Gabby Windey Is the Coolest Reality Star You’ve Probably Never Heard Of

As an obsessive watcher of reality television and dating shows especially, you’d probably assume I’m a Bachelor fan, but you’d be wrong. The Bachelor franchise is just too heteronormative for me, too “faith and family.” Most of the Bachelors and Bachelorettes are just plain old boring, and I rarely have anyone to root for. Gabby Windey, though, is anything but boring.

I first became aware of Gabby Windey, who was then a nurse and a professional cheerleader, during the finale of season 26 of The Bachelor, when she rejected Clayton Echard’s rose after he told each of the final three women he loved them…

…and then, after he convinced her to stay after all, iconically laid into him during their breakup and wouldn’t even let him walk her out.

After that, she and fellow Echard reject Rachel Recchia shared season 19 of The Bachelorette, where her straight-shooter, take-no-prisoners personality really got to shine.

But we also saw her tender heart, and she opened up about her struggles with mental health and receiving love.

She ended up getting engaged to Erich Schwer, but they broke up shortly after. Gabby was already competing on Dancing With the Stars by that point, where she finished in 2nd place.

Then she came out on The View and revealed her relationship with comedian Robby Hoffman.

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“My whole world was kind of, like, male gaze-y,” she explained. Now, it’s the complete opposite, and by design. She’s the host of the podcast and YouTube show Long Winded, where she sometimes hosts guests to talk about mental health and relationships, but the best episodes are the ones where she’s solo and delivering monologues about whatever’s on her mind. It’s the best, kookiest, occasionally weed-induced performance art of the internet era, if you ask me.

Her latest stint on The Traitors is like a full-circle moment in this story of male-gazey cheerleader turned lesbian podcaster because this season of Traitors is “conspicuously sexist” (The Cut). The dynamic from the jump was Gabby and her clique of “bambis”—Chrishelle Stause (another queer female reality star), wrestler Nikki Garcia, and occasionally other reality personalities like Ciara Miller and Dolores Catania—versus the “gamers,” most of them men—Rob Mariano, Wes Bergmann, Derrick Levasseur, et al. There have been several tense moments at round tables and elsewhere when Gabby and her clan have put one or more of the men in their place for speaking down to them. Often at the challenges, there are cries of “we need a strong man on each team” or some such thing.

“I was always fighting with the men,” she tells The Cut, saying it was an “unpleasant reminder of the real world—a throwback to her old life.” She explained that it made her remember that reality TV is “such a microcosm of society.”

“I forget, because I literally interact with no men. My manager and my dad are the only men in my life. So I forget that this is what it’s like.”

It is what it’s like, and she’s happy in her long-winded lady world, which is gaining traction. She’s excited about that, but she doesn’t aspire to huge fame. “I like having a niche audience, so I can be myself,” she says, “I don’t want to turn into Call Her Daddy.” But she has other aspirations, like posing nude—which she thinks would be “so sick, especially since I’m a lesbian,”—starring on The Real Housewives of New York City, and writing a memoir, but she “can’t write everything” until she’s dead.

“I protect people. So right before I schedule my euthanasia—which I do plan on, because I like to be in control—I’ll publish.”