Queer relationship visibility isn’t good enough if all it does is replicate heteronormative approaches.
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Like any faithful reality TV fangirly, I dutifully invest many hours of my brief and precious human life into my little shows. I dwell unabashedly in the cult of reality standom: My housecleaning rituals include day-long marathons of shows like Vanderpump Rules or 90 Day Fiancé, where I empty my closets and scrub my floorboards to the tune of a full season, filling my home with the sounds of strangers’ arguments, diary cam thoughts, and curated confessionals.
For me, this isn’t just entertainment. I am endlessly fascinated by human relationship dynamics, and the belief systems that shape them. Much of reality television serves as my personal laboratory for examining these phenomena in action—and I absorb every minute with rapture. This is especially true within my favorite subgenre of all, reality romance, which I find particularly compelling because of the ways it reveals the ubiquity of heteronormativity in our collective consciousness. It’s also why I think we are long overdue for more queer reality romance—including shows that actually explore queer relationship frameworks, rather than just LGBTQ+ casting.
From classics like The Bachelor and Rock of Love to contemporary hits like Love is Blind, shows where total strangers form attachments to one another and make legally binding commitments in intense, pressurized, and unnatural situations are canonical. They’re also historically very heterosexual, something that hasn’t changed even as casting has diversified.
Accurate, dynamic queer representation across all media is essential, and desperately overdue. Thanks to LGBTQ+ reality shows like Tampa Baes, The Real L Word, and the I Kissed a Boy franchise, we’ve finally been able to see a variety of sexualities and genders normalized in a dating context. And thank goodness! But as entertaining as these programs might be, queer relationship visibility isn’t good enough if all it does is replicate heteronormative approaches—and when it comes to relationships where personal autonomy and romantic intimacy are successfully balanced, these shows are falling short.
With its second season out last summer, breakout hit The Ultimatum: Queer Love might be the most popular of the LGBTQ+ reality romance genre, both for queer and straight viewers alike. It’s also a strong (and, for better or worse, incredibly entertaining) case study in the pitfalls of dropping queer contestants into heterosexual dating frameworks, especially on a global stage. The plot features five couples on the lesbian spectrum who have reached an impasse in their relationships—one partner wants to get married, the other does not, and the former has issued the latter an ultimatum: Marry me, or we’re breaking up.
The show aims to “help” castmates gain clarity about their present dilemma by presenting them with an opportunity to explore partnership with someone new. But not just anyone new: Castmates date each other.
In front of the partners they arrived with.
Participants have one week to select a new partner, and then immediately move in with that person for a three week “trial marriage,” which some of the new couples consummate. They then each move back in with their original partner for another three week “trial marriage” before decision day.
The end goal is either for castmates to leave the show engaged—whether to their original partner, or to someone they just met under fast, furious, and fantastical circumstances—or, if they’re still not ready to commit, to walk away single. And of course, things go off without a hitch, everyone is super mature about everything, and no one ends up brokenhearted or publicly humiliated.
Now, maybe this plotline conjures images of the chaotic, toxic, and mysteriously elusive “U-Haul lesbian”. Yet that instinct would be misguided: In reality, The Ultimatum: Queer Love is a spin-off of The Ultimatum: Marry or Move On, a pre-existing show with the exact same premise, but a heterosexual cast.
When the main focus of a show is for participants to “find love,” however, especially when the premise pressures them into making quick decisions about marriage or monogamy, the ghastly, unflattering light of patriarchy spares no one—something the landscape of LGBTQ+ reality romance makes clear. This is also one reason why copy-pasting heteronormative relationship frameworks onto a queer cast is particularly dangerous. On the whole, as a society, we are not trained to recognize misogyny when it doesn’t come from cis men, something that can quickly translate into queerphobia: When queer folks embody patriarchal values, people around them may be tempted to blame queerness, rather than patriarchy, for any ensuing problematic behavior. Queer people struggle enough with this inside our own communities already; something that compounds when media about us continuously reiterates stereotypes about gender, power, and control. This is particularly visible in reality television, from the lesbian sex scenes that border on soft porn, to the queer fuckbros whose predatory behavior towards femmes goes largely unconfronted, to cis women whose emotional abuse of their femme, masc, and genderqueer partners does not ring alarm bells the way it would if a cis man were behaving the same way.
