| When
she told The Advocate in 1999, "I consider
myself bisexual, and my philosophy is, everyone innately is,"
actress Megan Mullally (Karen on
Will & Grace) was one of only a few celebrities
to ever publicly identify as bisexual.
Since
then, however, there has been a stampede of well-known women admitting
their attraction to women, with only a few actually embracing the
word "bisexual" as Drew Barrymore did in her July 2003
interview with New Woman magazine when she said "I have always
considered myself bisexual" because "I think a woman and
a woman together are beautiful, just as a man and a woman together
are beautiful."
Most
who are open about their bisexuality, however, are leery
of being labeled. Angelina Jolie has always
been very upfront about her attraction to women, making frequent
references to it in the press all along, like in a 2000 interview
with Elle magazine in which she responded to a question about what
who she was attracted to by saying "Honestly, I like everything.
Boyish girls, girlish boys, the heavy and the skinny. Which is a
problem when Im walking down the street."
But
in her July 2003 interview with Barbara Walters on 20/20,
Jolie responded to Walters' question of whether Jolie considered
herself "bisexual" with a response that was both characteristically
forthright and deliberately undefined: "I consider myself a
very sexual person who loves who she loves, whatever sex they may
be."
Tian Kitchen from the CBS reality series The Amazing Race 4
gave a similarly ambiguous response when asked how she defined her
sexuality in an interview with
AfterEllen.com, saying "The way I feel about my sexuality is
that I am open to finding my soul mate from whomever it may come
from."
In
another interview, with The Dallas Voice, Kitchen indicated even
more discomfort with the label when pressed as to whether she considered
herself bisexual: “I guess so. I don’t do labels on
stuff. I don’t know what my sexuality would be called—but
it wouldn’t be called heterosexual either.”
Many
of these women have never actually had a relationship
with a woman. "I have never had a girlfriend but I’ve
dated," Kitchen told the Dallas Voice. "I don’t
know what form the love of my life is going to come in. I’m
open to that.”
Mullally
made a similar statement to The Advocate in 1999, saying "I've
never had a full-on relationship with a woman, just a couple of
what I'd term half-assed dalliances, so I haven't explored it to
the degree that I'd like to, but I'll tell you, I'm open to it.
And I don't have any problem saying that." Since she met her
now-fiance Nick Offerman shortly afterwards, however, it is unlikely
she will have an opportunity to explore it further in the near future.
Others, like Alanis Morrisette, Lisa Marie Presley,
and former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell have acknowledged previous
relationships with women, but are quick to place these firmly in
the past. Presley even went so far as to say on The Howard Stern
Show in April 2003 that although she could have a relationship
with a woman again, she tries to keep that impulse in check.
Barrymore
told New Woman "when I was younger I used to go out with a
lot of women," but then she added "I don't think I could
ever just solely be with a woman...It's just not enough for me."
In
fact, of all of these celebrities acknowledging their attraction
to both genders, only Angelina Jolie has both had a relationship
with a woman in the past (actress/model Jenny Shimizu in 1996) and
expressed an interest in dating women in the future. "If I
fell in love with a woman tomorrow, would I, you know, feel that
it's OK and it's right to want to kiss her and touch her if I fell
in love with her in that way?" she said on 20/20.
"Yeah."
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