Maybe All Real Housewives Are Bisexual

There comes a time in every Real Housewives franchise, it seems, when one Housewife asks the rest of the Wives whether they would ever be with a woman. It’s presented as a hypothetical, a safe way for mostly heterosexual-identifying women to imagine their sexuality in a different light. Some Wives take the question seriously and open up about past sexual experiences or relationships with women. Some double down on their straightness explicitly by saying never or implicitly by regarding queerness as some costume to try on. The latest instance of this social tradition occurs in this week’s episode of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. While at an outdoor wine tasting in Ojai, longtime cast member Kyle Richards asks the group if they’d ever date a woman. It feels important to note the women aren’t talking about anything remotely related to this. It’s completely and totally out of nowhere.

Kyle Richards saying "Would you ever date a woman?"

Garcelle Beauvais says she indeed thinks about it sometimes, which doesn’t really surprise me. She has talked about hooking up with women in the past. Kyle, meanwhile, also says she is open to it. It seems like the whole reason she posed this question was so she could answer it. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it Kyle coming out necessarily; after all, it’s still couched in the hypothetical. But that’s also why it really does seem like she’s trying to say something real about her sexuality. By doing so in the context of just a fun little party question, there’s a layer of distance there.

It’s also made more interesting by the fact that rumors have been circulating behind-the-scenes about Kyle being in a relationship with country singer Morgan Wade. Neither woman has commented publicly on her sexuality, and Kyle and Morgan have dismissed the rumors while also cheekily leaning into them in a music video for one of Morgan’s songs.

Next, Kyle and fellow cast member Dorit Kemsley, for some reason, decide to…demonstrate scissoring? And now with their hands like normal people but quite literally on the ground, scissoring with their clothes on.

Kyle Richards and Dorit Kemsley scissoring

Suddenly, they’re back to seeming super straight with this one. But Kyle bringing up scissoring in the first place, especially against the backdrop of these Morgan rumors, which some of the other women including Dorit and Garcelle seem to believe on some level, does make it seem like she’s trying to tell us something here. If nothing else, she at least seems to have some curiosity about lesbian sex!

This moment does support my theory that all or most Real Housewives are bisexual. The homosocial environments the shows often place these women in often lead to homoerotic physical intimacy. And sometimes it’s played for a cheap joke, like this scissoring scene, but other times there’s also something deeper there, the intense bonds between the women sometimes existing in a more nebulous realm than mere friendship. Real Housewives of Beverly Hills in particular is no stranger to dyke drama; Denise Richards left the show because of it.

So many of these reality shows are about performing femininity in specific ways, and it’s fascinating that the longer a franchise has been on, the more we see the Housewives start to question some of the roles and expectations they’ve been slotted into. It remains to be seen if this is building to a late-in-life coming out storyline for Kyle, but I really think it could be! I’ll be tracking closely and reporting as Bravo Dyke when needed.

Also, I mean, did anyone see the way Kyle and Morgan were feeding each other fruit?! 👀

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Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is the managing editor of Autostraddle and a lesbian writer of essays, short stories, and pop culture criticism living in Orlando. She is the assistant managing editor of TriQuarterly, and her short stories appear or are forthcoming in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Joyland, Catapult, The Offing, and more. Some of her pop culture writing can be found at The A.V. Club, Vulture, The Cut, and others. You can follow her on Twitter or Instagram and learn more about her work on her website.

Kayla has written 946 articles for us.

1 Comment

  1. It feels like Kyle is dropping major hints this season and I cannot wait to watch this unfold. With the bombshell RHSLC finale, Kyle’s sapphic hints, and general RHOM greatness, the RH world is really killing it right now.

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