Finally! The first out lesbian has been inducted into the main cast of a Real Housewives! Julia Lemigova, a former model who’s married to retired tennis star Martina Navratilova, will join the cast of The Real Housewives of Miami.
No, former Orange County housewife Braunwyn Windham-Burke coming out as a lesbian in 2020 — while claiming she’ll remain happily married to her Husband Sean Burke — doesn’t count. Not only is she still in a relationship with a man, she also entered the show that way. Julia Lemigova enters as a lesbian.
I have definitely been sleeping on RHOM. Perhaps that has something to do with it being M.I.A for eight years. Atlanta, NYC, Beverly Hills, New Jersey and Orange County take up too much of my time anyway. But, if there’s going to be a lesbian, then I’ll definitely sacrifice days of my life catching up on yet another Real Housewives franchise. I’ve given up pretending like reality television doesn’t run my life.
I can’t wait to meet Julia!
Who is Julia Lemigova?
In 2014, Julia Lemigova and Marina Navratilova married in NYC. Julia, a former beauty queen, won Miss USSR in 1990. She’s not what meets the eye: while the rest of the cast may be 100% citified, “Julia runs a small farm outside of Miami and can often be found on the farm feeding the chickens or milking goats, amongst the menagerie of animals found on her property,” according to Bravo.
Past “representation”
While Julia and Marina are the first lesbian couple on any Real Housewives, there have been a few housewives admit their attraction to women before.
Kandi Burruss, from Real Housewives of Atlanta, prefers to be publicly viewed as straight but admits she’s dipped “in the lady pond” before. She’d prefer for the public to see her “girl experience(s)” as some kind of experimentation back in the day, especially now she’s married.
”I’ve said on Housewives before, I have said on Kandi Koated Nights before, yes I’ve had a girl experience. It’s not a secret, but I’m very happily married with my husband and I am not a lesbian waiting to come out of the closet,” Kandi said, reported by Bravo.
The Real Housewives of Orange County has had multiple housewives admit their bisexuality. Not only did Braunwyn come out as a lesbian, Elizabeth Lyn Vargas shocked many of us when she shared her bisexuality this year. New RHOC cast member Noella Bergener declared she’s bisexual in this season’s trailer.
Noella normalizes bisexuality by being so excited to meet another one. “I’m bisexual too!” she excitedly says, on the trailer. Finally, someone who is proud to love women.
Unlike Noella, a common thread among bisexual housewives is the need to downplay or erase their attraction to women. Sure, the fear of getting slammed by homophobes exists, but it’s disappointing to see sapphic women treat their attraction to women as experimentation or something they can “not practice.” I just want someone to be brave.
Elizabeth spoke about her bisexuality as if she was a reformed alcoholic: “Have you always identified as bisexual?” Andy Cohen asked Elizabeth at the most recent RHOC reunion, to which Elizabeth said: “100 percent, but I don’t practice it.”
“Are you saying you don’t practice it because you have a boyfriend right now?” he further clarified, referring to her boyfriend Jimmy.
“I just don’t have any interest in meeting a new woman right now,” she said.
Why distance yourself from women so readily?
It’s harder for lesbians to hide our sexual orientation when we don’t have the option to happily be with men in homophobic, heteronormative societies. Seeing bisexual women act so ashamed of their love for women, constantly reminding us they choose to align themselves with men and male attraction because of how ashamed they are to love women, is hurtful.
Hopefully having the first lesbian Housewives couple will normalise lesbianism and not portray same-sex attraction as experimental or something you should avoid “practicing.”
