TV

“Bad Girls Club”: the most lesbian show on television

Reality television has given us our share of queer women, but outside of a select few shows (Gimme Sugar, The Real L Word, Curl Girls), their sexuality isn’t discussed much beyond the occasional reference or joke. The standard treatment of lesbianism on reality television consists of a single episode following the lesbian housemate or contestant to a gay bar or on a date with another woman. But it’s rare that a show that isn’t focused on gay women would feature much lesbian sex or discussion of lesbian sexuality.

Enter Bad Girls Club: Miami.

Though the show has existed since 2006, and also featured a handful of queer-identifying bad girls, the current season is the most lesbian show on television. One could argue that it’s not a difficult accomplishment right now, in today’s still quite straight programming landscape; but the 2010 Bad Girls Club house has shown sides of lesbian and bisexual relationships, friendships, sex and self-identity not depicted on a regular basis anywhere else on television. Though if you asked the Bad Girls about it, they might only admit to the sex part.

The premise of the show: A group of twentysomething women with penchants for partying and acting out are put together in a house to interact with one another. Unlike The Real World or other reality shows, they do not have jobs or any purpose other than to be filmed while trying to not kill each other.

This season’s queer women include Brandi, a lesbian “90 percent of the time.” She’s a stripper who is proud to show off her skills whenever there’s a pole in the vicinity, and is prone to become angered easily, especially if alcohol is involved. Brandi has hooked up with two women while in Miami – a cop and a DJ – but she has a continued interest in her bisexual roommate, Lea.

Lea is a Miami native who is dating two men when she enters the house. That doesn’t stop her from having sex with her friend and another one of her roommates, Danielle, which makes Brandi very jealous and upset. Their relationship is rocky after Brandi angrily confronts Lea about choosing Danielle over her.

Late to the game is Christina, a 22-year-old from Staten Island with a girlfriend named Lauren who comes to visit her. Christina came to the house after a few other girls had chosen to leave (Danielle included).

So far, there have been 10 episodes and almost every single one has focused on Brandi and Lea. The sex featured on the show has involved these two women and female partners – except for once in Jamaica, when Brandi slept with a man because she was “horny” and couldn’t find any lesbians on the island. (Not surprisingly – it’s not exactly a gay mecca.)

The show finished filming in June, but the women are reliving their time in the house with America every Tuesday when a new episode airs on Oxygen. Christina tells AfterEllen.com that she was drawn to the show because she is a true Bad Girl, and also thought the house could use some lesbian representation.

“I feel like there’s not a lot of strong lesbian women portrayed on television, so I thought it would be a good chance to get out there and show myself and who I am and what I’m about,” Christina said. “I definitely feel that’s who I am everyday. That’s my character. I definitely represent myself really well on the show.”

On a recent episode, Christina and Lea got into a huge argument in which Christina continues to tell Lea she’s a lesbian. “I have good gaydar,” she says, and feels vindicated when, later that night, Lea gets a lap dance from a female stripper. But when they get home from the club, Lea blows up at Christina, screaming that she isn’t a lesbian, that she loves men, and that Christina is only a lesbian because men wouldn’t like her.

“I did it partially just to get on Lea’s nerves, because of the way they treated me when I came in the house,” Christina said. “But another part of me really did feel she was a lesbian, she was making out with girls and so there was a part of me that really did mean it.”

Now, Lea is a little more level-headed about the situation, and says she wishes it hadn’t been about sexual orientation, because it wasn’t really about that at all.

She told us, “It’s really unfortunate that it had to be about being a lesbian or whatnot,” she said. “At the end of the day, it really had nothing to do with it. You’re put in a house where you have no television, you have no iPhone, you have no music, no internet – you have nothing. All you have is each other. You spend so much time with each other that these quirks and little things begin to irritate you.

“She’s from like Long Island or New Jersey or wherever and I’m from Miami and we are just so different,” Lea continued. “When someone just constantly is telling you something like ‘You’re a lesbian’ – she could have been saying ‘You’re blonde! You’re blonde!’ And if I tell you ‘Please stop. Please stop.’ After a while, it’s so redundant and consistent, you get to the point where you explode.”

Lea’s relationship with Brandi continued to be tumultuous, with Brandi’s obsession turning violent when Lea made it known that she was uninterested in pursing a sexual relationship with her.

“Maybe she’s not accustomed to hearing no,” Lea said, also mentioning the two women are cordial today. “I can’t tell you why she would do that. I really have no idea but it was really awkward.”

On the show, Lea seems to be irresistible to women. In this week’s episode, she is approached by a woman in a bar, and Lea asks the woman if it’s because she looks likes a lesbian. Lea comes home complaining about how no men ever hit on her, so she might as well just become a lesbian.

“I don’t think your sexual orientation is a choice. I think it is what it is,” Lea told us. “I hate it though. I hate saying I’m bisexual because I don’t want to put myself in some category that society thinks I should put myself in. If there is something about a person, regardless of sexual orientation, regardless if you’re a man or a woman or if you’re transexual, if I feel as though you’re intriguing or if there’s something that I’m drawn to, then I like you – period. I think people are beautiful regardless of their organs.”

So far, Lea’s hook-ups on the show have been with women, with the exception of one brief make out session with a guy at a bar, which she told the camera she did just to prove she wasn’t a lesbian.

“I think women are beautiful. I think men are beautiful as well,” Lea said. “It isn’t about women or men – I think there’s something beautiful in anyone. Have I been in a relationship with a girl? Yeah. Have I dated a girl? Yeah. I have done the same with men, too. It’s not necessarily that I prefer one or the other.”

