Are we really still describing people as 'openly' gay?

I’m going to start referring to heterosexuals in the public eye as “openly straight”, in the hope that it draws attention to how clunky and outdated the phrase is when used to describe gay people. By now, you’ll have seen the headlines: Grace Richardson, 20, crowned the first “openly gay” Miss England in what is being celebrated as a triumph for representation.

- LOTTE JEFFS

The entire circus around this announcement gave me the ick. I don’t mean to diminish the personal journey of a young gay woman who has spoken candidly about the homophobic bullying she experienced as a teenager, and how isolating it was to grow up “feeling different”. Well done to you for winning a strangely anachronistic beauty contest - take that, haters!

What troubles me is more the giddy insistence on her being the “first openly lesbian Miss England”, and the implication that this, finally, is what progress looks like. Because in 2025, shouldn’t we be past this by now?

Let’s start with the pageant itself. Miss England still trades, however modernised it pretends to be, on narrow ideas of femininity, palatability and traditional womanhood.

It exists in a bubble entirely detached from the material realities of women’s lives in this country, let alone queer women’s lives. To crown a lesbian within that system and declare it a radical win feels to me like assimilation with a sash.