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Bisexual Awareness Week BY PAUL MASTERSON
B
ack in 2014, actor Shailene Woodley with great pride announced her bisexuality. “I fall in love with human beings based on who they are, not based on what they do or what sex they are,” she declared. With that she captured the essence of bisexuality. Meanwhile, seven years later, whilst chitchatting about his most recent MVP award and having scraped his nose hairs for 180 days straight, Green Bay Packer quarterback Aaron Rodgers mentioned, as casually as he did his grueling nose hair grooming regimen, some bombshell nuptial news, namely of his engagement to the very same notable bisexual celebrity, Shailene Woodley.
with windmill stone-ground flour, too). Still, try as I might, I found no reference to the bride’s own bombshell revelation of yore. It doesn’t even seem to have been a matter of a spat on The View. I suppose Woodley’s bisexuality really isn’t as big of a deal today as it was seven years ago. It’s like celebrity Ellen’s historic coming out during her TV sitcom’s “Puppy Episode” in 1997—we’ve become educated, so we don’t react beyond a “that’s nice.”
NOT OUTLIERS Back in the day, when the community initials were still but a mere quartet, the “B” for bisexual added to the cadence and flow when saying “LGBT.” But, for many, the letter signified an outlier group, whose members grappled with their identity and, sooner or later, would come out and embrace their gayness or lesbianism. Despite their bitter frustration and insistence of bisexuals that their sexual identify wasn’t “just a phase,” the on-the-fence notion remained pervasive.
Of course, the Rodgers-Woodley coupling has since received the fawning press coverage any celebrity nuptials might. In an article on the online rag theknot.com we read in great detail about their fairy tale love story and plans for an environmentally conscious solar powered wedding. Woodley, it seems, is an avid environmentalist (I expect their wedding cake will be baked
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Photo by nito100/Getty Images.
