When Oscar-nominated actress Aunjanue Ellis accepted her honors at the Essence Black Women in Hollywood Awards, hardly anyone noticed that on the left arm of her Dolce & Gabbana suit jacket was the word “Queer” spelled out in rhinestones.
“I was thinking, ‘Why didn’t more people pay attention to that?’ And I was like, they probably thought it said ‘Queen,’” she tells @Variety. “It wasn’t that I was expecting any sort of major reaction or anything like that. One of my family members noticed, but nobody else did.”
Ellis went on to share anecdotes about her upbringing in a southern home while navigating through her attraction to guys and girls at the tender age of 8. “Why does a woman have to be submissive to a man?” she recalls questioning while in Bible study as a child. “And then there was this other thing about me that I also didn’t understand.”
One summer when Ellis was a teenager, she remembered trying to train her body to be attracted to boys and trying “to talk my body into correct behavior.”
“The solitude of that is so lonely, it’s violent,” she says. “It’s violent because you literally have to tuck and place so many parts of you to be acceptable, so people won’t run from you and don’t want to be around you. It was exhausting. That’s what childhood was like. That’s what adolescence was like. I knew [my sexuality], but there was no template for it; there was no example of it; there was no place for it, and certainly no forgiveness for it.”
While she was in an 11-year long relationship with a man in her 30’s Ellis was finally able to articulate to herself that she was queer and has been living in her truth ever since!
We love that for you, sis! Let your flag fly 🏳️🌈 #BWLM💕
