September 26, 2007
And She’s As Much to Blame for Exploiting Her Own Bisexuality
Swati Pandey describes MTV’s Boundary-Breaking Sleaze:
MTV’s latest effort — a serialized bisexual dating show starring Tila Tequila, mistress of MySpace — could be considered another sign of the station’s shift from music network to sleaze peddler. But even if that’s true, at least MTV is doing what it has always done best: making controversy while quietly breaking, or at least exposing, some pop-culture barriers.
. . .
But the main selling point for MTV and Tequila seems to be the bisexual angle, as both try to prove they’re busting a taboo. Tequila, for her part, claims she’s never come out as a bisexual before (though her MySpace profile suggests otherwise). MTV, meanwhile, gets to brag that “A Shot at Love” is the first bisexual dating show on a network not specifically targeted to the LGBT community.
But Tequila’s description makes it clear that the show is not so groundbreaking as all that. As she writes in her slangy, all-caps way:
the show will be about me finding love as a BISEXUAL!!!!! THAT IS CRAZY RIGHT? ….. the only twist is that these guys and these girls have NO IDEA that I am bisexual and that they are competing against each others sexes!!! GUYS AGAINST GIRLS……WHO WILL I END UP HOOKING UP WITH????? WILL I BE STRAIGHT OR LESBIAN IN THE END?????
In other words, the old sexual categories remain, embedded in the structure of the show: guys against girls in the mansion, straight against lesbian in Tequila’s heart, with little in the way of “bisexuality” in sight. And contestants will probably confirm many a sexual stereotype (straight guys making girl-on-girl jokes, lesbian women happily cavorting for them as if that were the point of being lesbian, and so on). …
Filed under: Bisexuality, Celebrities, Television
