Pride Month: To assume makes an ass of u and me
This Pride Month, I hope everyone thinks about how to be more inclusive in the way they ask personal questions – to everyone, in all contexts. After all, you don’t know who someone is until they tell you. Make it easier for them, writes Helena Snowdon.
I went to see Top Gun Maverick last night. I cried several times. It’s beautifully put together – a cohesion of the original and the new. It took me back to my teenage years when I saw it for the first time, then the second, then the third… when I listened to the soundtrack on cassette until it broke. When I wanted to be Tom Cruise, and all my friends wanted to be Kelly McGillis.
I’m a gay woman. I wanted to be Tom Cruise because I was enamoured by Kelly McGillis (and in turn, last night, by Jennifer Connelly). Why am I telling you this? Because the way I live my life and who I’m ‘out’ as now, versus who I had to pretend to be back then are poles apart.
The 90s were confusing. Teen magazines told me, “It’s alright darling, it’s just a phase, every girl goes through it”. No. They don’t. The early 2000s, when I started out in media were a pretense. Fortunately, it was the fashion at the time to wear men’s Diesel jeans, so I fitted right in alongside my straight female colleagues.
