Member-only story
Finding Bi Identity with MTV
From Tila Tequila to Are You the One?
In the Fall 2007, I could be found inside my dorm room, A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila playing on my hidden computer screen. I’d left home about a month and a half earlier, a copy of Curve rolled up in my backpack and a pirated season of The L Word downloaded on my laptop. I had one foot in the closet, and one rainbow colored sock peeking out. I also had a boy back home who kept asking me are you sure you’re gay who I wanted very badly to love.
I don’t know, I said. I know I like girls.
My cute RA walked by.
You’ve got to pick.
I knew that, if someone was going to force me to choose, I was going to choose women. But low in my gut, I knew that there was a slight injustice in it, a constraint I wasn’t ready to name biphobia.
— -
“I’m trying to decide if I want to be with a boy or with girl.” Tila says straight to the camera. Girl, me too, I thought as I watched the opening credits roll through, with purple sparkle, and lights like door beads ubiquitous in the early aughts, jangling to announce your presence as you walk through them.
Not that Tila needed to announce anything, except her dirty little secret of bisexuality. Her television show, A Shot at Love…