But for viewers watching the show, it’d be easy to be confused – just like it’d be easy to be confused with Brandi, after she slept with a man in Jamaica.

“I was like ‘You guys are talking so much about me being a lesbian because I hook up with a woman, but [Brandi] talks about being a gold star and being a full-blown lesbian and then she’s having sex with married men in Jamaica,” Lea said. “It’s just so hypocritical. I think people just need to respect each other for who they are and what they want and that’s it. This is why I hate titles as well.”

No matter how they identify, it seemed the whole group of women were interested in going out to gay and lesbian bars and participating in the Pride parade. Lea said she’s been going to these places since before she was of legal age, so she knew where to take Brandi and any of the girls who just wanted to have a good time.

“Some of the other girls are open minded, except a few of them,” Lea said, explaining that she thinks the camera had a little bit to do with why some of the women were reserved with their opinions about homosexuality either way. “I think there was tension with it, but I think myself and Brandi were very alpha females in the house and no one’s going to say something like that to one of us because hell’s gonna break loose. Had it been someone else that was weaker and was a lesbian then perhaps there would have been more drama. But I think people were intimidated by me and Brandi than other girls in the house. That had a factor in why they were so passive about it.”

Christina said she thinks there was some bisexual tendencies in some of the other girls, as on previous seasons. “I think I’m like the first true lesbian, really. Brandi says she’s a lesbian 90 percent of the time; I’m a lesbian 100 percent of the time, so I’m the first true lesbian on the show,” she said.

Christina and Brandi found a bond in their commonality, which Christina said she appreciated. “I definitely felt like I had a connection to Brandi in the house because she was a lesbian. We connected on a friendship level. There’d be plenty of times we’d sit outside and have conversations about girls and being a lesbian so it was really good to have somebody in the house that I could be close with in that way,” she said.

While Brandi is looking for sex in Miami, Christina has her girlfriend, Lauren, visit. Lauren is a soft butch type, a few years older than Christina who seems to be in love with her. In fact, the episode in which Lauren comes to town shows Christina at her most vulnerable. Despite Christina’s bad girl status, they appear to adore one another, and not just sexually. Lauren gives Christina a promise ring, and shows off her tattoo of Christina’s name on her stomach.

“My girlfriend was definitely a little bit nervous because it is The Bad Girls Club,” Christina said. “She knows that I am a bad girl, so she was nervous with how I was gonna act. So it definitely caused a lot of strain on our relationship.”

Christina and Lauren’s relationship is the only one featured on the show. All of the other Bad Girls have flings, but Lauren is the only long-term partner with whom a Bad Girl entered the house. They are shown kissing, getting ready to go to bed together, and Christina tells the camera they had the best sex they’ve had in a while while Lauren is visiting.

Christina said she has always been strong in her individuality, and is proud to be a lesbian. “Growing up, I was who I am and I always believed in myself. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to talk to me, you don’t have to be around me, that’s just who I am,” she said. “I feel very strongly about that, and when I believe in something, I believe in myself.”

“I feel like I’m a very good influence because I have people coming up to me all the time, saying ‘We loved you on the show, how you stand up for yourself.’ I actually had this gay guy e-mail me saying ‘Thank you so much for standing up for yourself. Now I’m going to come out because I saw how you acted on the show.’ I get a lot of positive feedback and it’s good to be able to help somebody out.”

Even if you don’t watch the show, a lot of women do. The show is the number one cable network program in its time slot with women ages 18 – 34, and each episode brings in over a million viewers. Re-runs air frequently, and episodes are available for free online. The women are all on Twitter and participate in live chats and national events. There’s no escaping that the Bad Girls are some of the best known lesbian and bisexual women on TV today.

The bigger question is how exactly are lesbians and bisexual women “Bad Girls”? Is their interest in hooking up with other women part of the “bad” behavior? The show touts their women’s “similarly explosive personalities, manipulative backstabbing friendships, in-house love triangles, exotic trips to the Caribbean, unexpected alliances and endless mind games,” but not their sexuality, and when each of the girls came out, it was in regular introductory conversations with their housemates.

But surely casting knew what they were doing when they put queer women in the house, and the editors are the ones that get to work with all of the material. One thing we can likely conclude is that the Bad Girls are being themselves, and they are open about their sexuality. And because there are three different women in the house with such different ways of expressing themselves (their sexuality included), it’s actually a positive representation of queer women.

While it might not be considered optimal to have our representation include a bisexual woman who becomes so upset at the idea of being called a lesbian, or a lesbian who becomes obsessed with her housemate and then sleeps with a man just because she’s “horny,” there is no such thing as a perfect gay woman.

When it comes to reality television, we want to be represented, and to be represented fairly; but we’re all so different in how we see ourselves, our relationships and how our sexuality fits into those aspects of our lives. The thing that makes Bad Girls Club different from shows like The Real L Word is that they aren’t attempting to speak specifically for, to or about our community. The women come onto this show simply being themselves, and that makes them more genuine and more real than those who might think they are in the position to speak and act for us.

Since we are part of their target audience of any show that has “lesbian” (or “L”) in the title, our expectations of such shows are understandably raised. If the “L” shows disappoint, it feels almost insulting to watch them. But a show like Bad Girls Club is clearly just “entertainment,” without the added pressure of any expectation that it will help the world understand who we are or what we’re about.

What will women ages 18-34 learn about sexuality on the Bad Girls Club? Probably what they see with their peers in everyday life: sexual fluidity, friends sharing kisses while intoxicated and a lesbian couple that enjoys each other’s company and commitment. All of it might just be a little amplified.

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