Straight women all over America are going gay for Jackie Warner, the sinewy, six-packed 39-year-old blonde who fronts Bravo’s reality show Work Out. ‘It’s about my life as a businesswoman and as a lesbian, as well as just my day-to-day dealings in Beverly Hills, California,’ she says. She speaks quickly, breathily, like she’s just come off a Stair Master.

The owner of five successful businesses, including Work Out (now in its third season) and a new fitness DVD, One-on-One Training with Jackie, Warner left home in Ohio at 18, came out as a lesbian at 21 and was a millionaire by 22. At her penthouse gym, Sky Sport & Spa, where cameras follow her sweating clients and her tempestuous relationships, her $400-an-hour sessions have attracted stars including Paul McCartney, Anne Hathaway, and a couple of closeted A-list homosexuals (‘who I’m afraid I can’t name’). ‘Yes, some people fly out from all over the world to meet with me and train with me for just one session. Those are the most difficult clients because they’re only there to ask me out. That’s kind of awkward. I’ve learned to deal with it through humour.’ Straight fans that can’t stretch to her fees or travel to her gym, whose machines overlook the Hollywood sign, chatter online at social networking groups including, ‘If Jackie hit on me, I’d definitely reconsider my sexuality.’

The Workout cameras flit between Warner’s work with obese clients, her fierce direction of the trainers (one of whom, Rebecca Cardon, left a boyfriend for her last season), and her unsettled personal life: her triumphant seductions; her therapy sessions; her desire for children; the poignant conversations about her sexuality with her religious mother; and a colleague’s sudden death.

Mostly though, we wallow in her relationships, waking up with her partners in her sunfilled bedroom. Season one saw the end of Warner’s four-year relationship with Mimi, who had a habit of biting when she was angry. Season two focused on her public trysts with Cardon outside Sky Sport & Spa’s unisex toilets, and in season three, Warner moved new girlfriend Briana in after their first date. Now, she’s single again. ‘Being on the show is terrible for my girlfriends. It’s scary that whatever you do can be seen by the country and can be edited in any way,’ she says. ‘The camera is like a mirror, and if you have cracks in your relationship, it shows very fast. It accelerates problems. I don’t know any reality-TV show that has been good for a couple.’ However difficult Warner finds it to maintain a relationship, starting one up is never a problem. Women are falling over their plimsolls to meet her.

‘I get a lot of mail from housewives,’ Warner admits, ‘a lot of pictures. Sometimes I get rude pictures, some of them in the nude. Sometimes pictures of them and their husbands, and their families, which is a little odd. Then they’ll write me a love letter, that’s the strangest.’ She pauses,
reflecting on America’s hidden, married lust. ‘I feel that, the more depressed our nation gets, the more we’re turning to the fantasy land of reality TV. And I think that all women are attracted to people that are confident and self-assured, like me. I’m a woman who created my own destiny. And I think that’s where the admiration and crushes come from. It’s as if they chose another path, towards husbands and families, and, through me, are living their secret dream.

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