In the opening minutes of Perfect Match‘s second season, Dominique Defoe introduced herself and her entire deal with words that were gentle music to my ears: “On my last show, I was definitely more attracted to the girls than the guys. And that’s just how life is. Beauty is beauty and love is love and all of that.” First of all, that’s so true about beauty and love! Secondly, I was hoping for some hot bisexual action.
See, in Season One of A Perfect Match, a particularly demonic cog in the Netflix Dating Show Cinematic Universe that brings single people from other Netflix reality shows (Love is Blind, Too Hot to Handle, The Mole, The Circle) together to see if they might find love with similarly conventionally attractive influencers, swimwear entrepreneur Francesca Farago thwarted impossibly heterosexual odds to deliver solid and compelling bisexual representation, even revealing she’d only agreed to be on the show at all ’cause they said she was allowed to date girls. So I anticipated Season Two being equally open to exploiting its queer cast members drama.
But bisexual contestants Dominique Defoe and Brittan Byrd have accused Netflix of removing their queer romance from the final cut of the show, a connection that began when they both appeared in Too Hot to Handle Season Four — in fact, that’s what Dominique was referencing when she said she was more attracted to her female castmates on Too Hot to Handle than her male castmates. That storyline never made it to air, however.
Then, on TikTok, in a post titled ” Existential Crisis Of [Rainbow Emoji] Girls on Straight Dating Shows,” Dominique wrote about Perfect Match: “We matched at the party, immediately had to leave and weren’t aired for the second dating show in a row.” When commenters asked why they didn’t see the clip of the two matching, she responded, “they cut it LMAO, I thought it was funny!! boys were lined up to talk to us and we were literally just making out and they were like oh.” However, a source “close to production” told The Wrap that the two never officially matched. It’s true that neither girl is shown matching with anyone in that episode, but also neither are present the next morning, so it’s unclear what happened there.
In an interview with Tudum, Dominique said that she clashed with Bryton, her initial match, for most of their time together, revealing: “I liked him for maybe two hours, and then it became very evident to me that he was the kind of person who was using me to get hate speech across on television.” She describes him as patronizing and misogynistic and incredibly biphobic, telling her it was fine for women to be bisexual, but not for men. Upon hearing that, Dominique revealed, “My soul literally left my body. Now I’m sitting here arguing with him about what’s basically an antigay hate slogan. We literally spent 45 minutes just arguing about gay rights. I don’t think he’s listened to a single thing I said.”
She continued: “He went around the house the entire day talking about my sexuality and me wanting to go on a date with a woman, saying how it was going to make him look bad. He was just another man who’s just completely insecure in his masculinity, because once he found out that I don’t use my sexuality as a way to attract men, now it’s a problem.”
If you watch Perfect Match’s eighth and ninth episodes with Dominique and Brittan’s connection in mind, it’s easy to see — the two are often standing or sitting next to each other and neither seem to be trying to connect with any of the men on the show, aside from a brief moment between Brittan and Brytan. (These names!)
On instagram, Dominique has posted about her bisexuality consistently throughout Pride Month, including this longer reflection on what her bisexuality means to her, which included the claim that she was “kicked off a dating show because of [her bisexuality].”
Brittan, who seems to only post photographs of herself with other people maybe twice a year, preferring instead to keep the focus on herself (Brittan) and her various eras, has already posted two carousels that begin with Brittan + Dominique photographs, and one of her posts is simply an effusive endorsement of Dominique in her life. Dominique responded with similar levels of effusion: “I love you so, so bad you beautiful ethereal fairy. I cannot imagine who I would be without you, I’ve loved growing besides you.”
After her run on Too Hot to Handle, Brittan and her THTH beau James did apparently date briefly. She was also posting sexy pics with Dominique as the season aired:
This is their thing I think:
June 1, 2024
They’ve also been posting erotic TikToks. Honestly IDK why Netflix wouldn’t want this on the show, I didn’t care about any of these people until today and now I do?? Bisexual erasure at its finest and most literal!
