At a Colorado concert this week, 26-year-old Shawn Mendes took an opportunity to address ongoing rumours about his sexuality.
“Since I was really young, there’s been this thing about my sexuality, and people have been talking about it for so long,” he said. Mendes started in the music business when he was 16, achieving fame when his single Stitches went viral on Vine.
“I think it’s kind of silly because I think sexuality is such a beautifully complex thing, and it’s so hard to just put into boxes,” he continued.
“It always felt like such an intrusion on something very personal to me, something that I was figuring out in myself, something that I had yet to discover and still have yet to discover.”
While there’s been greater appreciation over the years of the fluid nature of sexuality and gender, Mendes said that he hasn’t been afforded the luxury of exploring his sexuality without scrutiny.
“The real truth about my life and my sexuality is that, man, I’m figuring it out like everyone,” he continued. “I don’t really know sometimes and I know other times. And it feels really scary because we live in a society that has a lot to say about that.”
He told the crowd of fans that he hoped sharing his thoughts and feelings on the issue would bring him “closer to everyone.” “I’m trying to be really brave and just allow myself to be a human and feel things,” he said, “And that’s all I really want to say about that for now.”
Mendes has had a series of high-profile relationships in the past including Hailey Bieber, Sabrina Carpenter, and Camila Cabello.
This isn’t the first time Mendes has expressed frustration about speculation about his sexuality. In 2020, the singer said in an interview with Dax Shepard on the Armchair Expert podcast that the rumours and gossip that started at a young age had caused real suffering for the people around him.
“It was so, so frustrating for me because there were some people in my life that I was very close to… who were gay and in the closet,” the then 22-year-old shared. “And I felt this real anger for those people.
He said denying rumours without sending a message that certain sexualities were wrong placed him in a difficult situation.
“You want to say, ‘I’m not gay, but it’d be fine if I were gay. But also, there’s nothing wrong with being gay, but I’m not. You don’t really know how to respond to this situation.”
Mendes said that everything, from his voice to the way he sat, was picked apart, leaving him at a loss as to how to act during his teens.
“Everyone’s been calling me gay since I was 15 years old,” Shawn explained. “I’m not gay, and I’m like, ‘What does that mean?’ I had these problems with the way my voice sounded. I’m like, ‘How do I sit?’ I’m always first to cross my legs and sit in a position of this feminine style, and I really suffered with that.”
His real worry, though, was how rumours like this would impact young people coming to terms with their sexuality. “I think a lot of guys go through that and, even worse than that, there are so many guys who are gay and in the closet and must be hearing s–t like that and being like, ‘I’m terrified to come out.’”
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Read the original article in ELLE Australia.
