The pansexual singer Demi Lovato apparently cut her hair short to protest gender and sexuality norms in the Christian South.
During an appearance on “The Drew Barrymore Show,” Lovato said she felt more liberated than ever when she cut her hair.
“I cut my hair because I just wanted to free myself of all of the gender and sexuality norms that were placed on me as a Christian in the South. And when I cut my hair, I felt so liberated because I wasn’t subscribing to an ideal or a belief placed upon me to be something that I’m not,” she said, as reported by Today.
Lovato also reflected upon her experience of being raised as a child star and how she related to her parents.
“My parents, they did the best that they could. There’s no manual on how to raise a child star, and when the child star retorts back after the parent says, ‘You’re grounded for sneaking out at three in the morning, whatever.’ I retorted with: ‘Well, I pay the bills. What are you gonna do? What are you gonna do to keep me grounded?’ It was challenging,” she said.
Lovato got her start at age 8 on “Barney and Friends,” which eventually led her to think she could live like an adult at a young age.
“The adults leave work and they go and have a drink; the kids, what do we (do)? So it was this weird thing to think about, especially then when you become a teenager in Hollywood and your adult peers are going to a bar after work or whatever and you’re 17 thinking, ‘Well, what do I get to do to play?'” she said. “I had this mentality of ‘if you’re gonna work me like an adult, I get to party like one,’ but the reality was adults weren’t partying like I was.”
In late March, Lovato took her cues from the Miley Cyrus brand of pop-cultural identity and came out as pansexual, saying she was attracted to “anything, really.”
“I’m so fluid now, and a part of the reason why I am so fluid is because I was, like, super closeted off,” Lovato told Joe Rogan.
“You mean sexually fluid?” Rogan asked. “You like girls? You like boys?”
“Yeah, anything, really,” Lovato replied.
“What do they call that? Like pansexual or something like that?” Rogan asked.
“Yeah, pansexual,” she responded.
Apparently, Lovato felt her first brush with lesbian attraction after watching Sarah Michelle Gellar kiss Selma Blair in the 1999 movie “Cruel Intentions.”
“I felt a lot of shame because growing up in Texas as a Christian, that’s very frowned upon,” she said. “Any attraction that I ever had toward a female at a young age, I shut it down before I even let myself process what I was feeling.”
RELATED: ‘I’m So Fluid Now’: Demi Lovato Says She’s ‘Pansexual,’ Attracted To ‘Anything, Really’
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