Ali Bromley shares what lesbian representation means to her and her experiences with compulsive heterosexuality
BY YASMIN VINCE, IMAGES BY ITV
This year has been fantastic for sapphic reality TV fans. MAFS featured their second lesbian couple, The Real Housewives Of New York heavily featured Raquel Chevremont and her fiancée and Big Brother crowned its first lesbian winner!
Ali Bromley was announced as the winning housemate on 15 November. “It feels amazing,” she said to PinkNews when asked how it felt to be the first lesbian to win the long-running TV series. She added that it was “really overwhelming” too and a bit of a shock as she wasn’t sure how she would be perceived. “I should’ve known that the lesbian community would be out there rooting for me, but in the house, things felt so difficult sometimes.”
“It was hard to connect to the idea that people might enjoy seeing representation in the house.” Ali had been very vocal about her sexuality and the LGBTQIA community during her time in the house. Earlier in the show, she set the internet abuzz after wearing a “Trans rights are human rights” t-shirt on the show. She had been a firm favourite since, but inside the house, she couldn’t know that.
She couldn’t even know what they would show and what they wouldn’t. “I don’t know if they’ve aired all of what I said,” she mused. But that didn’t stop her from talking about the need for lesbian representation. After she left the house, she continued to do so and said: “If I had lesbian representation in my younger years, that would’ve made a huge difference for me.”
“I did have a conversation with housemates about compulsive heterosexuality,” she said. In the house, Ali had discussed her former marriage to a man. “If I had been able to see someone like me talking about how I feel and my experiences, I might have clocked on a bit sooner […] I could probably have saved myself a bit of heartache there.”
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