telling girls “I can’t be in a relationship with anybody because of my job” and then changing your mind when you meet someone hotter before you know it!
If there’s a queer style icon you’d like to see stripped down in Style Thief, send me an ASS message, ask on my formspring, or tweet me @Ohheyitslizz
Real L Word 309 Recap: Perfect Day For This Show To End With A Bang Bang Bang
Welcome to the ninth recap of the third season of The Real L Word, a subversive and edgy late night soft core cable special about four or ten extraordinarily good-looking lesbians who live on one side of the country or the other side and enjoy taking pregnancy tests, drinking/singing, public nudity, trying on wedding dresses, recording insufferable pop music, Tour, puppies, talking about Romi, sitting at round tables with their parents while crying and saying really truly amazing things, such as:
Unfortunately for fans of slow water torture and fortunately for my state of mind, this episode was the very last episode of the season and was therefore jam-packed with trapeeze artists, key lime pie, days-of-the-week underpants, sex swings, spring flings, weddings and evil zombies! Let’s dig into it, shall we?
We open in sunny Los Angeles, California, and are immediately informed via large white block letters that it’s ONE MONTH LATER. Given the byzantine sense of timing employed by this show, “ONE MONTH LATER” is about as meaningless as the lyrics to Dusty & Romi’s first single.
after dolphins conquered the earth and took over Los Angeles
With the wedding merely two days away, Whitney and Sarahara have got heaps of eyebrows to pencil, vows to spell-check, flowers to arrange, small address labels to print and fights to have.
i told you i was gonna get a face tattoo, we can’t both get face tattoos, we already both have full body tattoos and that’s gonna be confusing enough for my mother
Whitney interviews:
Whitney: “I love that we’re going into our wedding with such harmonious energy. We literally want to kill each other.”
The wedding situation has transformed Whitney into a one-man Pride Comedy Jam. Meanwhile, Sarahara searches for her own limbs and soul beneath a giant sheet of white medical gauze or some lacy thing I can’t understand because I don’t have a gender identity.
Whitney: “I also think it’s weird you’re wearing a veil considering in no way are you virginal, or am I like lifting it like who is this virginal person I will be experiencing for the first time tonight?”
Sara: “You’re the one taking the symbolic part of it for heart. I’m wearing it for a fashion statement.”
and the statement is “i wanna fuck you like an animal”
This riveting conversation about hymens and fashion is interrupted by a text message from Mr. Whitney:
because tegan and sara would really like to be there
Oh my goddess, Whitney’s Dad is coming to the wedding! He’s a Hunter Valentine groupie and as soon as he heard that Kiyomi would be there, he booked a ticket. Just kidding! There was a sale on Priceline. Just kidding! Maybe he found a mask to protect him from Ilene Chaiken and no longer fears the camera stealing his soul.
Cut cross-country to the post-apocalyptic industrial wasteland of New York, New York, where The Hunter Valentine Band is eagerly auditioning new hipsters with bangs to fill the void left by Somer’s absent hips and bangs.
Kiyomi: “Just so you know you’re auditioning right now too.”
Vero: “Always auditioning! When am I gonna make the band?“
what do you say we just get naked and wrestle and whoever wins gets to pick the fourth member
Basically it’s like American Idol but with only one contestant. Her name is Aimee (not Aimee Mann! I thought that too though, obvs) and she’s an “amazing musician” from Toronto.
hey hey guess what i’m gay
Aimee plays bass, I think? But Somer played keyboard. But also I don’t understand music. Three guitars? I assume they’re establishing a mariachi band to play Feliz Compleaños at Chi-Chi’s.
Luckily my G-Chat viewing companion Laneia is totally unhelpful about this:
Laneia: basically the 4th member HAS to have black hair and bangs
Riese: yeah what role is she filling
somer played keyboard
Laneia: i’m confused but also i think you can reach certain notes maybe using a guitar??
ergh idk it’s like watching fish talking about swimming
like, ok
Riese: yeah
like if i wanted to swim
i would swim
The Valentines are impressed with Aimee’s skills, as well as her “energy” and the fact that she seems “positive and comfortable with herself,” which I believe also qualifies her for the Dove Real Beauty© Campaign.
i’m going to grandmother’s house and i’m taking a mini-duck, two bottles of whiskey, and an aimee
Kiyomi interviews that Aimee’s got touring experience. Somer didn’t have touring experience, apparently, and it “showed in a major way” ’cause Somer didn’t understand the rules of the road, like “thou must suck face with regional strangers” and “that’s not the band’s repair.”
Kiyomi: “How attached to Toronto are you?”
Aimee: “I have a cat, and that’s about it.”
“You nailed it,” says Kiyomi. “Just don’t nail anybody in the band and you’ll be okay.” Hey-o!
but honestly she’s a total bitch and would be much happier in the wild
Smear across 2,777 miles of vast unexplored swaths of land to sunny yet sketchy Los Angeles, California, where Romi Flinger, as evidenced by the giant chunk of heterosexual lifestyle hair stolen from Kid Rock currently snaking down her back, has left the world of lesbianism forever to worship at the shrine of evil cis-male-privilege and The Dark Knight Dusty Ray.
ok let’s play the game again where we take turns telling the other how pretty they are
Romi: “As soon as me and Kelsey’s breakup, pretty much, I am in a relationship with Dusty.”
Suprise!
the backup knights of the apocalypse
In merely a month, Dromi and Rusty have fallen in love, which I believe is a similar sensation to falling down an endless tank of rice pudding while wrapped in latex.
Romi: “When I was in the studio I didn’t know what the hell was gonna happen. At all. I didn’t think that we were gonna end up like this again, I mean it had been so long. But there are some people in your life that you meet and it just takes over everything about you. You can’t even control it, even if it’s the wrong time or the wrong place or the wrong situation. It was just inevitable, you can’t put me and Dusty together without us being in love. And we have a history together, it’s not like we just met. And I just wanna like put my heart back into Dusty.”
That’s not all she wants to put back into Dusty HEY-O BUTTSEX!
and then, where my heart used to be in my chest, put some kind of shiny broach or something
Romi, having confused “the institution of marriage” with “staying in touch with another human,” explains that they’ve gotta marry or else may lose each other.
Romi: “I don’t ever wanna lose him again and I know that he doesn’t ever wanna lose me again and we spent six years apart and we just are so in love, it’s stupid.”
Laneia: i cannot roll my eyes hard enough
Riese: i had to put in new eyes
mine fell out when i saw romi’s extensions
Laneia: it is stupid
she’s right abt that at least
I wish they’d just gone with something more like this:
Now that they’ve spent two seconds discussing their options, it’s time to call Mom and inform her that Dusty and Romi wanna make this nonsense permanent.
and then we’re gonna get a puppy and maybe a frappuchino!
Romi: “Um, Dusty and I are getting married!”
Mom: “Like, you’re kidding right?”
Romi: “No, like we’re gonna get married.”
Mom: “What?”
Romi: “We’re gonna get married!!
Mom: “Dusty.”
Romi hands the phone to The Slice of Man.
Dusty: “We love each other so much.”
Mom: “You’re like serious? I can’t wait. What is happening, like for real, do you know what I’m saying? Marriage is for real.”
Romi: “We’re gonna do it!”
Mom: “You guys seriously, this is a serious thing and you’ve talked about it and you understand the commitment.”
Romi: “Yup!”
Mom: “Okay.”
Well, that was easier than this:
Elsewhere in gorgeous yet often sweltering hot Los Angeles, California, Lamanda are moving objects around in hopes of shipping half of said objects to The Grande Apple and keeping half in the garage. That’s right, they’re moving back to New York City, which means New York won the “New York vs. Los Angeles” Challenge this season. Good work everybody!
Lauren: “I’m so exited to be moving back to new york, it’s just gonna be incredible to like, re-learn the city, go back to my favorite places, go back to my favorite places and do it all with my fabulous girlfriend, Kiyomi.”
Storage Wars would lose their shit over this bondage chair:
my safeword was “dirty knees”
Amanda: “I think we need a box just for sex toys.”
Lauren: “Oh no we have some there. It’s too much of a pain to carry back and forth.”
Amanda interviews that despite her plans to return to The City, she and the ex aren’t back in the saddle, ’cause the ex has other ponies to ride. Amanda tells Lauren that she doesn’t want her ex to think she’s coming back to the city just for her.
ehhh i dunno, when she fucks me with that thing i feel it more in my upper abs
Amanda: “I don’t wanna give the satisfaction of me thinking that I’m going there to be with her, you know?”
