In The Ladies' Room: Things That Don’t Hold Up – MTV Edition
I figured out that I was gay when I was eleven; a half-awake, half-asleep dream about Jewel proved it to me in about a second. Earlier that year, Ellen DeGeneres came out as well (though on a much larger scale). And while I have a fleeting memory of staring at her “Yep, I’m Gay” Time magazine cover wishing I could read it in my school library, that was about all the influence Ellen’s coming out had on me. At that point, I hadn’t had the Jewel dream yet, so being gay was only something that I only felt bizarrely drawn to. I remember watching Ellen’s coming out episode, but not really getting what it meant.
After I had that dream about Jewel, there was a show that provided me with an opportunity to see someone else who was like I was, who was gay, out and from the South. That person was Genesis, and the show was The Real World: Boston. Being able to see that there was someone out there like me was a comfort at that time, when my only other exposure to gay people were those girls in Seventeen that used to pray everyday that they weren’t gay.
Realizing that The Real World–and Road Rules–were the only places at that time where I could see real, young gay people, I watched every season. It helped me come to terms with being gay, and let me see GLBTQ people I could see myself reflected in. By the time I was 15, I was very aware and accepting of my gayness. I’d already had a brief lady-fling-and-a-half, and was in the midst of developing a crush on one of my best friends. And though watching The Real World and Road Rules was becoming “lame,” I was still there. Especially that season of Road Rules, which featured out lesbian Rachel Robinson.
I can’t explain why I always had a thing for Rachel. During Campus Crawl, she was hooking up with Darrell, who was, clearly, a dude. But I did, and for some reason, my crush on Rachel persevered. Which is why, about three weeks ago, I found myself watching Real World Road Rules Challenge Part 98, aka The Duel 2. And when the episode centered almost entirely around Rachel’s dyke drama, I stuck around to watch the The Duel After Show. Boy, what a mistake that was.
When I was younger, I remembered The Real World and its affiliates as being places that documented the lives of GLBTQ people with little judgment or exploitation. However, watching again after almost a ten-year break, that has clearly changed. The after show, in particular, was basically an entire half hour devoted to the host asking Rachel how she got so many straight girls and other stereotypical straight-male-fawning over lesbians questions. I won’t even go into the amount of “dude I am so not gay” posturing that went on as well.
Maybe I shouldn’t have expected these matters to be handled tactfully by an MTV that has clearly declined over the past few years. But I guess I just held out hope for the network that I had turned to as a place to see GLBTQ people when I was young, and when I needed to know that there were other people like me the most.
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