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Even five years ago, this many openly bisexual women in entertainment was unthinkable; few women in Hollywood were willing to risk the career backlash that was likely to result from such an admission. Which begs the question, is this recent flood of bisexual disclosures a reflection of the changing times, or just another attention-getting trend that allows many of these women to score cool points with the younger, more open-minded generation that has increasing power at the box office?

Certainly an environment which allows female celebrities to talk about their attraction to women and not have it negatively impact their careers is an improvement over the past, when any such disclosure was likely to be a career-killer.

This new openness about female bisexuality is not just reflected in celebrity disclosures, but across-the-board in entertainment, where same-sex kisses between women now regularly crop up on television and in movies. Same-sex kisses between non-lesbian women are almost always exploited for male titillation, as in movies like American Pie 2 and Anger Management and on reality shows like MTV's The Real World, but even five years ago, these images were non-existent in mainstream entertainment.

In this context, a surge of celebrities coming-out as bisexual is probably due at least in part to more liberal attitudes towards female bisexuality, even if it's also a marketing ploy for some.

But is this increased attention to bisexual women a positive development, or is it doing more harm than good? The fact that no female celebrity has ever come out as bisexual and then actually dated a woman (at least, not publicly) means that while this trend is helping to break down some of the silence that has existed around bisexuality, it's also strengthening some of the stereotypes that make it so difficult to be a bisexual woman today.

Not all of these celebrities have admitted their preference for men as explicitly as Drew Barrymore has, but except for Angelina Jolie, the message appears to be that bisexual women don't really want to be in a relationship with another woman, they just want to have sex with them occasionally--not exactly the kind of message we want to send to a public who already confuses promiscuity with bisexuality. (There isn't anything wrong with heterosexual women who occasionally want to sleep with other women--but they're Bisexual Straight Women, not bisexual.)

Complicating this issue is that fact that even for bisexual women who aren't famous, it is almost always easier to meet eligible men than women, since straight men are everywhere and obvious, but lesbian or bisexual women are fewer and generally assumed to be heterosexual unless they clarify otherwise--often not an easy or desirable thing to do to strangers or acquaintances. For women who are well-known, generally insulated from the public, and unable to drop in at a local women's bar without it being splashed all over the tabloids, it becomes even harder to meet women who might be potential lovers.

Given this, it is understandable why high-profile bisexual women may tend to date men disproportionately, in a way that is not exactly representative of the dating patterns of most bisexual woman.

Many bisexual women have a preference for one gender over the other, of course, and there is certainly nothing wrong with that, but when almost all the high-profile bisexual women only ever appear to date men, it creates a distorted public image of bisexuality.

In particular, it reinforces the idea that heterosexual relationships are always preferable to same-sex ones, and that given a choice, of course women would choose a relationship with a man over a relationship with a woman.

But perhaps this trend is just the first step in the process of conditioning the American public to be more comfortable with the idea of bisexuality, a necessary precursor to laying the foundation that will allow bisexuality to be truly accepted sometime in the near future. Maybe in the near future, female celebrities will be able to talk about their attraction to women and actually date them, too.

And although the jury's still out on what kind of long-term effects this trend will have on the public's image of bisexuality, at least we're talking about the issue. For bisexual women who still feel largely invisible within both gay and heterosexual communities, that may be enough to offset a few reinforced stereotypes--at least for now.

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