Lauren: “So why don’t you tell her you’re not going, and then go anyway? And if she sees you out, just be like, Hey, I’m visiting.”
Amanda: “Well, that’s really retarded. Why would I do that?”
They’ve got this Paris/Nicole circa Season One of The Simple Life thing going on, these two.
Elsewhere in the bright futurescape of Los Angeles, California, Whitney and Sarahara are prepping for their Special Day with Mama and Papa Bettencourt.
yup yup everyone puts their keys in this bowl, that’s why it’s called a key party
Whitney and Sarahara have managed to muster up a large photograph of their photogenic faces for the family to admire.
so this is what you kids have been doing with all your free time, huh?
Sarahara notes that her Mom is looking sad and removed and at first one might assume she’s just depressed that the happy couple didn’t hire Robin Roemer to photograph their wedding, but then one might realize Sarahara’s Mom is just sad about Sarahara being a homo:
Sara: “Mom, can you tell me if you feel better about this wedding?”
Mrs.Sara: “Still, I’m thinking. You don’t need to be married.”
Sara: “Why? I don’t deserve the same rights as my sister or you and Dad, why? My love is not as good as your love?”
Mrs.Sara: “Yeah, of course.”
Sara: “Well, then that’s sad for you to say that.”
for example i’ve heard good things about domestic partnerships
Mrs.Sara: “But that’s what I’m still thinking, you know.”
Sara: “You want me to be happy because you love me.”
Mrs.Sara: “Yeah I want you to be happy Sara, but you can be happy anyway.”
Sara: “Yeah that makes me happy and I deserve that just like you and everybody else.”
Just imagine if Sara had called to say that she’d gotten back together with Whitney a month ago and they were gonna go get married at Circus Circus! LOL!
it’s okay i still kinda love you
Sara interviews that when she’s already so nervous about the wedding it doesn’t help that her Mom would rather be at The Hollywood Wax Museum.
GLAAD 2012 Network Responsibility Index: Why Do Queer Women On Television All Look The Same?
GLAAD has released its 2012 Network Responsibility Index, which is a fancier way of saying that GLAAD posted its Gay TV Report Card. Every summer, GLAAD rates cable and broadcast networks based on the amount of hours they feature LGBT-inclusive programming, as well as the network’s gender and racial diversity.
The results are revealing and not particularly positive. Representations of gay men far outnumber those of gay women, and queer people of color are eclipsed by am overwhelming amount of white characters. Not a single network was graded as “Excellent” and too many received “Failing” as their final rating. Networks that carried strong LGBTQ programming were also host to shows that featured homophobia or offensive humor. For every narrative that the queer community embraced, ten storylines ignored, negated or flat out insulted us.
Me too, Whit. Me too.
Showtime took the top slot with a “Good” rating due to 46% of its original programming featuring positive LGBT representations. Credit goes to Ilene Chaiken’s stumbling into her agent’s office on bath salts with “I swear this is a good idea hear me out” venture into reality television, The Real L Word. ABC Family was the only network where lesbian representation was higher than gay males: a whopping 45 to 7 hours. Special thanks to Emily and all the ladies who have locked lips with Emily (but mostly Paige for being the very best of the lady lip lockers). Extra points to Emily for being a queer lady of color.
CBS received a “Failing” despite the fact that Kalinda can get it, and get it hard. So did the History Channel and TBS. TLC, the same network that made the Palin family reality stars and has been accused of leaning in a conservative direction, received an “Adequate.” They can address their thank you cards to Glitzy, Honey Boo Boo’s “pageant gay pig”.
It’s important to note that GLAAD’s ratings reflect representation in the barest terms. Glee is a diversity gold mine as far as the ratings system is concerned, but the fact that it’s also riddled with tokenism and problematic portrayals does not have an effect on the final score. Even on shows where queerness makes an appearance, those portrayals need to be questioned. It’s not enough to have a gay character, to show a clip of two women kissing, or to have storylines that feature homosexuality. Yes, it’s a big deal that I can watch a teen drama where my favorite couple is the same sexuality as me (teen dramas are typically the most welcome genres to introducing LGBTQ characters and narratives). But it’s not enough, and it’s not something I have to settle for. There are crucial questions to be asked, and asked relentlessly: where are the queer people of color? Where are all the queers who are not gay men?
When we see queer women in media, what are we seeing? The lesbian couples that arguably receive the most attention on current network television are Brittany and Santana, Callie and Arizona, and Paige and Emily. Besides their sweet lady kisses, where are the indicators of queerness? Why is it that they’re all undeniably femme, conventionally attractive and able-bodied? This is the question that I come back to again and again: why do queer women on television all look the same?
Femme representation in the media is incredibly important — and strangely ironic given the issues surrounding femme invisibility within the queer community. By no means am I arguing against the necessity of femmes or femme presentation in the media. But I’m concerned by the fact that a female-bodied person presenting in a masculine or atypical way is absent from the queer media presence. Seriously, where the hell are all the butches?
The media has its own reasons for staying away from butch representation, and maybe they’re legitimate ones. Maybe they’re afraid to tap into representations that could be construed as stereotypes. Maybe they’re afraid that showing a female-bodied person who is not conventionally attractive, whose body and expression is not still desirable to a heterosexual male and thus the mainstream audience, is too risky for ratings. Maybe a legacy of lesbians only appearing in stereotypical roles makes networks want to showcase queer women as being “normal,” and that definition of normal means making them look like traditionally feminine women. Maybe we are in a “post-queer society” where it doesn’t matter what queers look like, and we don’t need to show butch lesbians to represent queerness. Too bad that’s bullshit.
Being a masculine-presenting female body — or any kind of body that isn’t within the norm — that isn’t conventionally attractive or widely represented means you’ve already struggling to love yourself. I own the fact that I’ve had to fight for my appearance to be accepted by my family and my surroundings. I know a lot of butches who do the same thing, and we’re lucky that there are beautiful people in this world who love our bodies and love the parts of us that society deems undesirable. Excuse me while I shed some precious butch tears.
I wish that I didn’t have to look at society around me to love myself, but damn it all if it doesn’t help. I think about the queers out there in places where there isn’t a strong queer community. I think about the queer kids who skip school so they won’t get their nose broken for wearing boys’ clothes. Society already tells us we are ugly, we are undesirable, we are freaks. Maybe it would help, even a little, if there were butches on those shows. If these butches were normal people, maybe even cool people. If they became more than just stereotypes or things to be feared — real characters with real narratives that viewers empathized with. If Paige’s gradual descent into soft butchdom continues on the righteous path.
A butch can dream.
Real L Word 307 Recap: Dream Come True, Nightmare Come Soon
Hello and welcome to the seventh recap of the third season of The Real L Word, an hour-long teen drama centered on a tight-knit group of surprisingly artictulate friends growing up in the quaint seaside town of Capeside who carry on passionate teenaged affairs with one another, create terrible self-referential films, escape housefires and deal with Adult Issues like estranged parents, dead parents, divorced parents, re-married parents, sex, teacher-student affairs, mental illness, slut-shaming and homosexuality.
L to R: dusty, amanda, kiyomi, cori
I got the screencaps last night and have been immersed in this delightful program all day! My dearest love, Intern Grace, did not have time to create her clever image titles past the first few scenes, unfortunately, and this recap is kinda late, but it’s here now and that’s all that matters. We’re all here now.
We open in sunny Los Angeles, California, where Whitney and Sarahara are attempting to leave on a jet plane for Connecticut, where Whitney’s family lives, but their bag is overweight! Riveting stuff.
and uh, we don’t need an on-board meal because we already ate this morning if you know what i mean wink wink
After removing their medium-sized strap-on, their large strap-on, Sarahara’s Ashton-Drake realistic baby doll, the nightstick Whitney uses for cop/robbers role play, the bust of Ilene Chaiken she insists they bring with them everywhere they go, six identical copies of Infinite Jest, Sarahara’s five-gallon Caboodles and a small household cat, they’re good to go!
