How to be a guy-hot cool-girl bisexual
Taking notes from "House"
Thirteen from House was the first bi character I ever saw onscreen. She had long hair, futch accessories, and a Hollister-compliant body that was too couture for Hollister. I was 14, sometimes a boy, and gay marriage wouldn’t be legal for almost another decade.
Thirteen (a.k.a. Remy Hadley a.k.a. Olivia Wilde) enthralled me. She was a definitive guy-hot, cool-girl bisexual, which is the second type of queer person America decided was OK to show on TV. This is mainly because these characters were nonthreatening, and your dad could jerk off to them later. The GHCGB’s main character trait is being bisexual, with “attractive” and “mysterious” as close seconds.
Compared to other LGBT flavor combos, the frequency of these male-gaze-friendly bi women on TV has considerably decreased nowadays. Even mainstream media has expanded its horizons in terms of gender and sexuality. Hell, Kelly Ripa is nonbinary!1 So Thirteen’s whole thing feels almost vintage.
But, in a classique case of representation without solidarity, it has also become kind of a shit time to be queer and trans. Lately, I can’t help but turn to Thirteen’s particular flavor of cisgender bi-ness as a guidebook just as I did in the 2000s. As a teen, I emulated her and survived (thrived!) in the Bush era. She will not do me wrong now.
Even if you’re not part of any demographic who’s one JD Vance fever dream away from being hunted for sport, we can all learn a thing or two from Thirteen’s stylistic choices. Here are some survival tips to help you live your palatable mainstream sexiest life!
Wear all the gray you have
While I wasn’t allowed to watch House for several months after Thirteen’s post-Huntington’s-diagnosis sapphic sex spree, that didn’t stop me from consistently trying to replicate her wardrobe.
I quickly realized that if there’s one thing Thirteen is going to do, other than allude to kissing girls but not be that kind of queer, it’s wear gray.
Especially in multiple shades and pieces, all at the same time. Dark gray gets the most airtime, but light heather grays do a fair amount of work here too. Maybe it’s to tone down her inherent flamboyance and extra sin. Maybe it’s because she can’t pick black or white, because bisexual.
Whatever the reason, wearing gray can make you, too, flinty-looking and intriguing to people in power.
Layer gray things that don’t really layer together, like two shirts of nearly identical cut. Wear a silver (shiny gray!) necklace where people will be like, “what’s on your necklace?” And then don’t tell them.
Work on pulling off suspenders
These brown suspenders are the most notorious of Thirteen’s sartorial choices. Nonfunctional, vaudevillian, iconic.
A huge component of the guy-hot cool-girl bisexual is being super skinny. The suspenders must not touch your hips or stomach. They should form an aggressively straight line from your belt loops to your delicate falcon shoulders. Think of it like a little jail for your organs.
If you have literally any other body type besides “lithe alien,” you’ll need to get creative to make suspenders work for you in this way. Some ideas:
Line the entire eye
The biggest makeup crime, they say. Wrong! Even with her eyeliner choices, Thirteen is pushing the boundaries just enough to be interesting without getting anybody sharpening their pitchforks.
When you don’t limit yourself to only part of your eye, you show the world that you don’t care about their rules, but in a hot way, and that maybe you didn’t wash your face because you stayed the night at the house of one of your many paramours.
Thirteen famously opts for a 360° smoky eye during her Depression Hookup.
Rock a bang + flare + flappy shirt combo
Behold, the first doctor with a shag bang. House, like all medical shows, is full of perpendicular lines and straight-cut chinos. It’s a little on the nose that Thirteen’s silhouettes are so often flowy and unrestricted (except for organ jail), but it works. She loves a batwing, a wide leg, a breezy vest.
In 2025, a lot of Thirteen’s style choices read “divorced Stevie Nicks fan wine aunt.” Lean into this. No groomers here! Just the wittiest lady on the girls’ trip to Charlotte.
Stay nimble with your hair
Despite the resounding success of Thirteen’s bangs, the show never quite figures out what her ideal hair sitch is. Just like her love life and inner conception of gender, it is both versatile and ultimately unknowable.
First things first, grow your hair at least long enough to put into a ponytail—no nonbinary shards sticking out around the nape. It should at least reach past the straps of your outermost gray tank top.
Then, the possibilities are endless. You could:
Straighten some of the strands in a ponytail to increase its spikiness and intrigue.
Or pour some water on it:
Or do some half-up-half-down styles, but only in the season where you’re dating a man:
Or, my favorite, rock the Sweaty Death Curls.
Like many of Thirteen’s styling choices, it’s all about peppering enough structure or visual straightness to emphasize sway and curve, in a way that is separate from fruitiness and connotes available girl.
Visually frame your ovaries
Fascism looooooves reproduction. Clothes that remind people that you might one day be with child will get you out of a lot of tight spots and prove your value as a person.
Lower belly emphasis is a core strategy of Thirteen’s wardrobe, even in her more complicated gray ‘fits. This is because Thirteen ““““plays with gender”””” within the trenches of the 2007 “menswear-inspired” trend.
If there’s a jacket, it’s cropped at the waist. If there’s a vest, it’s buttonless. Balancing these masculine-adjacent pieces with femme lil tank tops or a low-waisted pant is paramount to flying under the radar in a fuckable way.
Get a questionable hat
“Menswear” can also mean train conductor. Again, we are pushing boundaries!
Get another
This is not a helmet, but it could be.
Also, if someone is about to attack you, they might be so startled by the hat that you gain a competitive advantage.
Find a signature statement necklace
This is THE ultimate accessory for a Real Woman Who Is Definitely Not Overthrowing the Government. Find one, and wear it until it’s part of you. A statement necklace can be a great humanizing element, as it alludes to your inner world without risking anything.
A statement necklace says “I have something to say” without saying it. This is the #1 most important aspect of white-lady feminism. You can move mountains.
If you don’t have a statement necklace, a whole-ass clock can work in a pinch.
Work on your “expressing concern” face
There are many moments in House where Thirteen makes a progressive argument in a way that would almost hold up at a Republican Thanksgiving. I studied these intently.
Arch your brow more than you furrow. Stick your chin out, but at a pleasing angle. Exhale with control.
Do not get flustered like the blue-haired Picrew-avatar libfreak you are. In this house, we are calm, cool, collected, pissed, and flashing a solid platinum face card.
While these mannerisms aren’t a sartorial choice, they’re paramount to claiming your guy-hot cool-girl bisexual privilege. Channeling Thirteen in this way will help you avoid unwanted attention while giving you the armor to confront someone about that fucked-up thing they said. If you take a page from her book and do it really, really hotly, it just might work.
BONUS: Pick up an obscure instrument
House is a bi girl. Goodnight.
I love spreading misinformation
Lost it at the supender drawings, hilarious.
I want one for the bi boys!