Oh, Billie Lee, my LGBTQIA∞ sister in struggle. Where, oh where, did you go wrong? Last season she was a lovely breath of fresh air who dated creepy Jeremy, Ariana’s brother, and was wonderful and sweet. This season she is a DJ James Kennedy loyalist who is not so much stirring the pot as she is dumping it on her head and then yelling at everyone else for getting her covered in mediocre marinara sauce. (That is what was cooking in this particular pot.)
It all starts when Katie and Kristen show up to “Brunch with Billie†at SUR on their way to Stassi’s #InternationalOOTDDay party. Billie goes over to them and says, with enough vocal fry to cook a BLT for every furloughed government employee, “It’s so random that you’re here.†Um, it’s not that random. Not only does Katie work there and Kristen uses it like her living room because she likes being recognized, they both star in a show that is taped right at that very establishment. Not random at all.
Then Billie accuses Kristen of being “toxic†because she’s actively crusading to get DJ James Kennedy fired from SUR, something which she and Katie did successfully. Also, as Kristen points out, she’s over there creating drama in her workplace which seems to be exactly what she’s accusing Kristen of doing. If she doesn’t want things popping off at SUR, maybe she should just smile behind the hostess stand and not try to rile up the customers.
They run into her again at the #InternationalOOTDDay party, which is a holiday Stassi now “owns†to celebrate Outfit of the Day photos. I know that Stassi is writing a book called Basic Bitch or whatever (it is published by Gallery Books, which also published Erika Jayne’s memoir Pretty Mess, which is now available in paperback!), but this party is especially basic. Only the simplest of Instagram users do #OOTD anyway, and now here is something celebrating them along with a flower wall, a step and repeat, “craft cocktails,†party sliders, and just about everything that every budding influencer could possibly want shy of 1 million followers that weren’t purchased from a Chinese bot farm. The only thing that would make this more malignantly basic is if Stassi found a way to incorporate the Friends yellow peephole frame that is on the back of every one of their doors.
Stassi is very pleased with the event because more than 1,000 people used her hashtag and Instagram users told her they were too worried to post about #OOTD until Stassi made them feel safe. Oh, the charity work she’s doing. She’s basically a digital Mother Teresa, giving relief where there was none before. Where exactly would we be without those extra Outfits of the day? Will she take on Instagram food pictures next? What about those people that insist on taking videos and photos at concerts even though they always look like shit, they’ll never look at them again, and they spent the whole concert blocking someone else’s view for their idiotic digital archive?
And isn’t the outfit of the day sort of redundant? Isn’t every outfit the outfit of the day, no matter what you’re wearing? If someone didn’t have an outfit of the day, wouldn’t they be walking around naked or maybe just wearing a bunch of sea green glitter around their bosom making it look like they have a very glamorous version of the pox, like when Ariana showed up to this party? Just wondering. Just wondering how far this good work really goes. Stassi says that one day that banks and schools will be closed on #InternationalOOTDDay and she is right, because one day the world will end and whatever day on the calendar she registered as her holiday will still occur even though this planet has turned into a fiery granite marble spinning around a barren sun.
The most disgusting thing about this party, however, is when Stassi and her boyfriend Beau are celebrating and they somehow got the idea into their heads that they should swap one of those party sliders from mouth to mouth like a momma bird feeding its tweeting baby. At least after they finished even they were like, “Yeah, that was disgusting, we should never do that again.†It was possibly the grossest thing we’ve ever seen on this show and we once had to watch Jax’s breast reduction.
Anyway, things really come to a boil with Billie over Girls Night In. It’s a party that Katie, Scheana, Ariana, Brittany, and Lala decide to throw at SUR to replace DJ James Kennedy’s See You Next Tuesday to prove to Lisa that she can have a successful party without James. This way Lisa can be righteous about her female staff and a sound businesswoman at the same time. Their whole planning meeting seems to consist of taking a picture of Lala’s bare boobs and trying to get Brittany not to freak out because people still don’t think her marriage to Jax is a good idea. (I’m going to leave this alone this week because I’m sure, like Tom Schwartz at an open bar, we’ll be returning to this so many times we’ll eventually get sick.)
The party is a huge success, but even before it starts, Billie gets upset and Twitters something about how she wasn’t informed of this “Girls Party†and she’s the only trans person at work. Katie, the lead organizer of the party, does not take kindly to this, nor do the other women who helped her put it together.
Now, I can understand Billie’s objection and I know that the world is hard for my trans sisters and brothers. I get that. There are slights both blatant and subconscious that they’re dealing with on a daily basis that those who aren’t a member of that community can’t even imagine. However, I fail to believe that this is one of those instances.
Billie talks about how she was the only woman at SUR who wasn’t consulted about the “girls night,†and because she was left out of things for girls when she was younger, this was triggering for her. However, she is explaining this to… two other women who work at SUR who also weren’t in on the planning or “invited to the party.†These women don’t even get real names.
I do believe that Billie is triggered, but I don’t believe that she was left out because she is trans. I think she was left out because she was a jerk to Katie and Kristen. If she wasn’t an asshole to them at brunch and if she didn’t defend James like he was the Fifth Element that would save mankind, then maybe they would have included her. It wasn’t that they didn’t call on her because she’s trans, they didn’t call on her because she’s her.
As Lisa points out, all of the women who work there have been very supportive of Billie and her journey and welcomed her into the fold effortlessly. There is nothing that shows that these girls are transphobic and to insinuate otherwise, which is what her tweet did, I think is very off base.
Her and Katie almost come to blows and Billie accuses Katie of “cis hetero privledge.†Katie counters back with a “stop it†as flaccid as her husband after 13 Fireball shots. It was so weak it was almost comical. When Katie repeats this insult to Lala she gets indignant and says, “Cis hetero privledge? What the hell? No, I mean it. What is that? I have no idea what she’s talking about.†Oh, Lala. I love her so.
Billie ranting to Lisa about Katie getting to play her “fat card†so she can play her “trans card†is just so bizarre that it makes Billie into a villain, and I don’t want that for her. I don’t doubt that she has been through a lot, but this is not the time to play that trans card. If she does, it’s going to be taken away from her and when she really needs to play it then it’s not going to have any value left, especially since she played it while body shaming a fellow woman.
The thing I really need to point out about Girls Night In is that it wasn’t successful because of these girls, just like See You Next Tuesday isn’t successful because of James. They are both successful because of the show. The reason there is a line out the door for Girls Night In isn’t because they wanted to go to the “glitter bar†or because they were going there to see James and just walked into another party by mistake. They were there because they’re Vanderpump Rules fans. They’re there because of Lisa’s marketing savvy, so all of these young bucks should take a page out of her book and shut up.
James was licking his wounds at home wearing his “White Kanye†bathrobe (I wish that was a joke I made up) and hanging with Tom Sandoval and his girlfriend Raquel, an 11:11 wish for the perfect pair of yoga pants. They listened to the track that James was working on where Sandoval played the trumpet. It sounded like a stuttering fart squeaking through a pair of too-tight butt cheeks. Later Sandoval took that track home and played it for his manlover Tom Schwartz. “Dude, I’m sorry,†Schwartz said, taking his hand tenderly, “But I can never fuck you again after listening to that rusty trombone.â€