The entire Ultimatum franchise is part of a robust and patriarchal legacy within the genre, where marriage is treated as an achievement, especially for women and femmes, and prioritized over everything, even at the expense of healthy bonds and connections. But to simply recycle the plotlines of heteronormative reality shows and transpose them onto a queer cast is not only creatively lazy; it exposes the errors of these shows’ premises at their core.
“[R]eality television…has created a falsified account of how certain people are meant to behave, communicate and love, and the majority of the victims to these production tactics are women,” wrote Lindsey Spencer in a 2022 article for the Michigan Daily.
Where patriarchal marriage is the prize, women and LGBTQ+ folks will always get the short end of the stick, even when they “win.” I’m not knocking marriage as an institution—big fan, actually—but patriarchal marriage? One where gender is, whether consciously or unconsciously, viewed as binary, and where partners and/or traits perceived as “feminine” are subjugated to partners viewed as “masculine”? Where the praxis of the relationship itself eliminates the possibility of true intimacy? Where my partner and I are beholden to monogamy, rather than deciding whether we want to choose it anew, as the seasons of our lives unfold?
Ew, no.
This is also precisely why I believe we’d all benefit from some more queering of reality romance. What if, instead of watching people wrestle their partners into making high-stakes commitments, audiences were offered a window into a cast of queers exploring alternative frameworks and modalities for love and connection? Reality fans would still get to absorb all the juicy human drama we hold so dear, but we’d also get to witness people grow and change in ways for which current plotlines don’t allow.
In the current season of The Ultimatum: Queer Love, for example, an interesting situation cropped up during the initial re-shuffling of couples that might have played out very differently outside of the show’s rigid framework. A mutual attraction developed between one participant, Pilar, and both halves of one original couple, Kyle and Bridget. When, independently of one another, the pair learned that Pilar was interested in them both, they each encouraged her to explore the other, vouching for each other’s radness.
The show’s most visibly genderqueer couple so far, Kyle and Bridget already stood out from the pack. But they were also, in my opinion, the most mutually respectful couple the show has seen—something made clear throughout the season. Eventually, Pilar and Kyle selected one another for the trial marriage, and Bridget ended up with someone else. After Pilar and Kyle shared a kiss during their time together, Kyle quickly disclosed it to Bridget once they were reunited for their own “trial marriage.” While Bridget was visibly miffed, she and Kyle continued to have productive, open, and tender communication as they worked through a difficult conversation.
It was an intriguing plot line, for sure, and played out as healthily as it could have within the scope of the show. But how much more interesting would it have been to watch Pilar, Kyle, and Bridget explore what it might be like to date as a trio? Or to watch them even have that discussion? I wonder how they may have all impacted each other’s lives differently, and whether stronger friendships or romances could have blossomed if they hadn’t been confined to the show’s rules.
Something as simple as that could have changed not only the trajectory of the contestants’ lives but, arguably, perhaps the trajectory of a viewer’s life, too. Witnessing couples undertake that type of exploration, safely and from a place of mutual trust, could be the very representation that some viewers need, queer or straight. It could also be a gateway for them to learn about their own relationship preferences, or even expose them to the fact that alternatives are possible.
Beyond that, this more expansive approach would bring us closer to true representation, not just its bare minimum. The reality romance industry profits greatly from our identities, and queer viewers deserve something beyond an “LGBTQ+” label on the dropdown menu of our favorite streaming sites. After decades of witnessing countless reality stars run the hamster wheel of heteropatriarchy, I, personally, am ready for something a bit more nuanced—and, frankly, a lot more queer.
