Watching “The Real World: Cancun” makes me feel old for multiple reasons.
1. I am five years too old to actually be cast on the show.
2. It’s so insanely vapid that I cannot actually watch a full episode, which says a lot considering I can stomach an entire marathon of “Keeping Up With The Kardashians.”
3. Every single girl in the cast seems to be bisexual.
Why does point three make me feel old? Well, I think I just missed the boat on the bisexuality trend. Hear me out. I believe sexuality is a spectrum and where we fall on that spectrum when we’re born and how our sexuality evolves as a result of societal influence depends on the person. I also don’t think it’s relevant whether a person is gay, straight or bi, whether they were born that way or “chose” that “lifestyle,” as I don’t think what goes on in a person’s bedroom or romantic life is anyone’s business.
In the last five years or so, female bisexuality has become quite “cool.” On one hand, this is awesome, because it’s encouraged and allowed people to open their minds and hearts to the love and sexual pleasure you can find with both a man and a woman. The negative side, of course, is that much of the attention paid to ladies-lovin’-ladies was in the context of male enjoyment — girls making out in bars to turn on their boyfriends, for example. The increasing number of bisexual woman on reality TV shows (this season’s “Real World/Road Rules Challenge,” for example, had, like five bisexual women) and in movies, I think has it easier for women under the age of, say, 26, to acknowledge any “bisexual tendencies” they may have.
I grew up in a very open-minded, liberal household. My parents would not give a hoot if I was gay, straight, bisexual, or transgender — all they want is for me to be happy. I also went to a very liberal college — the University of California at Santa Crux, whose school mascot is the banana slug, which just shows you the kind of cuddly hippies I was surrounded by — yet, off the top of my head, I can only think of one woman who I was close friends with that had sex with both men and women, though I never heard her label herself as bisexual. She had the same perspective as I do about sexuality — that it’s a spectrum — but she didn’t like labels. Aside from her, I knew plenty of lesbians and lots of straight women, but very few women who casually hooked up with each other the way they hooked up with guys. Yet many of the younger women I know, either still in college, or out for just a couple of years, do identify as bisexual. Like I said, it feels like I missed the boat.
My sexuality, at age 29, feels pretty “defined.” I was in a serious relationship from age 24 until recently, so I didn’t think much about my sexuality during that time, outside of how it affected us as a couple. Now that I’m single again, I’m thinking about my sexual identity a little more closely. I’m pretty open-minded to new experiences, but being with a woman has never been something that has even really occurred to me. Women of the latest “Real World” generation have come to know their sexuality in a time when considering the same sex as an option is not necessarily different or strange. I made out with a girl in college, just once, under the influence of, um, a substance (just say no, folks) and I only did it because she was making out with the guy I wanted to be making out with. So I got in on that action to get a piece of him and felt really icky about it afterward. Looking back, my discomfort had nothing to do with her being a girl, but regardless, the experience sort of soured me on having any future sexual experiences with a woman.
So, what say you, Frisky readers — do you have “bisexual tendencies”? Do you think the increase of girl-on-girl sex on TV and in movies has influenced real women?
