Outnumbered star: I’m not heteronormative*
SHE was just six years old when she made her name playing precocious Karen Brockman, forever firing questions at her frazzled parents on the hit BBC sitcom Outnumbered.
Now, 13 years on, actress Ramona Marquez has shown that she’s just as outspoken as the character she portrayed on screen by writing a ‘woke’ passage in a new feminist book.
Ms Marquez also reveals that she is bisexual in the volume, Women Don’t Owe You Pretty, in which feminist author Florence Given relentlessly condemns ‘rigid and archaic gender roles supplied by the patriarchy’.
In particular, Ms Marquez, who is currently studying Mandarin and Spanish at Manchester University, rants about ‘heteronormativity’ in a chapter titled Maybe It’s A Girl Crush, Maybe You’re Queer. The term, usually applied negatively, refers to the attitude that oppositesex attraction is the norm.
Ms Marquez believes that being brought up with that belief forced her to question her relationships with ‘multiple women’. ‘The influence of heteronormativity and the male gaze was so strong that I, someone who has fallen intensely in love with multiple women, felt like an imposter calling myself bisexual,’ she writes.
Following Ms Marquez’s statement, 21-year-old Ms Given goes on to claim that women are faced with ‘shame’ when they express a desire to be in same-sex relationships ‘because we are taught that our bodies… belong to the male gaze’.
‘Heterosexuality is the fairy tale we are spoon-fed growing up,’ she adds. ‘We see it on our TV screens and read about it in our bedtime stories. I like to call this relentless bombardment, quite simply, hetrifying.’
* If that’s a new one on you, it means believing that heterosexuality is the norm