We cut to Lamanda’s Love Shack, where the Beautiful Party Princess Amazonian Lovergirl Lauren Bedford Russell wakes up to greet the morning but finds herself alone, yearning for Kiyomi’s soft futch touch and the gentle snap of her suspenders as they graze her skin and fall delicately to the floor, where someone recently spilled a beer. What am I even talking about anymore.
wishing those sexts came with more pics
Lauren sulks into the kitchen, adorned in her lady-love’s varsity jacket:
nothing but your t-shirt on
Lauren interviews that she’s still thinking about Kiyomi, in case you missed that whole thing from five seconds ago, and Amanda points out that Lauren’s been really wacky lately:
it looks good curly though, i mean, i’m just saying, i’ve just only seen it straight
We take a midnight train back to New York City, where Kiyomi is meeting up with Vero The Coolest Cucumber for cornbread, daisies, fight club, ping-pong, arsenic, hemp tattoos, babies and a heart-to-heart.
vero has been practicing her “pretending to listen to kiyomi” face
Obviously Lauren is on Kiyomi’s mind as well:
Kiyomi: “I feel like everything is happening really fast and I’m trying to, you know, take things slow, you know. We’re both really busy people in our careers, just gonna try and see each other when we can and see how it goes.”
Kiyomi interviews that part of her hesitation is because she’s just gotten out of this relationship with Ali, because now that she’s out of it, she can call it a relationship without hyperventilating. Vero is like, dude, she is way into you though:
Vero: “At Dinah Shore she told me something, she said something along the lines of I can see myself just being with her.”
Kiyomi: “She must have been loaded! No, I’m just kidding.”
Vero: “It sounds like she she really digs you.”
Regardless, Kiyomi is k-k-kinda busy:
honestly with these cameras around it’s been super hard for a girl to get her masturbation on
We then cut back to Lamanda in Los Angeles, still sitting in The Room With The Table In It, still talking about Kiyomi. Lauren points out that perhaps the distance will enable a more mature relationship as they’re unable to hang out all day every day until they lose all their friends and develop a false sense of intimacy and understanding that cannot possibly exist until you’ve known someone for a really long time. But also, she’s never done long distance, and also it’s not a relationship yet but also —
Lauren: “It’s like crazy to talk about it right now, you know?”
Amanda: “Yet you’re like talking about it constantly to the point where I wanna like gouge my eyes out with a fork.”
don’t we all
And SCENE.
Somewhere else on a planet far far away but probably in the Los Angeles Metro Area, it’s Kacy’s Mom’s turn on the Meet The Parents Tour. Kacy interviews that since retiring, her Mom’s become super-awesome: she drives long distances, enjoys golf and is a Great Source of Love and Comfort.
kacy dear, i’ve been watching season two of that show you’re on, and i have some questions for you about claire and vivian’s relationship if you have a minute after we’re done talking about this baby stuff
Mom asks how Cori is holding up and Kacy admits that “sometimes I think she’s doing better than I am.”
Kacy: “I think everybody expects to be really gentle with her, and they think I’m fine.”
Mrs.Kacy: “Well, that’s so crappy.”
Kacy: “It is pretty crappy.”
Mrs.Kacy: “You have to tell people, I’m hurting too.”
This show’s done a great job of showing that Kacy is hurting too, but it’s unsurprising that perhaps her friends haven’t noticed it themselves. Often butch or masculine lesbians are handled like men are handled when it comes to emotional situations — expected to be The Protector somehow immune to The Feelings, and probably moreso in this case because it was Cori who carried the baby. But pro tip: butches cry too.
Mrs. Kacy tells Kacy that she had a hard time getting preggers too — ten years, four miscarriages — but she never had to carry the baby to term, like Cori did. Mrs. Kacy says what we’re always thinking every episode every single week, which’s that it’s mega-inspirational to watch how losing Charlie brought KayCor closer together rather than driving them further apart. Kacy says that they’re ready to try again.
It’s true, there’s so much more now. Because when her first sibling is born, Charlie won’t be their last child anymore. She’ll be their first.
Starsweep cross-country to cloudy Connecticut, where Whitney and Sarahara have traveled to participate in the next stop on The Real L Word’s Meet the Parents Coming Out World Tour — this time Grandma’s in the hot seat. She’s 92 years old and also awesome.
whitney and grandmother prior to their gang initiation ceremony
Whitney gathers ’round the table with Grandma, Sarahara, Mom, a bottle of wine and captivating conversation:
and i first saw the trees! The Truffula Trees! The bright-colored tufts of the Truffula Trees! Mile after mile in the fresh morning breeze
Whitney interviews that as a kid, when her family split up and money was low, Whitney and her Mom moved in with Grandma so Grandma is really important, just like Sookie Stackhouse’s Gran and Jen Lindley’s Grams.
Whitney’s never directly addressed The Gay Thing with Grandmother and now she’ll be delivering the double-whammy of Gay and Engaged. Whitney’s nervous and taking it slow:
that’s what she said
How will Grandmother react?
Will she react like this? 
+
I hope it’s not like this:
+
Or like this:
Hopefully it won’t be anything like this, either:
+
Ideally, it will go something like this:
Whitney’s gonna break the big news during dinner, for which she’s invited her childhood pal Tiffany who accidentally steals the scene when she announces during dinner that she and her boyfriend Luigi are getting married.
he’s leaving the super mario brothers for this, so it’s pretty serious.
She’s basically marrying the second-most-popular video game character of all time! Sarahara cannot compete with this holy union!
wedding invitation mockup
Despite all the love in the air, Whitney fails to announce her engagement:
Whitney: “Basically everything is like engagement engaged discuss and I for some reason am not going there at all, I was avoiding it like the plague.”
Cut to somewhere else in the universe, probably Venus or Pluto or The Inferno, where Romi’s meeting up with some alternatively coiffed ladies named Mercado and Erika to discuss her latest adventure in self-referential commerce: Romi’s gonna become a pop star and would like “her own song.”
i mean imagine how cute my face would look on this mug
These chicks are gonna make her music video for this song she hasn’t recorded or heard yet.
At this moment in the recap I would like to introduce a new device, which’s “copy/pasting g-chats I had with (Autostraddle Executive Editor) Laneia during the show.”
Laneia: she looks like a twelve-year-old’s take on what a hip hop starlet would wear
Riese: fur coat
baseball cap
oh she’s practically nicki minaj
what the fuck does this chick think she’s doing with that haircut and that fur
Romi’s had just about enough of established musicians like Rihanna and Madonna stealing the stage at her club appearances. Why’s she wasting her time introducing other people’s music when she could be introducing her very own song?
Romi: “I do a lot of club appearances, and I think it would be nice to have something that was mine, now I’m trying to have fun with another creative side of me.”
and while we’re at it, i’ve also always wanted a pony, too
Romi interviews that her Mom’s ex-girlfriend was a songwriter/producer and used to write songs in the car, which’s basically like Romi growing up on Bob Dylan’s lap. My Mom’s ex-girlfriend was a high school track coach and you don’t see me doing sprints in the backyard, but whatever. Romi also claims to have experienced the completely unique and totally remarkable sensation of wishing she was the one on stage while watching other humans perform musically.
no i just wanna do the like, lip syncy thingie that britney does, can you make that happen
Romi: “My thing to every work opportunity right now is YES.”
It’s also her answer to every ex-boyfriend, coincidentally — Romi plans on laying down her slick beats with none other than the world-famous Dusty Ray of my favorite tumblr, dustyandromi dot tumblr dot com!
Once upon a time, Romi was just the rock star’s girlfriend, drooling in the front row with her Miracle Bra and chunky rings and whiskey flask but we’ve all grown/changed so much since then, haven’t we?
in my face
Erika and Mercado are concerned regarding Romi’s mike-holding skills. I’m sure Jay could testify that she’ll do just fine with it.
this is not how you hold a microphone
Romi interviews that she dated Dusty Ray six years ago.
Riese: 6 years ago?
um, i thought that she hadn’t dated men in 8 years
Laneia: she is such a raging twat
Riese: seriously do the people who make this show think we’re total idiots?
i’m not being hyperbolic this is a a real question
she said it’d been eight years since she dated a guy like two episodes ago
Laneia: puppppyyyy
Real L Word Episode 306 Recap: Lost In A Bush (That’s What She Said!)
Hello and welcome to the sixth recap of the third season of Showtime’s hit series, The Real L Word, a 30-minute sitcom about a spunky young girl with pigtails, day-glo leggings and multi-colored outfit situations who is abandoned in a Chicago shopping center by her mother and subsequently adopted by Henry, the kindly manager of the building she’d found to squat in. Eventually she opens a hoppin’ burger establishment at the local mall and throughout the series deals with tough pre-teenage and teenage issues such as buying your first bra, being a tomboy, bullies, getting trapped in an old refrigerator, dodging Child Protective Services and fighting swamp monsters.
