By Kim Dowling. Graphics by Daniel Brookes

I, like many people I know, used bisexuality as a stepping stone en route to coming out. The term gave me the freedom to experiment sexually, allowing me to discover who I actually am. Coming out is not an easy process for anyone, and everyone’s experience varies considerably. The product of an Irish Catholic family, I was readily schooled in the ‘proper’ ways to conduct oneself…every Friday at 1pm during my entire schooling life. Expressions of sexuality – any sexuality – never figured into this equation. Fast-forward a couple of years and I’m a music student at Adelaide Uni. Jazz students are renown for being slightly off-centre, so when a friend admits that, upon our first meeting, she suspected I was bisexual, I took it with a grain of salt. I wasn’t, of course, but I didn’t care that people thought I might be – bisexuality was garnering more exposure in mainstream media and it was becoming more and more acceptable for people to express their sexuality on their own terms. It was cool and edgy to transgress the line, and I was happy to be seen to be doing that. When I finally began to understand who I actually was around the age of 21, I realised that I was not bisexual – I was gay and bisexuality was a joke. Something people used to avoid scrutiny whilst they figured it out. I definitely batted for the opposing team, and I was not ashamed of it anymore.
That attitude never really changed and, until recently I didn’t believe that bisexuality actually existed. I thought self-identified bisexuals were ambivalent and indecisive – greedy even. In fact, this opinion is common amongst the greater queer community, where bisexuality is readily marginalised, openly ridiculed, repeatedly overlooked, or understood to be a combination of hetero- and homosexuality without maintaining a unique identity of its own.1 Having since met two very strongly opinionated bisexual women, my opinions on the subject have completely changed. Whilst I find it most disconcerting that the queer community that I belong to dismisses the term ‘bisexual’ as being less legitimate than the other myriad of terms we distinguish our ourselves by, I find it even more compelling that the media are so blatantly exploiting this form of (female) sexuality for mass entertainment, and that I once bought into it.
It’s no secret that every form of media is saturated with representations of femine physicalities and sexuality – it’s what sells magazines and movies. For Gen-Z, getting bombarded with images of sexualised female forms comes with the territory – so much so that we’ve almost become immune to seeing them on a daily basis. A relatively new phenomenon is the emergence of the female ”faux-bisexual” and I, for one, am fascintated by this media appropriation of a queer sexuality. Now, I’m not talking about those late night commercials advertising mobile downloads where Lucy and Rachel want you to join them in the spa using your mobile phone and imagination. Those girls are obviously (badly) acting out a fantasy. I’m talking about the queering of traditional heterosexual identities to enhance someone’s star persona, which, when you think about it, is something that is happening a lot nowadays. And we allow it to happen.
I suppose sexual exploitation shouldn’t be such a shock to someone of my generation, but in the case of faux-bisexuality, I continue to be stunned by its overt appropriation by the media for the purposes of enhancing a star’s persona. Remember the furore surrounding the 2003 MTV Video Awards kiss between Madonna and Britney Spears?2 Although arguably the kiss between Madonna and Christina was more natural and hotter (and apparently more forgettable) the kiss between the two hottest music star’s of that year made headlines around the world. And because they were both ‘straight,’ it was okay, right? Um, no. This was not a moment of genuine trangression of respective female sexualities – it was a stunt, and we lapped it up. Put simply, this was the pure objectification of two women whilst they displayed a ‘legitimate’ sexuality for our pleasure – Laura Mulvey would have had a field day. Contrast this with public furore following US Idol Runner-Up Adam Lambert’s similar actions at the 2009 American Music Awards3 – since when did it become okay to display female bisexuality over male bisexuality? And why do we, as females, allow our sexulaity to be hypocritcailly exploited in such fashion?
More disturbing than merely the objectification of women is the way in which faux-bisexuality renders true bisexuality an undermining caricature of a genuine sexuality. I could list a myriad of stars that appropriated bisexual signifiers to enhance their career, with notables Angelina Jolie and Drew Barrymore subverting this sub-text into almost every movie they make. However, one star takes the cake this year – Katy Perry, I’m looking firmly at you. ‘I Kissed A Girl’ was the ‘infectious, bi-curious pop nugget’ (to quote Rolling Stone) released onto Australian radio almost two years ago now, and Perry carefully crafted her image to suggest that she may indeed be bisexual – just enough for lesbians to lap up the song, for gay boys to laud her dress sense and for mainstream radio to jump on board. In interviews she talked of early teenage crushes on girls, thus adding weight to the song and allowing the media to explore bisexuality without offence. But was this honestly done with any integrity? Was this an ‘artist’ truly representing herself through music, or was it a carefully crafted image designed to sell records? The jury is still out.
We are constantly fed a message that it is okay for two females to hook into each other in public – girls get free drinks, guys get a kick out of it. Granted, the emergence of faux-bisexuality has given this generation the freedom to explore their sexuality without (too much) fear of recourse, but at what cost? Not only does faux-bisexuality permit even greater exploitation of women on a sexual level, it also undermines legitimate sexuality in the process. So a challenge for the females of my generation for the new year – how about a display of public sexuality for the sake of making it visible and challenging the norms we’re presented with instead of this act of acquiescence? Kiss someone because you want to kiss them, not because it will pay for your next gin and tonic.