Last night’s episode of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! saw jungle star and former Miss Universe Australia Maria Thattil publicly come out as bisexual to follow contestant David Subritzky.
In the candid chat between the two, Maria opened up about her experience growing up bi-curious but “buried that side” of herself until fairly recently.
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“I do have something that — I haven’t told anyone this but I’ll tell you,” Maria said.
“It’s like actually nerve-wracking to talk about. So growing up I always thought I was maybe a little bit bi-curious.
“Only ever dated straight people but like growing up I did have crushes on girls I was going to school with. Even as I got older I thought ‘I can appreciate an attractive woman’ and I’ve always been curious about that. I’m like ‘Is it? No, it’s not, it’s not, it’s not’ and just buried that side of myself.
“I just felt like, it’s just easier to be like ‘you know, I date men’. But before I came here, I was out at a party and I met a girl and we ended up hooking up, and it just felt natural.”
You’ve got the support of the whole country behind you Maria! #ImACelebrityAU pic.twitter.com/znTwyK1UdE
— #ImACelebrityAU (@ImACelebrityAU) January 12, 2022
In a recent interview with The Daily Telegraph’s Confidential, Maria talked about how she “invalidated” her own feelings because of the homophobia she witnessed while at school.
“I grew up having crushes on girls in school and just completely invalidated it because of religion and also because there were many homophobic sentiments in my school around being a lesbian, around anything other than heteronormativity,” she said.
“You don’t have a lot of bisexual visibility in popular culture and so you don’t understand what it is.”
She also said that the big moment for her to fully explore the fluidity of her own sexuality came whens he split from her last boyfriend two years ago.
“Because we were in a monogamous relationship I couldn’t explore it but he knew and when we broke up, that is when I started exploring and dating women,” she said.
“The way I think about it is that sexuality is fluid. It is very heavily judged and therefore people don’t come out so it is a vicious cycle. It is important not to box people in.”
Fuck yeah, we love this for Maria Thattil, for everyone watching along, and for the representation of bi people on prime time TV. How bloody good.