L to R: Whitney, Amanda, Lauren & Romi (the dog in the middle ate everybody’s little dog so he represents all the little dogs)
I don’t know about y’all, but I’m ready to rock this recap! Not really, I’d really rather discuss how the fuck True Blood is gonna wrap up their crazy-ass season in next week’s finale, right? Jesus. Also we interviewed Lauren and Amanda, a.k.a. “Lamanda.”
Anyhow, this week The Real L Word treated us to yet another Dinah Shore-centric hour of sapphic solipsism, in which someone curled up and took a nap on wet asphalt, someone twisted her ankle stepping off a curb, someone passed out on the bathroom floor for three hours mid-day and someone met Miley Cyrus at The Coffee Bean. Hey, who wants to see a sexy picture of Vero?
Sorry about the lateness of this recap, Intern Grace had a special weekend which led to me not getting all the screencaps ’til this morning (Monday), and also because of the cram she didn’t have time to give them all cute names. We apologize and have nothing but love for you and each other forever and ever as so it was written, amen.
We open in the sweltering wildlands of Palm Springs, California, where an enormous group of intoxicated lesbians are enjoying each other’s nipples while rocking softly to the beat of insufferable pop music. Also, Kacy and Cori are re-entering the world they’ve shunned for many moons in the most violent way possible.
DINAH!
whaddya say we bust this popstand and go emotionally eat at in-and-out instead
Kacy notes that Dinah appears to be “like a club” but “during the day.”
Kacy: “It was a little bit like walking into an alternate universe.”
Cori: “Where men did not exist, and neither did clothes. I felt out of place with my clothes on.”
Tell it like it is, Nikki Weiss:
oh no she wouldn’t
The two well-insulated ladies make their way through the hordes of women not dressed for winter and are stopped by Real L Word fans who wanna take pictures with The Celesbians Kacy and Cori. Oh wait — is everybody here clear on the definition of “Celesbian”? Let me refresh your memory:
and a bluebird is a bird that’s blue
Get it? Okay, good. So, as I was saying, Cori & Kacy are spotted by fans amid the throngs of gyrating g-strings and roped into a Kodak Moment.
hot pink bikini is going to tag the hell out of this photograph
And thus KayCor are forced to grapple with the inevitable questions:
Fan #1: “I’m planning on getting pregnant myself.”
Cori: “Really?”
Fan #1: “But like, when we saw that episode with you guys doing like, that thing, like did it work?”
[awkward pause]
Cori: “Uh, it did work. I lost her at five months.”
Fan #1: “Oh G-d, that’s the worst feeling in the world, I can’t imagine.”
Fan #2: “But keep trying.”
Womp womp.
Back in Le Chateau De Lamanda & Whitney & Sarahara, Sara and Lauren are sticking colored pencils into their eyeballs while Amanda informs Lauren that she heard from a girl who heard from another girl who heard from Hunter Valentine that Kiyomi lives with her girlfriend. But Lauren heard from Kiyomi herself that the “thing” with Ali is “sorta done.”
Amanda: “But every girl says that.”
Lauren: “Duh! It’s not like I’m like ‘Oh! I believe you!’“
duh, everybody knows that it’s really not butter
Amanda won’t let it go and Lauren reassures her that she’ll get this whole fascinating mess cleared up, and Whitney says that as Lauren’s friend she’ll support whatever decision she makes. That’s easy for Whitney to say ’cause unlike Amanda, she hasn’t ever found her arm halfway up Lauren’s vaginal canal… yet.
remember what i told you about how to get on season four and everything will be okay, grasshoppers
Everybody laughs and explodes and turns into ghost ninjas.
and the scent of kiyomi’s vagina lingered all day long
Meanwhile, Kacy and Cori are still perched precariously on the lips of the mouth of hell, wondering what the hell they’re doing at Dinah Shore.
Kacy: “It’s not that I’m not happy to be here but it’s just like, I would rather be at the hospital, exhausted, knowing that in a month we were gonna have a baby.”
Cori: “I feel it too, it’s hard. We’re not where we’re supposed to be.”
Kacy: “We can get there.”
Cori: “Dinah!”
Kacy: “I wonder if anybody else is having the same conversation that we’re having right now.”
Cori: “I think we’re the biggest Debs here.”
but only because claire didn’t show up
At this point, the couple makes the only decision one can really make under such circumstances:
Kacy: “We’re gonna drink through it.”
coincidentally, this happens to be the exact strategy i employ to endure watching this show
Kacy takes one sip of what’s likely a $9 cup of fruit punch and basement-shelf tequila, declares it horrible and then declares herself drunk. Let’s rock!
helloooo instagram
We then return to the Main Pool Area, where Somer and Donna are smooching, Laura’s carrying Vero around like a baby kangaroo, Sara’s kissing Amanda, and Somer is doing her very best to adapt to her surroundings.
play her like a guitar
I believe Dinah is especially challenging for New Yorkers, who would never, not ever, not in a million trillion bazillion years, intentionally attend an event of this nature on their home soil.
here kiss me before kiyomi sees us and tries to talk to us
Based on the six years I lived in New York City, I’d say that many New York lesbians tend to be the type that haven’t bothered buying a swimsuit in five years and only dig out the two-piece when somebody forgets how long it took to get to Coney Island last summer and ropes everyone in to a repeat excursion.
Somer: “Dinah, it’s not normally you know, my bag of tea or whatever — cup of tea? I don’t drink tea.”
smoking tea, on the other hand
But Somer’s happy to be there ’cause of the Hunter Valentine gig. Laura asserts that Hunter Valentine plans on rocking everybody’s bras off, which sounds neat.
and then sell the nice ones on ebay
Back on The Other Part of The Dinah Pool Party Area, Romi & Kelsey show up and are greeted with open arms by KayCor, who ask how the Dinah Dingbat Dating Game went and Romi explains how, once again, the universe’s axis lay between Romi’s legs and the entire world just revolved around her, being mean, like witches sticking carrots in people’s faces.
Romi: “Lauren signed up to go on a date with [Kelsey].”
[pauses, dramatically]
Romi: “They set us up. I’m like, can you guys get away? Why are you always there? and I just stood there watching the girl that I hate sign up to go on a date with my girlfriend…. it’s just — the nicest way to put it is that they’re very bully-ish.”
Kelsey: “They’re just bullies guys, it’s really sad.”
i don’t even bring pop-tarts in my lunch anymore because what’s the point, they always steal them
Romi interviews that she’s so glad Kacy & Cori are at Dinah, ’cause it’s nice to be around a “nice couple.” The implication is that Romi is nice and mature, and all the other girls are bitchy and immature, which is a valid point (about the bitchiness and the immaturity), but also who gives a fuck.
Meanwhile, said bitchy girls are exploring the swelling sexual tension inherent in every group of mojito-scented Dos-Equis-chugging hot lesbians in bikinis!
sara just saved 25 cents on q-tips
Lauren: “I don’t know why I’m sucking on Sara’s earlobes but Dinah fever is in me.”
Sara comes in her pants and Whitney’s pumped for “a big orgy later tonight.” The theme will be “The Story of O.”
Whitney: “I’m kinda turned on by the thought of you [Sara] getting it into Amanda, not gonna lie.”
but i’ve also been known to get off from stretching at the gym, so really it’s anybody’s game
Cori is wasted and stuffs her head into Kacy’s bosom and all is sunshine and beauty.
Cut to a number of hours earlier and later wherein it’s time for Hunter Valentine’s performance! Romi spies the band preparing to perform and is disturbed by their presence.
do you see that rock band, david? you know they’ve never been friends to me or mother. not one hello from them, not since jackie died
Romi interviews that she doesn’t know who Hunter Valentine is. I hope they know who Romi is, ’cause she hates it when people don’t know who she is.
Romi: “…based on the fact that they are friends with Lauren and Whitney and Sara, G-d knows what they said about me, so I’m not gonna walk in and watch somebody perform that’s just gonna think I’m like, this bitch.”
in which romi and kelsey are letting the terrorists win
One of the many hazards of Being The Center Of the Universe is that at rock concerts, all the musicians are really thinking about is you, because duh, everybody is thinking about you. Like you wish you could just enjoy a performance but the performers are like, obsessed with you. You know? That’s what it’s like to be Romi, the Atlas Of the Modern World.
