the best (& worst) moments for lgbtq+ women on 'the challenge'

is mtv's 'the challenge' the most lesbian reality show on tv?

I had hoped to make this post free but, full disclosure, nearly 20 hours of work went into this newsletter, between crunching numbers and re-watching episodes and pulling screenshots. In an effort to respect my labor, I am going to be paywalling the majority of this post. If you’re not already a paid subscriber, I hope you’ll consider upgrading. I think this post is pretty fun, just saying.

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Anyone who has been reading this newsletter for any length of time knows that I am kind of obsessed with MTV’s The Challenge. Sports Illustrated has called The Challenge “the reality show for sports fans” and Bill Simmons, the former ESPN writer and CEO of The Ringer, dubbed it America’s “fifth professional sport.¹”

The show is currently airing the 40th season of its flagship franchise, bringing back cast members from all four “eras” of the show in a season that’s named (you guessed it) “Battle of the Eras.”

At

Paging Dr. Lesbian

,

Kira Deshler

dubbed Top Chef “the most lesbian reality show on TV” but I’d like to credit The Challenge for quietly having some of the most consistent representation for queer women on reality television. Inspired by Kira, I have done my own number crunching to determine just how sapphic The Challenge is, though I am going to be widening the frame a bit to include “LGBTQ+ women.”

This number is likely an underestimate, as I am only counting women I can confirm. I have counted anyone who has come out publicly because, as far as I am concerned, they were still queer women on TV even if we didn’t find out until later.

I have decided to count any woman who hooked up with another woman on the show, even if they don’t identify as queer, because no matter how you slice it, that is wlw representation on TV—and so is the “it’s just a phase” heartbreak that some lesbians have experienced from a girl not ready to go there (cue “Good Luck, Babe”). So for the purposes of this post, these women will be representing the “+” in the LGBTQ+ acronym.

I have also counted Katelynn Cusanelli, a trans woman who I believe identifies as straight, and Amo Elizabeth, a trans woman whose sexuality I am unsure of but I do know she dates men, simply because they are women who fall under the LBGTQ+ umbrella and we have so few transfemmes on reality TV. They are our “T” representation!

Looking only at its flagship show, which premiered in 1998 and has run for 40 seasons, there have been at least 32 LGBTQ+ women cast (scroll to the bottom for the entire list).

Only three seasons had no queer women on them—1998’s “Road Rules: All-Stars” (season 1), 1999’s “Real World/Road Rules Challenge” (season 2), and 2001’s “Extreme Challenge” (season 4)—and most seasons had more than one queer woman. There are a few seasons worth highlighting for having the most queer women on them.

One was 2004’s “Battle of the Sexes II” (season 9), with seven of the 18 women (39%) on that season being queer—Coral Smith², Ruthie Alcaide, Sophia Pasquis, Veronica Portillo, Aneesa Ferreira, Rachel Robinson, and Genesis Moss (who can forget the first episode of the season, featuring Aneesa unpacking her bags while singing, “Soooo many lesbians” to herself??). To put the significance of this into context, 2004 is two years before Top Chef even began airing.

The “Rivals” season, which aired in 2011, had eight of the 14 women (57%) who were LGBTQ+—Evelyn Smith, Cara Maria Sorbello, Laurel Stuckey, Katelynn, Aneesa, Sarah Rice, Paula Meronek, and Jenn Grijalva. There were five other seasons with at least seven queer women on them—2009’s “The Duel II,” 2010’s “Fresh Meat II,” 2010’s “Cutthroat,” 2020’s “Total Madness,” and 2021’s “Double Agents.”

The current season, “Battle of the Eras,” has at least eight queer women on it of 20 women total (40%)—Rachel, Aneesa, Laurel, Emily Schromm, Cara Maria, Kaycee Clark, Tori Deal, and Averey Tressler (Nia Moore, who says she is straight, is openly thirsting after some of the women on the cast over on X, so there’s also that).

With 17, Aneesa has the most seasons under her belt. I wanted to share this quote from an interview she gave to NYLON in 2019 about how her sexuality has changed over the course of her time on the show because I think it’s really lovely:

“[In the beginning] I was just in a time where we were really proud about our sexuality, and we were happy about it. As I got older, there were some things that changed, like having an adult relationship with a man. A lot of my ex-girlfriends are trans now, and I've dated trans people. I used to think bisexual people were super gross, and it's such a shitty term. That was basically a learned hatred. That was a learned way of thinking. The lesbian community frowns down on bisexuals, unfortunately. I think that's still kind of the thing.

But I realized that hating men doesn't make me a better human. At 31, I'm hooking up with a boy on national television, and I'm like, Shit, how am I gonna explain that? Being, like, a lesbian icon to people is a lot of pressure. [Some people] don't believe in change and evolution, that you can't be anything but where you were. You're kinda stuck in that time frame, and for me, I was like, Well, if I'm going to be happy, I want to explore things. I want to find out stuff about myself. If I don't like it, I don't like it. I think people are afraid that, once they say something, they can't turn back. And I think something about being queer, like being fluid, is a wonderful thing. I feel like I have a lot of freedom, and I should be able to be sex-positive.”

Cara Maria is in second place with 15 seasons, and Veronica and Nany González are tied for third with 12 each.

And now, the best (and worst) moments on The Challenge involving LGBTQ+ women: