In the history of lesbians and bisexual women on television, Bravo’s Work Out, a reality series centering on out lesbian Jackie Warner and her upscale Beverly Hills gym, stands alone. There are no other reality series on television, now or in the past, that have focused on an out lesbian. The result has been a TV series that begins with stereotypes – the egotistical businesswoman, the predatory lesbian – but ultimately subverts them.
And though some of the story lines in Season 2 seemed extremely staged, reality did intervene – in the death of trainer Doug Blasdell as well as a trip back to Jackie’s home town – and led to some truly genuine moments in the life of an out lesbian that have rarely if ever been seen on television.
In other reality shows, lesbian characters seldom are well-rounded individuals. Ami Cusack from Survivor: Vanuatu or Kim Stolz from America’s Next Top Model ultimately were characters in an ensemble cast who fulfilled particular roles: the feminist leader or the lesbian seductress, for example.
But on Work Out, Jackie Warner is the star, and she is presented in a much more three-dimensional way.
In the course of two seasons, but particularly in the recently concluded second season, viewers see several facets of Jackie Warner: the businesswoman, the conflicted daughter, the emotionally damaged lover, the seductive Casanova. Some of these roles, so to speak, were double-edged swords. While they skewered some stereotypes about women and lesbians, they also underscored them.
The stereotype of the power-hungry businesswoman who will stop at nothing to get to the top of her career is alive and well in the United States in 2007. Last year’s box office hit The Devil Wears Prada is testament to the enduring, sexist stereotype of women who claw their way to the top by being as egotistical and driven as necessary, leaving behind their femininity – and any hope for a happy, well-adjusted family – in the process.
On Work Out, Jackie consistently presents herself as a highly driven businesswoman, at times so consumed with her business that she appears extremely egotistical. In Episode 202 she says to Brian Peeler, one of her trainers, “I’ve like only built my whole empire and hired you on my body.” In Episode 206, when she is upset about the poor quality of her clothing samples, she says in exasperation: “If I don’t do everything myself, it doesn’t get done properly. And that becomes quite a burden, because I can’t rely on anybody but myself.”
When she finally sits down with the manufacturer to tell him that his samples just don’t cut it, she makes no bones about it: “I can’t sell anything that I wouldn’t wear myself. And there’s not one piece in there that I would wear. Not one.”
Jackie’s ambition and single-minded focus on entrepreneurial success land her squarely in the realm of power-hungry businesswomen in the mold of Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly of The Devil Wears Prada, but she is saved from complete stereotype by her sexual orientation. The typical power-hungry businesswoman is so aggressive in her career that she becomes too masculine to be a “normal” heterosexual woman.
But Jackie, of course, isn’t heterosexual – a simple but key difference.
Jackie rarely expresses any need to be feminine, and she is never interested in attracting a man. Because she has little or no interest in fitting into those traditional female roles, her ambition is not tragic, which is the way a heterosexual career woman might be perceived if she prioritizes work over marriage. But Jackie’s self-absorbed ambition is simply a character flaw. She becomes, essentially, like any businessman: blunt, direct and sometimes self-aggrandizing.
Some of Jackie’s actions in Season 2 also dredge up another stereotype: the predatory lesbian. This stereotype has been done to death in television and film, from exploitation films about women in prison to the recent Notes on a Scandal.
The stereotype of the predatory lesbian is also alive and well in real life. Pokey Chatman’s resignation from coaching LSU’s women’s basketball team after it was revealed that she had dated one of her players raised the persistent fear, among many parents and players, that lesbian coaches can persuade their players to become gay as well.
In Season 2 of Work Out, Jackie quickly ends her five-year relationship with Mimi Saraiva and embarks on the single life by dating two women, both of whom were straight before they became involved with her. First she reacquaints herself with Tiffany, a woman she dated previously, explaining that she “made such an impact” on Tiffany because she was the only woman she ever dated.
It’s not clear whether Tiffany now identifies as lesbian or bisexual, but what is clear is that Jackie doesn’t take a woman’s apparent heterosexuality to be a limiting factor in finding a date. In an on-camera interview she admits, “When I’m drinking, you know I’m a good-time girl, with just about anybody that wants to be.”
One of those people turns out to be Rebecca Cardon, one of Jackie’s trainers, who has also been straight until the second season.
In Episode 202, as Jackie and Rebecca begin their on-camera flirtation, Rebecca acknowledges that Jackie has a certain allure. “She is like Tom Cruise in the gay world,” she tells one of her clients about an evening she spent with Jackie at a lesbian bar. “She’s a sexy lady,” Rebecca admits.
Later on, at a party with the other trainers, Rebecca snuggles up to Jackie and says, “You’re so cuddly!” And Jackie replies somewhat sarcastically, “Yeah, I’m cuddly. I’m more like a praying mantis.” It’s as if even she knows that she’s stepping quickly into the predatory lesbian stereotype.
