admin I have nothing but love and awe for my friends who’ve been out—as queer, trans, or any other letter in the LGBTQ+ continuum—since middle school (and, for what it’s worth, I’d like to shout out their various parents and school systems for enabling this confidence), but there’s something both shitty and kind of magical about not coming out until you’re older. I came out at 24, or maybe 25, depending on your definition of “coming out,” and the minute I kissed my first girl and attended my first queer dance party, I was simultaneously thrilled about the new direction my life was taking and mega bummed that I hadn’t been gay as hell and out and proud since my teens.
I didn’t think I would find relatively late-in-life coming-out representation on reality TV, of all places, but it can’t be denied that the queer agenda has come for Selling Sunset’s Chrishell Stause, RHONY’s Jenna Lyons, The Bachelor’s Becca Tilley, and now The Bachelorette’s Gabby Windey. Over the last few years, all four of these women have left relationships with cishet men behind and started dating queer, trans, and/or nonbinary people, most recently Windey, who revealed she’s in a relationship with writer and stand-up comedian Robby Hoffman.
Obviously, lesbians are not a monolith and queerness isn’t a “trend”—no matter how much homophobes blather about social contagion—but I do think it’s interesting that Stause, Lyons, Tilley, and Windey are all relatively high-powered femmes whose public renown has been inextricably linked with their cishet relationships. This is especially true of Tilley and Windey, who literally rose to fame on dating shows, but even Stause and Lyons had their previous relationships publicized to a level that, at least in Lyons’s case, wasn’t entirely comfortable. (Listening to her discuss the pain of being outed by the New York Post shortly after divorcing her husband on a recent episode of RHONY was genuinely heartbreaking.)
Obviously, it’s always been easier for women like the ones above—all white, cis, thin, and conventionally attractive—to navigate their fluctuating sexualities without being subject to the anti-gay, transphobic discrimination that’s running rampant in the U.S. right now, but regardless of how much privilege you have, taking a risk in your personal life is still hard (especially when the world is watching). I’d like to offer a hearty mazel tov to Stause, Lyons, Tilley, and Windey for taking that risk, and I’d also like to offer up a humble prayer to the universe that I will eventually run into at least one of them at some L.A. gay bar or another.
