Perhaps it's my love for musical theatre.
Perhaps it's my drag queen fascination for glitter and cleavage.
Perhaps it's the fact that my mother, while pregnant with me, worked as a marketing VP for L'Oreal.
I'll probably never know for sure why that is, but I have been an active ally of the LGBTQ community since fetus-hood.

Amongst my group of friends, I, a heterosexual cisgendered girl, am basically a sexual minority, and I love it. In the past few years, my friendships with my LGBT friends have been some of the most important in my life. And it's not because of the stereotypical interests I listed above.

Authentic friendship goes way beyond that; it is birthed from common values. One of the life philosophies I value most is the appreciation of individuality, self esteem and self worth, and my gay friends always seemed to share those values.

I always wanted to write an article about human sexuality and its correlations with self esteem, but I just couldn't figure out why. After all, being gay isn't an imperfection or an insecurity one must learn to accept.
THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH LOVE.

So I left the idea to gather dust on a shelf in my mind.
----

Until one faithful day, exactly 2 weeks ago, as I was speaking to my friend David* about the worries and concerns I had for the young girls with whom I volunteer. How hard it is to make them see what I find so special in each and every one of them! It was then that he said:

"Don't worry, at least one of them is going to turn out gay, and she'll teach the rest of them the art of loving oneself through thick and thin."

That was it. The gay bomb of confetti exploded in my mind.
THAT was the correlation between accepting our sexuality and accepting who we are as humans.

With all the messages thrown at you, from the hate groups you see picketing on the news or your grumpy uncle's thoughts on those "damn homosexuals", it's easy for anybody who's sexual orientation is still a question mark to find him or herself confused about who they are.

Whether or not you come out to your friends and family, some day you come out to yourself. You make peace with who you are; you understand there is still so much you need to figure out about yourself, and there are going to be people who don't approve of you, but it's going to be okay.

You can finally exhale; because when you know who you are, no one else can define you.

....

Doesn't that sound familiar? Doesn’t that sound like every Dove campaign about media and photoshop, like every feminist rant about men defining women as sexual objects?

All those articles and videos and social media rants about self esteem, they're basically telling you to come out of the closet! Not necessarily "that" closet, but the one that you use to hide yourself away, to bury your fears and insecurities. The closet you've locked yourself in, because if they can't see you for who you are, a flawed complex human being who can't please everybody, then they can't hate you, right?

But ask anybody who broke down that door and let their true self see the light of day.

They call you a "fag" if you're gay, they call you a "fag" if you're not. In other words, those who want to hate you, who need to hurt you because they're hurting themselves, don't need ammo to fire at you. Hiding out won't prevent the rotten apples from calling you names, it will prevent your loved ones from loving you for who you are.

People will come in and out of your life, trying to define you. This might be the dumbest example, but it works:
If you’re sitting in class and some dumbass tries to convince you that your chair is actually a lamp, you won’t believe them! You know what a chair is! You’ll look at this person, tell them they are wrong, because that is a f***ing chair.

Just like a chair is not a lamp, you are not ugly, or stupid, or unworthy of respect: you are a goddess. Can't wear that shirt because the prom queen might call you fat, or weird, or (gasp) different?... Well, f*** the prom queen.

I once knew a kid who wore a sequin bow tie everyday! He had been called every homophobic slur available on urban dictionary, but he couldn't care less, he knew who he was.

"Yeah, I wear bow ties to school”, he would say, “I like men, but sometimes I like girls, I'm a 5 on the Kinsey Sexual Orientation Scale, and my favorite color is purple. Now what!"

So the next time you're watching the pride parade roll past your eyes, I hope you understand that being self-aware, exuding self-confidence, and having self-worth is not exclusive to members of the LGBTQ community.

"Coming out to myself allowed me to be more comfortable with my own thoughts and feelings, it allowed me to be less anxious and to live up to who I truly am." -Laverne (fake names rule)

Come out as you are, own it, and live in your truth.
If sequin bow tie Tom can do it, so can you.