I’m not even interested in Nico so much as the larger conversation of how public figures “come out”, how they navigate their queerness publicly, how they deal with fluidity, questioning, and their gender, sexual, affection, romantic, emotion, commitment spectrum publicly, how they deal with obvious insecurities, resentments, ignorance, problematic statements, mental health struggles publicly, and when does someone using “queer-ness” all the time for self-promotion cross over into being a leech.
I don't inherently disagree with you, but I do think that this paragraph brings up a number of interesting points (interesting points being a thing so gravely missing from this thread normally.) I think history has proven that the community at large (and frankly, just the public in general) is not going to be happy with the way
any celebrity comes out.
When it comes to "real life" people, we are much more open to respecting the journey and accepting people on whatever stage of their queer discovery they are at. I know people in my own personal life that have claimed nearly every sexuality under the umbrella, updated their pronouns a handful of times as they see fit, etc. We are long gone from the days that people only came out when they reached the "destination" (ex:
feeling gays for years but not coming out until you were
absolutely sure.) Now, people are much more open about discussing their feelings
right now, regardless of if they think they might feel differently 6 months down the road.
Now, when real people do it, it's just queer people navigating their own queerness and talking more openly about the journey along the way. But when celebrities do it, they are leaches. They are using queerness for clout. They are trying to revitalize a washed up career. Any and all the reasons are thrown at them. When Demi Lovato updates their pronouns, they are just attention seeking. When Nico talks about their queer history but then marries a (seemingly) cis woman, they are considered queer baiting.
Now, don't get me wrong, I just used two celebrities who I think are generally insufferable at times, but that quality would be true about anything about them, but it doesn't inherently make their journey with queerness a lie. They are just insufferable people, and they would be just as insufferable if they were going on about veganism, animal rights, Black Lives Matter -- pick a cause and they would probably find a way to be annoying about it.
I feel like we are so tied down to expecting and asking of celebrities to have all the answers and be totally candid, and if they are still figuring it out, if they are working on it, they are accused of being elusive, being woke for clout, chasing what's trendy, being inauthentic, and I just think that's a dangerous game to accuse people of when we truly don't know how they are feeling inside.
Even real life, legitimate gay people go through journeys with their gayness where being outspoken and in your face about it is more important than at other times. Just because Nico got married and had a child and stopped talking about it doesn't mean that it wasn't real at the time, or it wasn't important to them, but it's just not part of their journey at the moment. What gets me is that people go on and on as if Nico has done irreparable damage to the queer community or something simply by being a little annoying, and I just don't understand the ire ad nauseam for them.
