So here’s the deal: I get that Jersey Shore is the reality show you love to hate. Or, if you’re like my co-pilot, you just hate it. The hair, the tans, too much booze, boys who treat women like disposable wipes, and all the talk about guidos, meatheads, juiceheads, or whatever else they call dirty, hairy, overly testosteroned men on the show. The women all profess to love these types of New Jersey men and after awhile you can only sift through so much of that — and the boys macking on girls or Ronnie and Sammi breaking up and making up for the bazillionth time — before you have to turn the channel.
But viewers who can read subtext will see that at least one of those Jersey girls is coming out, maybe both of them, in that slow, awkward, teasing way that often happens. If this week’s episode is any indication, Deena is more than just curious about other women.
In this episode Deena and Snookie have a marathon makeout session that’s so lengthy, explicit, and intimate that the other cast mates were uncomfortable. JWoww, not one to be shocked, said during the episode recaps, “Nicole and Deena are digesting each other’s tongues! I am so skeeved out. I want to throw up.”
You know why JWoww is so skeeved out? Because there’s as brutal realness to the whole scene — it’s not being played out for the onlookers or the cameras (as the girl’s sexuality often is). And though Nicole (aka Snookie) tells the camera that she loves making out (“I’m the best kisser, I think, in this whole planet.”) it’s Deena who is really driving the action.
Later the girls dance together, Deena grinding on Snooki sans panties, as the cast is equally baffled. Snooki is having fun, but I think for Deena, well for her there’s something really happening.
Why? Because as awkward and uncomfortable as she’s been with the process — think “sharing” a bed swapping girl with Vinny, panicking and telling her roommates that the woman she was having sex with didn’t go down on her, looking embarrassed and befuddled as she’s teased by said roommates — there’s a realness to it that reminds me of every young woman I know who didn’t know exactly when or how to admit to herself, much less the world, that she’s lesbian or bisexual. She’s a girlie girl, a femme from a suburban world where lesbians are still supposed to look like Ellen, not Portia. She’s no doubt thinking she’s not a lesbian, and that perhaps bisexuality is an action, not an identity. But she’s wrong and like all girls her age, I have faith she’ll figure it out and I hope Jersey Shore viewers support her as she does.
I’d be the last one to label Deena or Snookie, but viewing her actions it’s hard to deny that they are at least exploring bisexuality and as uncomfortable as it is for JWoww and the guidos and sometimes viewers, that’s what burgeoning sexuality is like. Messy, sloppy, awkward, and so very unlike what you see on scripted television. I say bring it on.
E! has the makeout session if you want to judge for yourself:
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