I’ve been a loyal student of the Real Housewives franchise for years now—more New Jersey than New York City, but potato, potahto—and with the exception of Kathy Wakile’s lesbian cousin who always wears a weird little hat, I can honestly say that I’ve never seen myself in a single one of the women whose lives are blown up and intimately examined on these shows. Or at least that used to be the case—because ever since former J.Crew creative director Jenna Lyons joined the cast of season 14 of RHONY, I’ve been finding myself...well, flustered might be the best word to describe it? Or crushing like a closeted teenage girl who’s just been introduced to G Flip?
I’ve been vaguely aware of Lyons ever since she came out—or as she describes it on the show, was rudely outed by the New York Post—a few years ago, thanks to lesbian sonar (a telepathic connection that I feel I share with queer women everywhere, leading me to be cognizant of their general deal whether or not we know each other). It took seeing her on RHONY, though, for my genuine crush to develop; she’s constantly showing off the space from her sternum to just above her belly button in innovatively cut shirts (which, she explains in one of the season’s first episodes, is almost the only part of her body that doesn’t bear scars from her genetic disorder, incontinentia pigmenti), and as Vogue senior fashion news editor Laia Garcia-Furtado put it to me via Slack: “She wears pants better than anyone.”
Of course, it’s not just Lyons’s much-remarked-upon aesthetic that makes me love her. She also gets surprisingly real on the show, bonding with her castmate Jessel’s mom and admitting to the camera that she doesn’t have a great relationship with her own mother. (Mommy issues? Canonically queer!) I felt particularly connected to Lyons as she attempted to answer her friends’ questions about lesbian sex at a group meal because...been there! Sometimes when you’re a queer among straights, you’re just casually made into the spokesperson for an entire sexual identity, NBD. Yet Lyons handles it with aplomb.
Almost all of the drama on this season of RHONY seems to stem from food (also relatable!), but one of the focal points of episode three comes when Lyons slips out of what’s supposed to be a group sleepover at Erin’s house in Sag Harbor in order to crash at her own beach house nearby and wake up early for a 6:30 a.m. meeting. This seems pretty reasonable to me, but the rest of the girlies are mad. What they need to understand, though, is that a lesbian over 30 is possessed of one extremely important ritual: a bedtime! A lesbian bedtime—or a leztime, if you will—can be so crucial to proper functioning and girl wooing, and I’m furious to see the other women of RHONY try to deny Lyons’s needs. Let the woman go to bed at 10 p.m. so she can girl-boss in peace!
The RHONY women also eye-roll about Lyons’s refusal to talk much about her current relationship (which, FWIW, is allegedly with photographer Cass Bird), but given the very public outing that followed her divorce from her longtime husband, can you really blame her? Realiy, my one wish for Lyons goes as follows: Girl, you need to build yourself a queer friend group! I live in LA, but if you’re willing to fly out, let’s shop for khaki pants and then hit up the Ruby Fruit.
Listen to Jenna Lyons talk to Vogue on this episode of The Run-Through here.
