Lily Allen, Lindy West, And The Sensationalisation of “Bad Polyamory”
What do Lily Allen and Lindy West have in common? They're both women who have recently published works that led to the entire internet dunking on the polyamorous community - the album ‘West End Girl’ and the memoir ‘Adult Braces’ respectively. And while I think that both Lily and Lindy were well within their right to create deeply personal, real and vulnerable stories about their experiences, it makes me despair at the lack of visibility of positive polyamorous representation, because it's out there, but people don't want to pay attention to it. People love to hate polyamory because people love mess, especially mess that confirms previously held biases against certain groups of people.
If you already think that polyamory is weird and gross, of course you're going to seek out and delight in media that confirms that bias. What upsets me about this is the way that polyamory is held to a different standard from monogamy - monogamous people are messy as fuck all the time, and people don't blame monogamy for it. Meanwhile, many polyamory people feel the pressure to present themselves as perfectly happy and 100% not jealous all the time in order to feel like they deserve recognition, and I hate that for us. Everyone gets to decide what feels most authentic or most worth it to them, and I'm all about encouraging freedom of choice.
To be clear, I am not defending the heinous things that Lily Allen’s husband did, or the deep disrespect and mistreatment that Lindy West endured to get to where she is now - but just because these women have shared super negative experiences of polyamory, it does not mean that all polyamory is bad or that all polyamorous people are secretly deluding themselves into accepting crappy behaviour. To the monogamous people reading this, please just remember these are just two women's experiences of polyamory, and just because they're the ones being sensationalised right now, it doesn't mean they are representative of the full spectrum of what polyamory can look like. Positive and healthy polyamory IS possible and out there if you care to pay attention to, rather than what’s being sensationalised right now.
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