What do you think of when you read the words “I kissed a girl”? I hope it’s not the song by Katy Perry from 2008, where the singer portrays female same-sex desire as something for the male gaze. I hope it’s the recently aired BBC television show hosted by Dannii Minogue.
I Kissed a Girl (2024-?) is the first British dating game show to feature exclusively lesbian and bisexual women. So much could go wrong in this heteropatriarchal climate of simultaneous lesbian fetishisation and desexualisation. We’re fetishised when viewed as pornographic entertainment or a challenge for males but are desexualised as gals bein’ pals when males are out of the equation.
Unlike The Ultimatum: Queer Love (2023), I Kissed a Girl doesn’t shove the word “queer” down the throat of those of us who find specificity important. By the end of the I Kissed a Girl season, there was no guessing who was a lesbian and who was bisexual. The word “lesbian” wasn’t used as a blanket word for all same-sex attracted females. While used occasionally, the word “queer” wasn’t so abundant that it destroyed nuance for inappropriate universality among anyone who isn’t straight.
Unlike The Ultimatum, I Kissed a Girl doesn’t use orchestrated sex scenes to fetishise lesbians. Sure, there are loads of making-out sessions and sex chats. We are sexual beings, after all. However, The Ultimatum stages super inorganic, borderline pornographic bedroom scenes as if the couples got there naturally in front of a film crew. I was pleased that the audience didn’t get to follow the women on I Kissed a Girl to bed like they do on its heterosexual similar, Love Island UK (2015-?).
Unlike The Ultimatum, I Kissed a Girl has its finger on the pulse of lesbian trends and issues. Not only is it up-to-date with lesbian lingo–the Golden Retriever and Black Cat theory of lesbian couples mentioned by Fiorenza started on the Lesbian Herstory Instagram stories!–but it also discusses the importance of our history. Remember when Georgia explained that the L comes first in LGBT because lesbians were on the frontline of support for gay men during the AIDS crisis?
Unlike The Ultimatum, I Kissed a Girl wasn’t about finding joy in ruining female same-sex relationships. It was about finding friendship and love connections in a society that keeps us apart. Sure, the premise of The Ultimatum–seeing if couples can survive a “marry or move on” ultimatum while being tempted with other potential matches–existed before the “queer” season. Regardless, The Ultimatum reflects the blood-sport-watching element of humanity that I’m quite frankly ashamed of. Lesbians don’t need it.
Unlike The Ultimatum, I Kissed a Girl is a spin-off from a gay male dating show, I Kissed a Boy. While inspired by heterosexual dating shows before them–we want our own shitty reality shows, too!–the amount of gay, lesbian and bisexual people present in the shows’ making is obvious in the end result. The overall production of I Kissed a Girl reveals that there are parts of the lesbian experience that gay men will understand and straight women never will. When it comes to a dating show, understanding our sexual orientation is important.
The Ultimatum: Queer Love attempts to use all the “right” language to detract from the fact it shoves female homosexuality into a format and narrative that gives the worst parts of heterosexual culture. Don’t get me wrong, it was enjoyable. Us lesbians take all the crumbs we can get. But I Kissed a Girl came along and said, “The Ultimatum: Queer Love was the first draft, baby; let me show you the excellent lesbian dating show you deserve.”
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