Pump Up The Pride
Until the summer of my junior year of college, I had always had long hair. That all changed when I needed to complete an internship. I ended up finding an opportunity to work in the quality assurance department of a factory, where of all things, they made…cheese. During the interview, the hiring manager talked about how every employee was required to wear a hard hat anytime they were in the manufacturing areas and that there were several parts of the plant where the temperatures were very high. He cautioned me about fatigue and dehydration. Almost immediately after accepting the job, I decided that I would cut my hair off into a pixie to help with the heat and make wearing a hard hat and hair net more comfortable.
One day I’m among a group of my coworkers when one woman starts telling a story about her boyfriend. She told him that her “Aunt Flo was coming to town and that she would be late coming home from work because she needed to stop at the store and pick up supplies.” Apparently her boyfriend did not understand the euphemism, so he excitedly texted back asking what type of foods her Aunt enjoyed; did she need help going grocery shopping; how long would her family be in town and would they be staying at their apartment or at a hotel? I laughed along because I thought the story was kind of endearing. But, one of my coworkers turned to me suddenly and said “Oh, sorry. We probably shouldn’t be talking about this in front of you.” I said, “Why not?” To which he responded, “Because you’re gay.”
Now there are several problems I had with his statement: 1) I am not gay. Not that being gay is a problem, but I had to mentally process what he was saying for a second because that was not true of my identity. He said it as fact and not as a question. 2) Even if I was, why would that be a story that you would not share in front of me based on my sexuality? 3) I am a cis-woman, so regardless of my sexual orientation, I know all too well about Aunt Flo 4) How did he come to any conclusions about my sexual preferences? That was not a topic that I shared with my coworkers at all since I was so new. We had barely scratched the surface from polite chit chat to personal lives.
So I asked him. And he said, “Well I just assumed so because of your haircut.” I was surprised. That was honestly the first time that anyone had ever made assumptions about my sexuality (at least aloud to my face) because of my appearance. And to this day, I think that is so strange, because that’s just not how my brain works.
When I meet new people, their sexual preferences are so low on my list of considerations. First and foremost, I want to know about your character. What type of person are you at your core? Even more simply, I’ve never looked at a person with a pixie cut and thought “that person must be gay.” If anything, I’m thinking that they have impeccable taste in hair style. Alternatively, I’ve never looked at a person with long hair and assumed they were heterosexual. Now to be fair, sexual orientation is an important part of a person’s identity, but it shouldn’t be solely how you are defined.
Later, I had a friend come out to me. I remember thinking, wow, I’m so honored that they trusted me enough to share this with me. Not long after, a mutual friend brought it up and I said that I never knew that about them. And our mutual friend said, “Really, it’s pretty obvious.” Call me naive, or choose another word, but honestly every time I looked at my friend, I just saw them as kind. Someone who is really good at sports. Someone who I consider to be a savant and a genius. They are an incredibly talented musician and they have an absolutely magnetic personality. Who they chose to spend time with, date, and love was nothing for me to worry about. As long as they were happy, I too would feel happiness.
Going into Pride month, I always think about this point because I realize that even though I might think this way, there are a lot of people who don’t. People in the LGBTQIA+ community face hate and prejudice often- in communities far away and close to home. If you’ve been on the internet at all recently, you’ve probably seen the thousands of tweets and videos of people going off about the Pride collection being featured in Target stores right now. While I would argue that the anti-Pride content is unhinged (I could write a whole blog just about this), a lot of that discrimination could be considered mild when compared to other acts, sometimes violent and physical, that people of the LGBTQIA+ community continue to face.
I beg you as a fellow human to embrace the following month with an open mind. Educate yourself. Question yourself and those around you. Most importantly, I hope you’ll take a moment to acknowledge the love you have and the love you give to others. This can be in any or all of your relationships; platonic and romantic. Life is hard enough without having to defend yourself to others. I believe that we all deserve the right to just simply be.
Here are some helpful resources I found if you need a little jumpstart to your Pride month. No doubt there are a lot of other great resources, especially local organizations that you could get involved with:
I hope you’ll come back for our next blog, where we will get into the mental health aspect/impact in more detail. You should also check out our previous blogs which have lately shared a mental health theme in support of our song “Hello, Friend.” You can listen to it here. But, to bring it back to where it all started, we shared our debut single last June. “Supermoon” and it’s meaning reflects exactly what I asked you to do above- love one another and love yourself. Pump up your Pride by listening to it here.
Jamie