Romi dramatically yanks Kelsey through the crowd like she’s Justin Bieber and zips into her room, anxious to the max. “Let’s just order,” she says. Music to my ears!
this is hands down also my favorite place to be during dinah shore
Oh, these are ladies after my own heart, really. I love hotels and 95% of the time would rather be drinking/laughing/smoking with my friends in a hotel room, rolling around on sheets we’re not responsible for laundering, than be outside in the sticky-sweaty sunshine with People Who Enjoy Socializing.
While Romi and Kelsey debate which incidentals they’d like to consume, Hunter Valentine gets ready to rock in the sweltering sunlight of the Dinah mainstage.
raise your glass
The Drunk Lesbians enjoy the show but perhaps nobody’s enjoying the show quite like Lauren’s enjoying the show:
Lauren: “When I first met Kiyomi I thought she was attractive but then they go on stage and they play, she was so hot, and then hearing her voice, it was like, wow.”
Truth: there is nothing sexier than watching your loved one play a musical instrument, which is one of many reasons why all my girlfriends have been excellent instrument-players (the primary reason is “coincidence”). Look, even Amanda likes it:
don’t let any of that drool land on amanda’s shoulder
Or maybe not.
this photo could possibly actually be from the wet t-shirt contest (also note the girl from the williamsburg bar behind lauren)
Turns out that seeing Kiyomi rock out with her cock out gets Lauren hard like Swiss Chard:
Whitney: “I could practically see Lauren’s full-on erection for Kiyomi just waving in the wind by the end of the performance she like, blew her load on herself.”
is it true that i came in my pants? i don’t know.
As you’re already aware, Kelsey & Romi have retired to their hotel room, sneakily foiling the CIA-implanted chip in Romi’s left thigh that enables them to follow her with spider trackers.
who’s at the door? who’s at the door? whooooos atttt tttthhheee dooorrrrr
So, Cori’s trashed. Which is actually a huge relief because she seems happy, at last. All of them do, all four of them.
Kacy: “When Cori gets tipsy, she has an alter ego and uh, Romi gets introduced to partial Coco. Coco At dusk. Kelsey got bent over, Coco style. It’s happened to all of us. She doesn’t really know you unless she’s bent you over and slapped your ass.”
Indeed: Coco Lite, beautifully wasted, thrusts Kelsey into a prone, stomach-to-the-mat position in which Coco Lite can properly smack Kelsey’s ass like she’s ready for some Canyon Yodeling, if you know what I mean.
is anybody here interested in pony play
Romi: “She’s making you a bottom, baby.”
For your reference, this is Coco Full-On:
Then Kacy interviews that “you looked light, for the first time in a long time you just looked light,” and Cori says that she felt light. She felt light!
little lightworker
I think that’s the thing about Dinah — it’s so grotesque and over-the top, and its attendees are so uproariously irresponsible that anything, any kind of behavior at all, is automatically deemed sensible because there’s no way what you’re doing is less acceptable than what anyone else is doing, anywhere. It’s a giant rollocking excuse to just let go of absolutely everything. You can’t feel guilty for kissing a girl you just met or getting super-drunk when two strangers with tequila fumes radiating from their pores are making out on-stage without shirts on while others wrestle topless in a kiddie pool drowning in vegetable oil.
You just let go, and then you feel light. Cori deserves to feel light. So does Kacy. Sookie should give them some light:
The Real L Word’s Lauren and Amanda Have Brains and Beauty: The Autostraddle Interview
My initial impression of Lauren Bedford Russell and Amanda Leigh Dunn was “Hair? HAIR!” There’s something about a girl who knows how to make a frosty ‘do look fabulous, and if you aren’t thinking about dyeing your hair bubblegum pink by the end of this interview, you are not paying attention.
Getting everyone to covet your coif isn’t an easy task, nor is joining the cast of The Real L Word in its third season and managing to win the affections of a very particular fanbase. Lamanda has done both. Entering your television screens/hearts by way of a New York to L.A. crossing, the pair are accomplished ladies with accomplished resumes. Lauren’s jewelry line Lyon features totally beautiful pieces, as well as charity collaborations that put communities first. Amanda is the owner of Cross Street Productions, a marketing and PR firm that has worked with such clients as MTV, Valentino and W Magazine. Amanda has also had a hand in a number of charity organizations, including Cinema For Peace and Music Unites.
Brains and beauty, ladies. And they understand the value of undressing.
Lauren: So this Skype video isn’t actually going to be online?
Kate: No, I’m typing up the interview.
Lauren: So we can take off our clothes.
Kate: Honestly, I’m not even wearing pants right now. But obviously we should keep our clothes on for professionalism. I’m supposed to be a professional.
Photo credit: Andrea Kennedy
How did you guys initially get involved in the show?
Lauren: This is always the first question.
Amanda: Lauren’s friend wanted to interview for the show, and she hooked Lauren into it. Lauren was hesitant about it, but then she decided to do it.
Lauren: My friend’s really badass. She’s a really cool chick, a musician, and I said, if you’re gonna do it, then sure, I’ll try out with you. Some factors ended up preventing her from doing it, but she told me to go for it.
Amanda: Two weeks before I moved out, Lauren found out that she was on the show.
Lauren: I literally found out right before we started filming. It was like, guess what?
Amanda: When I decided to do it with her, it was really funny because they told us they would start filming from the second I land. And I thought, oh, huh.
So you were thrust into it headfirst?
Amanda: Yeah, we just got thrown right in. It was touch down, and go.
Lauren: No time to breathe.
And you had seen the show before, or were aware of it?
Amanda: Didn’t see it, actually.
Lauren: She had never watched it. But don’t tell anyone.
Amanda: Don’t say that!
Lauren: I’m just saying. When she came out to L.A., and that information first came out, I was like, really? Really?
Amanda: No! She asked me if I wanted to do it. I thought if Lauren wants to do it, then it can’t be that bad. But I had to admit that I had never actually watched the show. Our line producer said okay, here you go, better watch these DVDs.
Lauren: I’d watched the first and second season and half of the third. Wait! I watched the first season and half of the second. I totally watched the third season before I filmed it.
What did you think of the first two seasons? Love, hate, indifference?
Lauren: For me, that’s where I saw the opportunity. Without putting anyone down, I thought that they could show a lot more, and a lot more excitement, and a lot more fun. And something real. I don’t see myself as super feminine on the inside. I think I’m feminine on the outside, and that could maybe help the feminine girls to come out. I want to help the girls that I was when I was trying to come out that didn’t see gay girls out there who looked the way I did.
Photo credit: Andrea Kennedy
What is it like having reality television cameras in your life all of a sudden?
Amanda: It’s really weird. It’s really funny actually because Lauren and I had made this decision before we started filming. We said we’re not going to drink on camera, we’re not going to be obnoxious, we’re not going to be dramatic, we’re not going to hook up with anybody. We’re just going to showcase our businesses and that’s it. But seriously, after a week of that you realize you would literally blow your brains out if you had to spend four or five months of your life being a robot all the time, not doing anything.
Lauren: What ends up happening, and I think this happened to the other cast members too, you’re so aware of yourself at the beginning that you end up overthinking it.
Amanda: And also the weirdest thing is that sometimes you don’t realize you’re on microphone.
Lauren: At the beginning, I’d be constantly checking for it. If I burped, I’d be like, sorry! And then I’d realize it wasn’t there.
Amanda: Eating and going to the bathroom are the two things that are the most awkward. I would eat a lot. And going to the bathroom – we couldn’t unplug it.
Lauren: At the beginning I was so weirded out that they could hear me peeing, and I kept trying to take the mic off. [The film crew members] were like, stop, you’re going to break your mic. We really don’t care about your pee.
Obviously that didn’t make it on the show. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone pee yet. I’ve seen people in the shower.
Lauren: Oh god, the shower.
Amanda: Let’s not talk about the shower.
How do you feel about the way the show is portraying you so far? You said you came in with a certain idea of how you would act and be seen, and I assume that’s changed. Right now we had a few clips of your business but we’ve seen a lot more about the sexual tension and relationship.
Lauren: It’s probably confusing for everyone. We talk about this a lot, and people are going to watch the show and take away what they want to take away.
Amanda: Here’s what you have to realize: Lauren and I have been friends for years, basically forever. We’ve been through relationships with other people, and we’ve looked out for each other through so many things. There’s never been tension or a power struggle – it’s just us being us. People will either understand that or they won’t. I think people have trouble understanding how a relationship like that could work.
