How pop culture's depiction of bisexual women still fails us
For decades, screenwriters, music producers and media gatekeepers have shape-shifted the image of bisexual women into something glossy, marketable, and almost completely inaccurate. From soap opera kiss-and-tell plot twists to moody indie film flings, bisexual women are routinely flattened into either the wild sexual experiment or the closeted lesbian in waiting. The reality, of course, is far messier and more wonderful than any thirty-second network promo can hold.
Australia's relationship with bisexual visibility has its own strange shape. Bisexual activists in Sydney and Melbourne have spent years building community centres and Mardi Gras floats that push back against the assumption that bi women simply need to pick a side. Even with marriage equality passed in 2017, bisexual women here still report higher rates of discrimination from both heterosexual and queer communities than gay men or lesbians do. Pop culture, which loves a tidy arc, has barely caught up to the truth.
The long shadow of the phased-out trope
The "it's just a phase" trope is the oldest wound in the book. It usually arrives early in a character's arc, delivered by a parent, a friend, or a particularly confident barista, and it positions bisexuality as a sort of gateway sexuality that any halfway-attentive woman will graduate out of. The message is loud: stop borrowing our flag and go home to your real one.
Real people who come out as bi in their twenties, thirties, forties, or later, especially in regional towns from Cairns to Bunbury, know that phrase all too well. It follows them into job interviews, into dating app bios with carefully worded disclaimers, and into family group chats where someone always adds a laughing emoji. In Australia, bisexual people are roughly four times more likely than heterosexual adults to report being treated unfairly in everyday settings, and a chunk of that comes from the assumption that their identity is still under construction.
The harm of the phase trope is not just personal; it shows up in healthcare, in workplaces, and in the way policy conversations unfold. When bisexual women are treated as people who will sort themselves out eventually, the funding that supports our specific mental health, our relationships, and our communities tends to slide toward whichever identity the funder thinks we are heading toward. The result is a funding gap that the phase narrative helps keep open. The bleary, looping way many of us talk ourselves out of asking for support is its own quiet research project, and the chronic overthinking guide reads suspiciously like a field report from inside that exact pattern.
The male gaze made flesh
If the phase trope denies our identity, the male gaze actively misrepresents our bodies. Bi women in film and television tend to exist for one of two narrow reasons: either as eye candy for a male lead, or as the punchline of a tasteless on-screen ménage à trois joke that always trails off before anyone actually kisses the camera. The famous example of a certain Jessica Biel character in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake is a perfect case study in how the industry treats bi women as decorative accessories rather than people with interior lives.
Streaming services headquartered in Sydney and Los Angeles have access to Australian writers and directors who actually understand queer culture, yet they keep feeding audiences the same thin gruel. Watch enough reality dating shows on Stan or Binge and you will notice that the bisexual woman who shows up confidently is almost always edited to seem either predatory or indecisive. She is rarely shown in long-term relationships with another woman. She is rarely shown paying rent, working a hospitality shift in Surry Hills, or texting her mum about her mental load after a long week.
The male gaze also reaches into music videos, fashion campaigns, and the artwork of Australian indie bands. Bisexual women get used in imagery constantly, yet we get asked to confirm our identities with paperwork if we apply for grants, family visas, or just a moment of being believed at the Christmas table.
The cheating shadow
Few caricatures sting as deeply as the bisexual cheater. Sitcoms and dramas love to set up a woman in a long-term relationship, then have her betray her partner with someone of an unexpected gender, as if attraction across the gender binary were the same thing as lying. The message is corrosive: a bi woman cannot be trusted, and her partners should monitor her phone like a moody detective.
Australian relationship data tells a kinder story. Research from La Trobe and Melbourne universities consistently shows that bisexual people face higher rates of intimate partner violence than gay or straight people, mostly because their relationships are less likely to be recognised by service providers and police. When pop culture keeps reading bi women as threats, the institutional response in our suburbs and country towns often follows the script, leaving survivors with nowhere comfortable to turn.
What makes the cheating shadow particularly strange is how selectively it is applied. A queer character who cheats is usually written as a complicated person wrestling with shame. A bisexual character who cheats is usually written as a warning. That imbalance reveals the message underneath: monosexual queerness is forgivable; bisexuality is, somehow, a moral failing.
Where bisexual women actually live
Looking for honest portrayals means pulling away from the studio-mandated love triangle and paying closer attention to the work being made on smaller screens. Australian creators behind Heartbreak High on Netflix, local podcast Magenta Does Doorways, and the writers at SBS's queer hub have built queer characters who feel like neighbours rather than talking points. The weekly newsletter that quietly reshaped my own self-image sits among those smaller objects of care, the kind that show up uninvited and end up rearranging the furniture.
Local support networks help too. ACON runs peer groups in Sydney and regional NSW, while Switchboard Victoria and Bisexual Alliance Victoria host regular catch-ups and zine-making sessions. Mardi Gras in Sydney and Midsumma in Melbourne both have bisexual-specific contingents that welcome newcomers, including those who arrive tired of explaining why they did not want a rainbow flag on every wedding cake.
What bisexual women actually look like is far less photogenic than the streaming-era version suggests. We look like nurses in Perth who clock off at 11pm and read on the couch. We look like PhD students in Adelaide juggling two part-time jobs. We look like mums in Brisbane supporting their teenage kids through their own coming outs, sometimes saying the words to themselves in the mirror for the very first time. Pop culture keeps insisting we fit into a category it can merchandise. The reality is that we are tired, sometimes bitter, often hopeful, and a great deal more ordinary on paper than any casting director would prefer.
Some habits that help reset the story
- Subtly rewrite your streaming watchlists so that bi characters are saved alongside, not separated from, the rest of your viewing. The algorithm will adapt.
- Read bisexual authors such as Eileen Myles, Carmen Maria Machado, Alison Bechdel, and the Australian writer Rebecca Long, and look for their work in your local bookshop, whether that is Newtown, Fitzroy, or the Brisbane CBD.
- When a friend tells you their attraction story is complicated, ask gently and do not fill in the gaps. People remember who made room for them at the bus stop.
- If you run any kind of community group, add bisexuality to your equalities policy rather than tucking it under a generic LGBTQ+ umbrella. Visibility is paperwork sometimes.
- Subscribe to writers and outlets that centre bisexual women, such as the resource portfolio I keep updated for bi and queer friends across Australia.
- Track down smaller corners of pop culture criticism, like Amanda Kerri's writing or the Bisexual Books Podcast, where the tropes get dissected with care rather than just named.
- Keep a small list of local organisations to pass along whenever someone you love needs a starting point, and use Mardi Gras season as a yearly reminder to refresh it.
Bi women are still waiting for a generation of pop culture that does not flinch at the word "bi" on the page. Until then, the script gets rewritten in smaller, slower ways, by readers who leave a queer book on the front counter, by friends who refuse to roll their eyes, by parents who finally learn the difference between bisexuality and the phase they were warned about. The story of bisexual womanhood is far from finished, and the next paragraph is being typed somewhere between a Brunswick cafe and a Bondi share house, between an Overland essay and a Tuesday-night Triple J slot.
