Sam Smith is opening up about a time when they were attacked for their fashion expression.
Smith is the cover star for Out Magazine’s Out100, and has an interview to celebrate that fact. The singer came out as non-binary this year and for the interview, they talk about building up to that moment and becoming more comfortable with themselves and their music career.
“In changing my pronouns, I felt incredible freedom. It’s like a brick was lifted off my chest, and with that freedom comes another kind of pain,” said Smith. “Feeling this free in our skin is answered with abuse. And that’s really hard. For the last year and a half, I’ve thought about changing my pronouns. I’ve always hid behind my “he, him” pronouns because I was too scared. I thought living a life playing pretend would be less painful than being authentic. But I’d rather be myself, even if it means being abused for it. I’d rather get all this shit for being myself than lie to myself. That’s not a way to live.”
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Unfortunately, Smith wasn’t automatically accepted by the world after coming out and openly expressing themselves. In fact, the singer shares that they were once punched in the face for wearing women’s clothing.
“Sometimes I feel a bit bad about it, but I definitely did make a decision,” they explained. “I was 19 when I moved to London, and I got punched. I used to wear lots of makeup and female clothing, and I got punched by this man, and ever since that happened, I started to dress down. When I started to dress down, that’s when my music career started to lift off, but I made a decision in that moment that I felt more comfortable and safer pushing myself to that male side, and it helped. It helped my music because I guess there was nothing polarizing about me in that album, so I could cross over to all these parts of the world that are extremely homophobic.”
But despite the pushback, the singer shares that they are trying their best to live life how they want to. So they’ll be “Singing through everything I’ve gone through until the day I fucking die, until there’s nothing left in my throat that will come out. I will carry on singing.”
Source: Out Magazine
