Joe Burrow’s girlfriend Olivia Ponton being openly bisexual and pansexual trends online after dating rumors surface

Olivia Ponton has been pretty open about her sexuality for years now. But somehow, the moment she got linked to an NFL quarterback, everyone suddenly had a problem with it. The TikTok model and Sports Illustrated Swimsuit star, now confirmed to be dating Cincinnati Bengals QB Joe Burrow, came out as bisexual back in 2021, then updated that to pansexual in 2022. Old news, right? Not anymore.With the Burrow relationship now firmly in the public eye, people are going back through her timeline, and they've got opinions.In June 2021, Ponton came out as bisexual in a Teen Vogue interview, simultaneously revealing she was dating Canadian soccer player Kaila Novak. She credited JoJo Siwa as her inspiration to go public. The relationship with Novak didn't last long, but Ponton kept talking about her sexuality openly. By 2022, she'd updated her label to pansexual, explaining that she's attracted to all genders and that sexuality, for her, is fluid. "I love kissing all types of people," she said at the time, asking fans not to invalidate her journey.That was all relatively drama-free, until December 2024, when a burglary at Joe Burrow's Ohio home put Ponton's name in football headlines for the first time. She was the one who reported the break-in. A police report listed her as an employee, but nobody was buying that. By mid-2025, the two were spotted together repeatedly, at Formula 1 in Miami, Met Gala after-parties, and late nights in New York City. They're dating. It's a thing.Here's where it gets messy. A chunk of Ponton's fanbase, particularly the queer women who'd rallied around her, felt blindsided by the Burrow situation. The accusation of queer-baiting started flying almost immediately. The argument: that her relationship with Novak was performative, that she used the LGBTQ+ identity for clout and an audience, and is now conveniently dating one of the most famous quarterbacks in the NFL. Some fans went as far as saying her pansexual identity was never genuine, just a brand move.It's a conversation that keeps coming up whenever a publicly queer woman ends up with a man. And it's a complicated one. Pansexuality, by definition, includes attraction to men, so Ponton dating Burrow doesn't contradict anything she's said about herself. But that logic hasn't stopped people from feeling burned, especially those who saw her as a rare openly queer face in the sports-adjacent influencer world.Ponton and Burrow haven't made any big official announcement, no Instagram post, no joint interview. But the sightings have been consistent enough that there's nothing left to speculate about. She's with Burrow. She's pansexual. Both things are true at the same time.