Lauren: This is a moment in time for us, and I don’t know how that will translate on the transcript. It’s interesting to be able to watch it, because we don’t know what’s going on. There’s a lot of clips they’ve only shown as teasers, so I imagine people are like “When are they going to do this? Why haven’t we seen that?” We don’t know where they’re going to put what, so we don’t know how people are taking the versions of us they see on the show.
Photo credit: Andrea Kennedy
So what should we know about you guys that The Real L Word leaves out?
Amanda: We have a brain, we are intelligent people.
Lauren: I think they showed a part of my business and what we do in our careers, but there’s only so much they can show. A lot of it won’t make it in. There’s an awesome scene coming up that I hope they can put in, and it’s hard because I don’t know if it’s going to make it on the show or not. We see it when you see it, just a day before, so we are in the same position as you.
Amanda: It’s a surprise.
Lauren: Yeah.
Amanda: I definitely think what they don’t show is that we are really career driven people and that we are very educated. We’re much more involved in the community than they’ve put on the show. I wish they could showcase what I do in the community, what we care about.
Lauren: I hate when people say they’re driven, but that’s actually the best way I can describe myself.
Does your family watch the show?
Lauren: My family is super awesome. My mom is always like, what’s happening next week? And I’m like, er…
Amanda: My family is very conservative and very private. They like that about themselves, so that’s how it is. But my siblings are supportive of it – I’m really close to my brother, he’s fantastic about stuff. I think it’s wild for them, the way the show is showing this side of me. My parents don’t have a problem with me being gay, but it’s the booze and the cattiness and the way you speak around your friends. If anyone films you around your close friends, you’re going to sound different than giving an interview. They’re slowly getting more comfortable with it.
Is there anything you’d consider a highlight this season?
Amanda: Dinah is really funny.
Lauren: Dinah is hilarious.
Amanda: This was my first Dinah!
Lauren: It’s funny, and there’s good moments. It’s probably going to be my favorite part of the season.
Amanda: We’re all there together, the whole East Coast versus West Coast in one place, so you can finally see that dynamic. And you can see all the stupid shit we do.
Have you seen The L Word?
Lauren: Yeah!
Amanda: All of it.
Do you interact with Ilene Chaiken at all?
Amanda: Yeah, she’s really cool.
Lauren: She’s really sweet. Anytime we do something with Showtime, she’s always there with us and so supportive.
Amanda: She gets a really bad rap. Like, they always blame her for everything.
Lauren: No way. Really? I don’t believe it.
Amanda: No, totally.
I have to be honest, people are hard on her.
Lauren: Well, I don’t read that crap. I just look at the person for the person.
Amanda: She’s super concerned with making sure everyone is comfortable and that we’re not being mistreated or misrepresented. She’s actually really nice, and actually gives a shit. She has a really rad idea for the show, and when she thinks about it in her mind, it’s supposed to be a really good thing for the community. She means well. She wants to make a good show that’s representative of the community.
Lauren: And the topics this year are stirring it up.
Amanda: Like men. With women.
Oh yeah, there’s that.
Lauren: Yeah, there’s men on a lesbian show.
Never thought I’d see straight sex on The Real L Word.
Lauren: There you go. It’s stirring things up.
Amanda: All stirred up.
Next: Discussion of scissoring.
Real L Word 305 Recap: I Wasn’t Expecting This To Be So Bitchy
Hello and welcome to the fifth recap of the third season of The Real L Word, a half-hour family sitcom about a teenage witch who, on her 16th birthday, learns that she has magical powers. Along with her 500-year-old European witch-aunts and her sardonic talking cat, Salem, Sabrina works to master the ancient arts of witchery while keeping her identity a secret and tackling teenage issues like learning how to drive, picking a college, earning your witch’s license and opening a jar of spaghetti sauce.
L to R: Laura, Sara, Slab of Man, Slab of Man #2, Whitney, Romi, Amanda, Slab of Man #3
This week on The Real L Word, we all journeyed to the world famous Dinah Shore Weekend in Palm Springs, California, which’s basically a Star Trek Convention but with lesbians.
Sometimes after writing a recap, I’m like, “this shit is fucking hilarious,” but throughout the entire process of writing this recap, I’ve felt like this shit is not remotely funny, I hope next week is more inspiring. I’m sorry I hope you still LOL at least once. Here’s the thing: nothing’s happening, so everybody’s plotline is just people talking shit about other people. When I read over what I’ve written, I feel like I sound just as petty and bitchy as the show itself. It’s fun to make fun of people acting crazy or weird, but it’s difficult to make fun of people acting bitchy. Does that make sense? THIS IS HARD.
Oh also, to all the people who keep asking why I recap something if I hate it, the answer is that it makes people laugh and feel happy, and I feel like the natural human instinct when you’re told something you do makes people happy, is to do it. Right? If you’re able to. I think that’s what we’re all here to do. Also, it’s the traffic, stupid! It can be a pure motive. We do some things so that we can do some other things. Seriously I’ve recapped four seasons of The L Word, two seasons of Glee and three seasons of The Real L Word and one episode of Two and a Half Men — if I had a dollar for every time somebody asked me why I recap a show I hate, I could gather enough dollars to smash together a big dollar ball of dollars, and throw it at your head! I’ve also recapped good shows, like Pretty Little Liars and Skins, that’s a whole different ballgame. Anyhow enough about me, there are all of these slightly more interesting people ready to tell you Their Stories!
Also we made a video, it’s a Whitney Mixter Self-Inquiry Supercut, and it’s kinda amazing.
We open in Silly Los Angeles, California, where Lauren is sitting at the table with a camera crew when Amanda, who has recently dipped her head into a vat of cake batter and then fallen asleep in a walk-in refrigerator, shows up at the thwarted homezone to break some unexpected news to Lauren — she’s getting back together with her ex-girlfriend and possibly re-re-locating to New York City.
1. what happened to your hair, 2. what happened to your shirt
Lauren: “I would hope that like, if you’re gonna move back, that you would give me like, advance notice so I can find another roommate and stuff.”
Amanda: [in an “oh, jeez” voice] “Woof…”
stop trying to make “woof” happen
Lauren: “What?”
Amanda: “I don’t know, that’s just like so extreme.”
You think that’s extreme, just wait ’til she dares to request that Amanda clean her room before moving out!
look the two of us together is just too much edgy hair for one relationship
Lauren presses for more details, Amanda responds with abstractions and Jesus Christ on a Cracker I always feel like we’re missing a big piece of the Lamanda story! Anyhow, Lauren wants to know when Amanda would potentially move out. Amanda’s not sure:
for example; when does filming for this show end?
Amanda interviews that she’s disappointed that Lauren isn’t throwing a Relationship Reunion Pretty Party for her and her ex-girlfriend.
Amanda: “It’s like she’s jealous or something.”
Lauren notes that Amanda lies a lot, and then Amanda’s hair catches on fire and the whole entire house burns down. Just kidding! I was confusing this show with a house fire.
Back in Lovely Long Beach, California, Kelsey and Romi are fudgepacking their clamsacks in preparation for their very first Dinah Shore together as a couple!
and sara’s dead body is enormous!
It’ll also be their first sober Dinah, a fate I wouldn’t wish upon Maggie Gallagher, as I personally failed to find a way to tolerate Dinah without ingesting at least three drugs and two drinks every 45 minutes. That was our first trip to Dinah. On our second trip to Dinah, I didn’t do drugs or have two drinks every 45 minutes, but shit got real.
Romi: “Dinah Shore is the weekend that all the lesbians from all over the world fly in to party and it does feel a little bit like high school spring break…. it’s really just a place for people to get wasted and fuck each other. Like people break up with their girlfriends just to go to Dinah and fuck other people, and then get back from Dinah Shore and get back with their girlfriend.”
but me and kelsey prefer to stay home at the farm, milking cows and/or each other
Romi The Sober Grownup explains that she’s attending Dinah Shore for work, because she is Famous and Important:
Romi: “I was invited to host and attend events as a celesbian. A celesbian is a lesbian that’s a celebrity, and they’re very rare. There’s not a whole lot of us. So, I have work to do.”
SURPRISE!
via straddlegifs.tumblr.com
She’s right, celesbians are very exotic and rare, like Leatherback Sea Turtles and Chinese Alligators.
save these endangered species
Romi suggests they try this weekeend to “have fun and like, stay out of as much drama as possible,” ’cause Romi has this routine where every time she goes anywhere, ever, she must first announce her intention to avoid drama and relay her conviction that such avoidance is indeed possible.
as opposed to what we usually do, which is to start a lot of drama and attempt to remain as miserable as possible
Furthermore:
Romi: “We’re sticking together all weekend if you leave me out there alone for the wolves to get me I will fucking murder you.”
Yikes.
baby they’re just a bunch of wolves on V, you can totally fix that with your glowy faerie thing
Romi interviews that she prays her rascally alkie ex-besties can avoid over-imbibing at Margaritaville and subsequently attacking Romi, ’cause it’s challenging to avoid drive-by attacks when the entire world revolves around you, you know? It’s like you’re everywhere!
Kelsey: “I’m trying to be respectful of Romi and I want to make her happy and if she doesn’t want me around certain people, then I’m not gonna be around certain people. Romi is usually right about certain people, so.”
Whatever you think about these two, Kelsey thinks Romi is the bee’s knees, that much is clear, and it’s kinda adorable.
like she totally called it about that kony guy
Elsewhere in the Los Angeles metro area, Kacy and Cori are meeting up with the newly engayged Whitney & Sarahara to discuss Dinah Shore Weekend, which Kacy and Cori are unfortunately planning to attend, escaping their Emily Dickinson lifestyle for something more up Emily Fitch’s alley.
Whitney and Sarahara (who is operating a secret refugee ladder for oppressed termites via the extension cords dangling from each of her tender ears) say they hope KayCor are planning to attend the demented pool party from hell, especially the Dinah Dingbat Dating Game they’ll be hosting.
Whitney: “People are competing to win dates with [Romi and Kelsey.] I don’t know why…”
Sara: [FACE]
blow job face
Kori: “Are you not talking to Romi anymore?”
Whitney: “No, we have abandoned negative people in our lives, Romi is one of them. She has done shady things —”
Sara: “Even last time and what happened was, we were supposed to be friends at that time and me and Whitney had gotten in a fight but she knew how much I loved Whitney even if we weren’t like perfect, you know? And she made out with her at the pool and then looked at me like — if she could toss me off a cliff and nobody would know about it, she would.”
Although I’d assumed Kacy and Cori’s facial expressions reflected their immersion in this abyss of bratty boredom, it turns out their tentative exhaustion/disapproval is actually a reflection of their affection for Romi Klinger.
next time let’s just get takeout
Cori: “It’s hard to hear because I love Romi so much. She’s become an actual friend through all of this and she’s constantly checking in with us to see how we’re doing and she’s a great person and to hear anyone talk poorly of anyone I really care about is hard, and I really want to stay neutral — and just they have their own stuff — but it’s hard because I want to defend her and be like, you’re wrong.”
Kacy and Cori don’t wanna be in the middle of all this, so you know. SCENE.
Back in the deepest depths of depravity vis a vis Brooklyn, Kiyomi and Ali are — surprise — fighting!
where does the kinda-good go?
Apparently Ali did the horizontal mambo with another lady whilst Kiyomi was playing sweet music for the little children of Texas and Ali lied to Kiyomi about where she met said lady, which’s what Kiyomi is latching onto to have an excuse to be pissed at Ali ’cause Kiyomi is “always honest” which’s really, really, really really not true at all, but whatever, I hate both of these people and hope they claw each other’s eyes out and then move to Newark.
Kiyomi: “I don’t care if you fucking fisted a cat, just tell me the truth, and then I don’t care, do you understand? That’s all I care about.”
Ali: “You’re being so aggressive right now because you’re gonna leave again and you wanna be able to do what you want.”
the cat, on the other hand, would care quite a bit
Ali fights with Kiyomi about how they fight too much, and Kiyomi interviews that her inability to commit is due to a recent breakup with a girlfriend-of-two-years who she was totes in love with and was about to move in with who moved to San Francisco for a new job while Kiyomi was on tour without telling Kiyomi.
Kiyomi: “I don’t wanna do that again, I don’t wanna give myself to someone completely to have them just rip me apart and destroy me.”
They yell at each other’s faces for a bit and Kiyomi finishes packing her stuff and it seems like maybe this thing is over. This terrible not-relationship thing. Kiyomi leaves her keys on Ali’s laptop and heads out.
Cut to the next morning in Brooklyn, where Somer and Donna are scrambling to pack and get to the airport before their flight leaves in an hour. In other words, Somer and Donna are scrambling to pack and get to the airport despite the fact that they are definitely gonna miss their flight.
ok you have the spare parts harness and i have the rodeo so i think we’re good to go
Donna: “We’ve gotta rush. There’s still a chance.”
Mhm, that’s what I used to tell myself on the subway at 5:55 when I’d just passed Lorimer and had to be in Midtown by 6. “I’m not late… YET.”
Back in Shifty Los Angeles, California, Whitney and Sara are also packing!
try before you buy
For Sara, “packing” involves scampering around in a thong and see-through bra while Whitney interviews about hanging up her Dinah hoe hat. Look out for that shit on ebay!
Hunter Valentine arrives at the Luxurious Los Angeles International Airport — but Somer is nowhere to be found! This’d be a HUGE deal if they had a show tonight or if the bandleader was an obnoxious asshole and unfortunately the latter is in fact the case. Kiyomi interviews that she’s disappointed that they’ve been “given such a great opportunity” but “can’t be professional about it” which’d make sense if the “opportunity” was “getting a ride to Dinah right now” instead of what it actually is, which’s “playing a show tomorrow afternoon, at which Somer will absolutely be present.” So like none of this even makes sense! They should hire a monkey for the cast. Just to scamper around. Or maybe a talking horse?
wait dude is that an auntie annie’s because if so can you hold up a sec while i go get a cinnamon situation
Laura: “I think we should just leave.”
Kiyomi: “And not wait for Somer?”
Laura: “Nope.”
Vero: “We’re just gonna leave her?”
Kiyomi: “Yup. I’m outta here.”
Kiyomi’s one of those people who looks for reasons to get upset. Like she’s already upset, all the time, so she just wanders the universe with her orb of anger, looking for excuses to share it with the world.
Kiyomi: “I just think it’s one more thing on the scorecard for Somer.”
Vero: “You know what guys, could we not make it a big issue, I swear. ‘Cause I cannot make it a big issue, like the whole keyboard thing on tour.”
just smile pretty and watch your back, vero
Vero interviews:
Vero: “I feel bad that Donna and Somer are not gonna get a ride to Dinah Shore with us, but it’s Kiyomi’s band and she calls the shots.”
I wanna be in Vero’s band where Vero calls the shots! It could be called Hey Vero.
VIDEO: Autotstraddle Presents The Whitney Mixter Self-Inquiry Supercut
Once upon a time, Riese asked us all if we wanted to help with “a whitney mixter related supercut video” to which I replied “I will potentially volunteer for this thing,” because I am a masochist. Before a few short weeks ago, I am happy to tell you, I had never watched a minute of this TV show, you guys. Not one minute. Of course, I read (and loved) Riese’s recaps and obviously I knew a thing or two about what to expect, so I bought a bottle of whiskey. However, when the rules to the drinking game are extensive (which they are), and I was marathoning every single episode of season 1 and 2 (which I was), and my roommate refused to watch them with me (which she did), I often passed out in the middle of episodes and had to go back and find the parts I wanted.
So know that it was with great perseverance and liver strength that I was able to make you this supercut of Whitney Mixter asking Whitney Mixter questions about Whitney Mixter and answering them. No one knows Whitney quite like Whitney does. Do we already know the answers to the questions before she asks them? Yes. Do we particularly care about the answers? No. What can we learn from all of this? I don’t really know. Maybe you can answer that.
Real L Word 304 Recap: Scissor Sisters Meet Tongue Twisters
Hello and welcome to the fourth recap of the third season of The Real L Word, a half-hour sitcom about an intelligent yet mischevious teenage girl struggling to carry entire flower bouquets on her head via Giant Floppy Hats while dealing with an absent mother, working musician father, an allegedly charming dumb jock brother with a lot of hair on his head and a recovering alcoholic older brother. Along with her idiotic-but-hot best friend named after the number of beers her father ingested prior to her conception, she struggles with very special teenage issues like buying tampons, going to second base, peer pressure and marijuana joints.
L to R: Romi, Kelsey, Lauren, Vero, Kiyomi (stylist: romi klinger)
This week on The Real L Word, everybody cried and everything hurt and I was mostly bored! Are you also bored? Just saying, last week my recap didn’t even get 100 comments, so. Anyhow, I feel like this recap isn’t as funny as usual, but I’d like to blame that on the rain that was falling and mostly on Ilene Chaiken and/or the patriarchy. #BOTP.
