Spoiler warning: This put up comprises spoilers for the winner(s) of The Traitors’s third season.
Bambi. Gaggy. Ciggy Mommy. Newlywed. America’s Sweetheart.
Former Bachelorette star and podcast host Gabby Windey has, at occasions, embodied all these beliefs, and now she will be able to add yet one more title to her bio: Traitors season three winner.
Windey, together with fellow “faithfuls” Actual Housewife of New Jersey Dolores Catania, skilled brother Dylan Efron, and lesser royal Ivar Mountbatten, out-maneuvered the remaining “traitors” — Massive Brother’s Danielle Reyes and Britney Haynes — to win Alan Cumming’s recreation present. Besting an assemblage of different actuality TV stars and barely random minorly well-known folks at a fortress within the Scottish Highlands to take dwelling 1 / 4 of the $204,300 prize pot is not any small feat.
Successful the homicide thriller nearly looks like icing, although, as a result of Windey had already charmed, entertained, and received the hearts of so many people watching at dwelling. With 832,000 followers on her personal TikTok, a rising podcast, and the fascinating recognition of Gaggy remixes, the throaty-voiced former cheerleader and her caustic high-femme persona are exploding on social media, promising to be a presence nicely after this newest foray into actuality TV.
How Gabby Windey grew to become America’s favourite Ciggy Mommy
Loving Gabby Windey is like loving an expert sports activities crew.
You clear your schedule at 9 pm on a Thursday for weeks on finish. You brace your self for her making the improper calls on the present and placing out. You discover immeasurable pleasure in her good performances. And for the remainder of the week, you’re on varied web sites, primarily TikTok and her podcast Lengthy Winded, to see what she’s as much as, all in an effort to kill the time between episodes. And like a real fan, you begin to converse her language — lethaaaaargic, ciggy mommy, I’m not dumb — a lot that it turns into each shorthand between associates and a litmus check for potential ones.
Windey first appeared on TV screens as a contestant on The Bachelor, changing into well-known for rejecting Clayton Echard’s supply to stroll her out. She adopted that with a stint as one in every of two The Bachelorette(s) for that present’s season 19, and adopted that by popping out as homosexual on The View in 2023. Someplace in between, she was the runner-up on season 31 on Dancing with the Stars. She lately revealed her shock marriage to her first girlfriend, comic and author Robby Hoffman. Beforehand, Windey labored as a nurse and Denver Broncos cheerleader.
Nonetheless, Windey got here into The Traitors third season arguably overshadowed by larger, flashy, actuality TV personalities like Survivor’s Boston Rob and Actual Housewives’s Dorinda Medley. However with every confessional, every roundtable, every banishment, Windey’s shimmery outfits, sharp wit, and ethereal child voice made it clear she was the present’s large star.
Whether or not it was sitting alongside a castmate she believed to be a “chilly. blooded. killer.”, raving concerning the Scottish breakfasts and criticizing her male castmates’ rowing method, or forgetting that Ivar Mountbatten was within the room, Windey made for wonderful tv. In a single unbelievable, contentious second, Windey shut down Danielle Reyes, the traitor who had seemingly spent the present’s whole tenth episode saying she was going to “annihilate” Windey.
On the roundtable, the place contestants attempt to sniff out and eradicate traitors, Reyes was gunning for Windey as cowl for her personal season-long deceit. Windey made it clear she noticed via Reyes’s plan, saying that it was simple to border her. “I’m a straightforward goal, I take every thing on the chin,” Windey defined.
“I don’t suppose you’re a straightforward goal, I believe you’re tremendous good, Gabby,” Reyes shoots again.
“I’m not saying I’m dumb,” Windey replies, silencing her alleged “annihilator.” “I believe I may have been saved round for this lengthy for this specific second.” Beforehand, Windey overheard Reyes and her fellow traitor, Survivor’s Carolyn Wiger, plotting in a single the fortress’s secret rooms, a reality she by no means revealed.
On TikTok, Windey added commentary: “Yeah I heard you again there, you lyin’, dishonest, traitor.”
Early within the season, Windey, Promoting Sundown’s Chrishell Stause, and WWE’s Nikki Garcia grew to become an alliance and known as themselves the “Bambis.” The group of doe-eyed bombshells believed nobody took them critically — and so they weren’t completely improper. However it’s Windey’s self-aware, unapologetically artful bimbo persona on the present and self-deprecating humor on her TikTok and podcast has made her a fan favourite.
She’s an exquisite lady with no curiosity — in perspective or actuality — in interesting to males. She’s additionally a wise lady with little interest in convincing anybody that she is. You get the sense that she is aware of she’s already wasted an excessive amount of of her time making an attempt to be understood by individuals who didn’t get her, and located it boring.
So Windey is simply herself.
Typically that occurs to be lovely, different occasions it verges on hostile. Watching Windey transfer via the present with talent, sassing self-serious players from Survivor and Massive Brother and completely confounding Zac Efron’s brother, you’ll be able to’t assist however need to understand how she sees the world. One can discover these insights on her TikToks, that are like if Legally Blonde’s Elle Woods mind-melded with Larry David.
One seminal second was placing to phrases an aesthetic generally known as “Ciggy Mommy.” It’s a vibe that lies on the intersection of leopard print, pearls, silk chiffon, Weight-reduction plan Coke, and the Actual Housewives of Beverly Hills.
“I’ve ripped some heaters,” she says on her podcast. “I used to be raised by wolves … I do want you may order half a martini.”
Regardless of her glamorous aspirations, Windey additionally is aware of the pains of on a regular basis folks. As regards to her personal work ethic, she has boundaries.
“No, I’ve enterprise hours. What are you doing calling me after 3 pm?” she says in a TikTok bemoaning the work day and the inevitable post-lunch comedown. Windey’s monologue has since turn out to be half of popular culture’s quickly rising lexicon of emotion, with tributes coming from the likes of director and actor Elizabeth Banks, a cappella band Pentatonix, and Pixar. “I’ve misplaced all my confidence. I’ve simply had lunch. I’m torpid,” she provides — drawing out the three vowels that “torpid” comprises and turning it right into a phrase that takes 4 seconds to say.
It simply feels higher, extra soothing, to say it like Windey.
Sadly for Windey’s followers, The Traitors ended on Thursday, which suggests ostensibly much less Windey on TV. However Cumming likes to deliver fan favorites again, so there’s all the time subsequent season of Traitors. Within the meantime, we all know the place to search out her.
