LADIES, LOCK up your girlfriends. Boys, break out the hand cream. The lesbian version of the TV show The Bachelorette is coming - and it promises to be as pathetic and unrealistic as its straight counterparts.
"For the first time ever, a major cable network is applying the lipstick, revving the Harley, busting out the wife-beater, and turning dating inside-out," promised the casting agency in its posting for the show.
Lipstick? Harley? Wife-beater? That's the best they could come up with to turn the lesbian dating world "inside-out"? Clearly this copy was written by some straight girl who watched two episodes of The L Word to school herself in gayness.
Tentatively dubbed Venus Envy, the show is set to air this fall on MTV. It is, of course, the only natural progression we could expect as we gays gain greater acceptance in the world. The L Word has made tribadism chic. Jackie Warner's Work Out has convinced millions of people that lesbians are not only buff, but that straight girls are throwing themselves at our feet. It's acceptable social behavior for straight girls to get "gaysted" and feign homosexuality until they sober up. Of course we need our own version of The Bachelorette.
And who better to represent the lesbian population than a former Maxim model? That's all the casting agency would leak when I called to inquire about the show. A former Maxim model? You don't say! That's about as realistic as a one-legged dwarf taking to the fashion runway to showcase Victoria's Secret's new lingerie line.
Or is it? I bitch all the time about the tired stereotypes plaguing the lesbian community. The cargo shorts. The Birkenstocks. The bad mullets (not to be confused with the good mullets). The nesting behavior. Perhaps a smokin' former Maxim cover girl is just what we need to drag us out of the dumps and raise up the ratty-lesbian reputation the world over.
Wait. We already have that. We already have the lipsticked, fake-breasted "lesbian" gaining notoriety while she jabs her co-star's labia with fire-engine red talons. Those are the lesbians people love. They're grotesquely gorgeous by male standards. And they're fucking lesbians, dude! How cool.
I'm not saying this former Maxim model couldn't be a lesbian. Certainly there must have been that one photo shoot where she was asked to pour sudsy water over another female model's white tank top, revealing just enough of a darkened areola to make something tingle downstairs.
Using this centerfold as a representative of the lesbian population, though, is a bit of a stretch, even for a "reality" show. But those are our choices: we either get Rosie O'Donnell and her football field of a head, or we get Barbie dolls who like to touch tongues.
What we don't get is a representation of that enormous gap between the flat-topped lesbians of yesteryear and the over-femmed porn stars of today's Girls Gone Wild culture. And I mean "real" people, as opposed to the actors who play gay people on television. And it would also be cool if they weren't all crazy and consumed by melodrama.
Apparently I don't even meet my own standards. When the casting rep suggested I send in a tape, I assumed the best way to make an impression would be to dance around in a blow-up doll costume and make goiter jokes. I even included a missive about crazy ex-girlfriends, complete with footage of one straddling a mechanical bull. My perception of what constitutes "reality" is as warped as everyone else's. And considering I haven't heard anything from the casting agency since I mailed in my entry, it appears I won't be competing to date a supermodel anytime soon.
But come to think of it, I'm not too sure the TV executives would have been wowed by footage of me in my underwear, editing the same line of this column 10 times over. Or of me on the phone with a friend, bitching about my unrequited love for some straight girl. Or perhaps they just looked at my photo and went, "Blah." Too average. Too normal. Too real.
The show will work much better with all the requisite lesbian stereotypes. They've already got their supermodel. I'm sure they'll throw in a porn star or a stripper. They'll have the gorgeous Southern homo who's been ostracized by her Republican family. Hopefully they won't sabotage the show with straight contestants, as they did on Bravo's Boy Meets Boy, using the program as some type of homosexual litmus test. Of course they'll toss in some big butch for good measure, or a good laugh. And I'll treat Venus Envy like every other "reality show": as a joke.
I guess I should look on the bright side: we lesbians can enjoy the trickle-down effect of yet another pop-culture phenom. If Venus Envy works the same as every other sprinkle of gayness in primetime, it'll make loads of straight girls hip to being a homo. They'll become more open-minded and curious. They'll have too much to drink one night and start asking questions about what it's like to be gay. Then they'll wake up with their clothes in a ball on your bedroom floor and realize their boyfriends have been texting them all night. They'll gather their stuff and sneak out the door, shaking their head at their silly exploit. That was fun for the night. But it was just an experiment. It's not for real. @
Jeannie Greeley is a freelance writer who misses the days of Pedro and Puck on The Real World. She can be reached at jeannieg@comcast.net.
[Illustration by C. Smigliani.]