Two announcements: we’re raising money and need your support and we interviewed Somer and I think you’ll like it.
We open deep in the bowels of California’s intellectual epicenter: Hollywood, California. Here our newlyengayged couple’s prepping for a trip to San Jose to blindside Sara’s Portuguese parents with news of their impending nuptials.
so that’s a definite “no” on the wake-and-bake at your parent’s house?
Sarahara interviews that her parents grew up on a tiny island with one donkey, three dirt roads, a duck pond large enough for only 1.5 ducks and a ramshackle grocery store that only sold rice and wide-ruled notebooks. There were no gay people on this island so therefore Sarahara’s parents know nothing of the gays and their wedded ways.
we’re talking ‘lord of the flies’ type shit here, guys
Whitney’s struggling to select which neutral-toned top, jeans, and stupid hat she’ll don for the big trip:
Whitney: “I can’t with this outfit, I’m not feeling confident —”
Sara: “You look — change your shoes, if that’s the problem —”
Whitney: “— and I need to feel confident because — I think it’s my pants —”
Sara: “No, I love your pants, there’s nothing wrong with your pants.”
Whitney: “I think it’s my shirt. I feel like I wanna look like, presentable.”
Sara: “You look like a 15-year-old little skater boy.”
she was a skater boi, she said ‘see ya later boi’, she wasn’t good enough for her, she had a pretty face but her head was up in space, she needed to come back down to earth
Whitney interviews that weddings are “a whole thing” in Portugal but Sarahara’s unlikely to fit into her parents’ vision of matrimony ’cause she’s marrying a woman. What woman is she marrying?
not that other guy in the corner, he’s just here to hold the boom
We then segue somberly back to The House of Sad and Fog, where Kacy and Cori are lying in bed, as they’ve done every day since their whole world imploded.
Kacy: “Cori and I have gotten used to just being here, with each other. It’s been uh, pretty difficult, damn near impossible, to leave the house.”
Cori: “Our lives have just stopped, and we’re shattered, we’re so broken. I just wanna crawl in a hole and pretend that this isn’t my life.”
Kacy: “We are both broken-hearted and sad, and we are there together, sitting there in the pit of hell, and I wouldn’t wanna be in there with anybody else but her.”
:-(
We cut jarringly cross-country, where Amanda and Lauren have landed in New York City for a few days of fun that’ll ideally cure Amanda’s fatal case of The Homesickness.
look it’s the statue of liberty!
The Twirlable Twosome are crashing at a dog-urine-soaked Brooklyn pad inhabited by somebody’s male friend and as Amanda showers, Lauren once again interviews to explain that Amanda and Lauren both had girlfriends when they lived in New York and now they’re both single at the same time and they’ve never been single at the same time before and REALLY DO WE HAVE TO EXPLAIN THIS EVERY SINGLE EPISODE, I quit.
this is the first time we’ve ever walked down a hallway with suitcases without girlfriends
“This is our first time out in New York, single,” Lauren explains, ’cause their situation requires (apparently) constant explanation. “This is our first time eating pancakes, single,” “This is our first time accidentally taking the N train to Queens, single,” “This is our first time shampooing our dogs, single.”
Amanda says she’s got some errands to run and will be back in an hour. Hopefully she’ll return with the rest of her shirt.
this is what happens if you lean back on a chair coated in super glue
Elsewhere in New York City, Hunter Valentine are returning from Tour!
Kiyomi: “South by Southwest was awesome, we did a really good job, we busted our asses, but there were some altercations, for every show that Somer sounded really good, there was another show that was a complete catastrophe.”
I really wish this show would embrace the ‘show don’t tell’ ethos, but I suppose that’s unlikely when nobody wants your cameras in their venues.
remind me again who my regional rep in this city is
Somer returns to her lady-love, Donna, and her two dogs, one of which appears to have eaten a third dog or maybe just a very large houseplant, and is relieved to descend into her wife’s arms, far away from Kiyomi’s menacing facial expressions and a van that smells “like fish.”
school’s out for somer
Somer interviews that after being On Tour, she totally understands how Odysseus felt:
Somer: “All I could think about was just being at home with her cuddling in bed, and she’s always there for me to bounce ideas off of and give me a good perspective and those were all things that I really craved while I was on the road.”
I think that’s ultimately the thing, you know? I mean, there’s sex. You miss the sex when you’re away, but more than that you miss the person who has been processing all your feelings with you for howevermany years, the person who gets you and usually agrees with you and can tell you if you’re being stupid or the other guy is being stupid. It’s the only situation in which life partner seems like the most accurate term to describe the person you miss and love.
who’s next, mama is hungry
Somer explains that when you’re out there on the road with a vicious womanbeast, Smee and Vero The Coolest Cucumber, everything’s just “naked and bloody” and nobody is polite and it’s hard. Somer and Donna have lots of processing to do about whether or not Somer should stay in Hunter Valentine.
We cut cross-country to Sunny San Jose, California, the city Kayak always suggests I fly out of when I’m hunting for cheap plane tickets. What Kayak doesn’t know is that I don’t have a car, so like, I can’t just go to San Jose on a whim in my Lexus with my fiancé or something, like these guys:
this calls for some solid daytime drinking
Sarahara says they’ve got news. Mãe and Pai strike out once with “you’re moving to San Jose,” and then again with “you’re pregnant.” The latter prediction is totally ominous, obviously. They’ve got no idea what’s about to happen.
even better: this bitch with the dredlocks is never gonna get me pregnant. how’s that?
In a surprisingly hilarious twist of fate, Whitney’s got no fucking clue what’s going on ’cause they’re all talking in Portuguese, forcing Whit to simmer in nervousness while chugging red table wine and laughing politely at what seem to be the appropriate moments.
Sara: “I’m nervous.”
Mrs. Sara [in Portuguese]: “What is it? You’re not expecting a baby, are you?”
Sara [in Portuguese] : “She asked me to marry her.”
Whitney, who — keep in mind — has no idea what’s been said, smiles nervously as Mr. Sara chuckles benevolently and Mrs. Sara’s face crumples and it’s really sad. You can’t even be mad at Mrs. Sara, because you can see her entire vision of her daughter’s future dissolve into a big black nothing and you can see that she is mourning this life and probably wishes she could mourn it off-camera. Sometimes it’s important to take a step back from our knee-jerk self-righteous indignation at anybody who doesn’t embrace our sexuality and recognize that “accepting” doesn’t have to mean “immediately embracing.”
kinda wishing sara’s announcement had been fetus-related
Sara: “Do you guys love me?”
Mrs. Sara: “I love you very much Sara —” [stumbles on her words]
Sara: “Are you sad?”
Mrs. Sara: “Well.” [pauses] “Old-fashioned.” [looks down]
Sara: “What do you think? What does that mean?”
Whitney interviews:
Whitney: “So yeah I’m not 100% well-versed on Portugese but I’m pretty well versed on the look of shock and dismay and tears. That’s a dead giveaway. She’s not 100% happy about this.”
who’s a genius? this guy.
Sara sort of purrs and hugs her Mom and tells her she loves her over and over as her mother stares at her fork and her lap and everything but Whitney, who at least shares a kind broment with Mr. Sara.
Mr. Sara: “I love my daughter, and I will do everything for her to be happy. And we really like Whitney and she’s a very nice person.”
four for you, mr. sarahara
Some Sadistic fuck takes this opportunity to interview Mrs. Sara, who clearly needs more emotional support than an exploitative television camera could offer:
Mrs. Sara: “This is a big surprise for me. It’s not easy. I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m saying this but it’s not easy.” [starts sobbing]
the saddest song
Mrs. Sara: “I never believe in gay marriage. I thought marrying is for woman and a man. Plus it’s not only me, really I don’t believe my family is going to the wedding. They all love me very much. Very much. very close family. But I don’t think they’d do that, even for me.” [starts crying again]
Back in New York Shitty, Lauren’s peeved ’cause Amanda said she’d be back in an hour and now it’s been three hours and she still isn’t back!
hi yeah, i’m calling because i used your shampoo and now my hair is pink? do you know anyplace i could get this fixed?
I believe we’re being set up to think Amanda is riding somebody’s hobby horse in a secret playpen and Lauren’s being overly possessive but seriously guys, don’t tell somebody to expect you in an hour and then go MIA, it’s ultra-rude, especially if you’re allegedly on a vacation together and have plans later.