It’s 2024: Billie Eilish releases explicitly sapphic Hit Me Hard, A24’s Love Lies Bleeding plays in cinemas and Chappell Roan is hurtling to super stardom faster than you can say midwestern wig. The Lesbian Renaissance is upon us whether you like it or not and gay girlies like me are simply eating it up. Although I’m barely keeping up with the sapphic art, music and cinema bursting through to the het mainstream this year, there’s one show capturing my heart more than the rest: BBC’s new reality dating show, I Kissed A Girl.

Let me catch you up on the Herstory. In the past, reality shows and lesbianism have gone together like Jojo Siwa and social media – it hurts to watch. I guess the results of plying a minority group with alcohol, depriving them of sleep and editing them to be caricatures of themselves hasn’t aged well? 

I was 13 when A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila aired in New Zealand and I subsequently realised I was gayer than a Gillian Anderson fanfiction. I’m still unpacking the effect of watching queer women forced to share a bed with 16 intoxicated men, under the guise of finding love.

The Ultimatum: Queer Love, released an auspicious 16 years later, learned little from its forebearer. For most of the season, host JoAnna Garcia Swisher looks so uncomfortable being in a room full of queers, you’d think she was interviewing her sleep paralysis demons. Then there’s the cast itself. Although there are entertaining moments throughout the show, I still have the scene burnt into my memory where cast member Aussie hysterically sobs on the sidewalk alone. Why wasn’t there a mental health team willing to step in and help this person? It makes me uncomfortable that straight people might watch this kind of show for fun.

I Kissed a Girl (IKAG) is so wildly different from these shows, you’d think they shot it 7000 years in the future. Hosted by Danni Minogue (queen/ally), the show’s format is the same as Love Island, although (likely for legal reasons) they live in the Masseria (villa) and they couple up by kissing. 

The representation is diverse: you’ve got femmes, mascs and bisexuals, alongside whole hog lesbos like me. There’s a relatable figure/dream girl for every viewer. The chat varies from educational (why is L first in LGBTQI+) to the banal but hot making out by the pool in bikinis.

The standout contestant, as judged by me and the internet, is Amy Spalding (a literal angel, I will hear no other take). Coined online as ‘Lesbian Lady Diana’, Amy seems taller than she is on screen, like some kind of Amazonian with ADHD. Maybe it’s her iconic boots or her handmade ‘DYKE’ rings but I like to think it’s something else: authenticity.  And that’s what pride is really about, isn’t it? I wish I had this show when I was 13 so I could point Amy out to my mother and say, ‘that’s how I feel on the inside’.

After years of chasing any crumb of representation, it would be easy to get bitter at a younger generation that are just handed this show, fresh out of their much more open and educated closets. 

I also won’t sugarcoat it: a lot of lesbians online are feeling sceptical about it all and I don’t blame them. But I feel protective over all gays, particularly the newly out in the world. I have the kind of aggressive love where if you hurt them, I’ll hang you upside down in a medieval well for three days.

You don’t need to gaze longingly at the current sapphic summer in the northern hemisphere to touch base with the renaissance in question. Auckland-based queer author Saraid de Silva has recently released Amma, which is arguably the novel of the year. Dykonic Madeleine Sami is straddling the Tasman with Deadloch and Double Parked. Internationally recognised rapper JessB is about to release her album Feels Like Home on July 5. Of course, these creatives didn’t make their work because of any Lesbian Renaissance. I do, however, anticipate that these women will become queer touchstones in retrospect of this year.

TVNZ has secured the rights to I Kissed A Girl, following 2023’s I Kissed A Boy; streaming from June 30 at the sensible time of 8am. To all my gay girlies reading this, IKAG might be satisfying but I hope you’re still hungry for more.