As Rebecca and Jackie’s relationship develops, the Sky Sport trainers express a great deal of discomfort with it. Andre, in particular, seems to see Jackie as a predator. “Tiffany and Rebecca — being that they’re so-called, like, heterosexual … they’re supposed to be … untouchable to Jackie,” he says. “But we all know that no one is outside of Jackie’s range.”
It is clear from Andre’s hostility toward Jackie and his clumsy attempt to flirt with Tiffany that his judgment of Jackie is based on jealousy: She can get the girls he can’t. It suggests that the stereotype of the predatory lesbian is based in part on male jealousy of lesbians and a feeling of being excluded as a sexual possibility. In fact, Jackie notes this about Andre, saying that he can’t handle a lesbian being in control.
The trainers’ discomfort is also due to the fact that the relationship is between an employer and an employee — something that verges quite close to the issue of workplace harassment. But although the majority of viewers as well as the Sky Sport staff might find this kind of relationship to be inappropriate, Jackie seems to find nothing out of the ordinary about it.
“The trainers have dated each other; the trainers have dated clients; clients have dated — you know, I mean, it’s flexible in our industry,” she explains in an interview. “Rebecca and I have an understanding, and neither one of us is going to let our personal life interfere with Sky Sport.”
Jackie’s relationships with Rebecca and Tiffany could be seen to fulfill all the hallmarks of a predatory lesbian, but ultimately, Work Out presents the relationships as light-hearted and fun. Lesbian sexuality is presented on the series as completely normal, and the camera does not shy away from showing same-sex kissing.
In fact, Work Out presents some of the better-lit lesbian kissing to be seen on television.
This reflects the fact that the series airs on a cable channel rather than a network, as well as Work Out‘s status as a reality series following in the footsteps of shows such as The Real World, which often depict same-sex kisses between women for their titillation value.
Both Tiffany and Rebecca appear to genuinely enjoy their time with Jackie, and their choices to date a woman for the first time are glossed over, suggesting a fluidity in sexual orientation that speaks to the greater acceptance that LGBT people now experience in American culture.
In Episode 208, Rebecca says: “My therapist says Jackie and I connect on every level, so right now I’m trying to just ask myself what is really going on with me. I don’t like to put myself in a box, and I think a lot of times we want to have people black or white, and there’s a ton of grey.”
Despite Rebecca’s desire to remain unboxed, her actions could easily label her as bisexual — an identity that comes with its own baggage. Many bisexual characters in television and film are portrayed as manipulative and scheming. And Rebecca is not immune to the manipulative bisexual stereotype.
When Jackie takes her trainers and their clients on a retreat, trainer Jesse Brune directly accuses Rebecca of using Jackie to advance her career. His accusation, however, is counteracted by his earlier statements in the same episode: “Jackie’s one of my best friends. And what I know of Rebecca, Jackie will eat her up and spit her out.”
In reality TV, everyone uses everyone else to advance their careers — in this case, Rebecca is no more a manipulative bisexual than Jackie is a predatory lesbian. On the surface, it may seem that way, but in reality — and by reality I mean the television genre — everyone is complicit in the manipulation, including the potential victim.
Moving beyond stereotypes, Work Out presented real life in a way that was at times unexpectedly genuine, despite the staged scenarios that Jackie and her staff were placed in. The second season showed an unusually close relationship between a gay man and a straight man. The friendship between Doug Blasdell — who passed away during the second season — and Brian Peeler was one of the more intimate and unabashed to be depicted on television.
The problematic relationship between Jackie and her mother was another surprisingly true one, possibly due to the fact that Jackie, who is generally in control of her environment at all times, is simply undone by her mother’s difficulties in accepting her for who she is. Work Out has essentially taken the coming-out story beyond the initial stages of revelation, moving onward into the years-long process of coming to terms with being gay.
Nowhere was this story line more raw and realistic than when Jackie returned home to small-town Fairborn, Ohio, to visit her mother and her high school.
As she drove through the town with her best friend, Erin, she explained: “Usually, I come simply out of obligation over a holiday. And you know, something comes over an adult when they go to their hometown. … You know what happens? You revert right back to childhood. When you’re surrounded with … especially in a tiny town like this, I’m surrounded by ghosts.” The experience of coming home to a town in which one was closeted while growing up, struggling to reconcile one’s adult identity with one’s childhood one, is an experience that many LGBT people have had. And when Jackie’s mother saw her daughter being welcomed by the high school students as a celebrity, she saw, at last, her daughter as a success — not her daughter as a lesbian.“It was just incredible for me to see my daughter … with a horde of students behind her, waiting in line for autographs,” Jackie’s mother says in Episode 207. “It was just something else. I’ll never forget it.” It is that experience that helps her to treat her daughter like her daughter when they visit Jackie’s father’s grave. In those moments, Jackie at last resembles the vulnerable young girl that she hides inside herself and becomes as human as possible in a reality series.
For viewers who are not accustomed to seeing lesbians and bisexual women as fully developed human beings with frustrations and hopes and emotional complications, Work Out has been groundbreaking.
For lesbians and bisexual women watching Jackie’s on-air shenanigans, the show presented both stereotype and complexity.
Thankfully, in the end, complexity triumphed.
