Sam Smith just made some major news.
Speaking with actress Jameela Jamil on her new online show “I Weigh Interviews” this week, the 26-year-old platinum-selling artist came out as genderqueer and non-binary.
“I’ve always been very free in terms of thinking about sexuality,” he says. “I’ve tried to change that into my thoughts on gender.”
Smith goes on to say identifies as both genderqueer and non-binary, explaining, “You do not identify in a gender. You are a mixture of all these different things.”
“You are your own special creation. That is how I take it. I am not male or female. I think I float somewhere in between–somewhat on the spectrum.”
Related: WATCH: Sam Smith surprises fans with something wriggling into his mouth
Smith says that how he feels depends on the situation. For instance, he often feels “very feminine” during sex with men.
“I’ve sometimes sat there and questioned, do I want a sex change? It’s something I still think about, but I don’t think it is (something I want).”
Smith makes another startling reveal in the interview: he had liposuction when he was 12 years old.
The singer explains that his doctor recommended he have the procedure done on his chest because his oestrogen levels were too high.
“At the time, I was very happy about it,” he recalls. “It didn’t really change anything.”
Related: Sam Smith and Brandon Flynn have something naughty to show you
He continues, “I think I put the weight back on in like two weeks, cause I hadn’t figured out my relationship with food. But being 12 years old and having liposuction on your chest is quite a big deal.”
Smith says he bullied about his weight beginning from the time he was 11 and continuing throughout high school and into adulthood, which he says has been “the basis of all my sadness” for years, and which he is now in therapy trying to work through.
“Literally everything I’ve ever been sad about is my weight,” he confesses. “I struggle with it every day.”
He has been reluctant to speak much about it, however, because he says it “feels a bit weird” to reveal such personal things to the world.
“It doesn’t feel manly, does it, to talk about how I feel in my body every day,” he says. “But that’s what I’m trying to fight against.”
Related: Everyone thinks this is a photo of Sam Smith having sex
Ultimately, he says, whether it’s dealing with one’s sexuality, gender identity, body image, or anything else, the most important thing to remember is practicing self-love.
“Self-love, I think people think it’s a destination,” he said. “It’s a practice.”
Watch.
View this post on Instagram
Polaro
Sorry, gender queer and non-binary are all nonsense
stephen_25
agreed
sfhairy
Agreed
Brian
Agreed
OzJosh
Whatever. I’m far more outraged that his parents thought it appropriate for him to have liposuction at 12.
mr guy
Agreed
dinard38
Agree. Tired of all these stupid labels.
CobraPowers
Whatever floats his boat. But when will Queerty post about the first public non-binary person saying it’s BS?
QueerTruth
Gender queer and non binary… are just additional unnecessary labels that are confusing, repetitive, trendy and for most people annoying bologna that turns people off to more important LGBT concerns.
stephen_25
I feel sorry for kids these days, with the hippy parents refusing to let little boys and little girls be just that. Raising a generation of fuxked up kids not knowing who or what they are
Donston
It’s hardly a generation thing. This stuff has been going on for many, many generations. It’s just social media and more people being open about it.
Crystix
More Trolls.
iamru2
@crystix Troll: Someone who says something I don’t agree with with and cannot handle so I have to call them names to end the conversation and denigrate them as a person.
Donston
Smith has already talked multiple times about his gender dimensions and having both feminine and masculine instincts. I feel borderline non-binary myself, but I don’t really feel every quirk and dimension needs a “special label”. However, talking about sense of gender and masculinity/femininity freely are important primarily because toxic masculinity, placing masculinity on a pedestal and effemi-phobia are real things. While about half of people with overall same-sex leaning romantic, sexual, emotional, relationship passions, preferences do have some layers in their entire sense of self.
thisisnotreal
@donston if I have to read one more comment from you that repeats your tired old mantra of there being “ same sex romantic, sexual, emotional, passions, teletubbies, flibbitity jibber blah blah blah” I’m gonna scream. There’s gay, straight, and bisexual, stop making the world more complicated and special snowflake than it needs to be, and for gods sake stop spiting in the face of every bisexual in history by trying to make all these unnecessary descriptors and hyper defined to the enth degree words and run on sentences. You either want to sleep with men, women, or both prove me wrong on that. Doesnt matter if you can fall in love with your [email protected] hag Jill down the street, if you don’t find any women sexually arousing your gay don’t matter who you fall in love with. Same goes for men, you can consider your best male friend your life partner or soulmate or w/e u wanna call him but at the end of the day if u don’t get aroused by men u ain’t gay, and if it’s both ur bisexual, enough with this tired diatribe of everything having “dimensions and layers” dude. I don’t care how many layers or dimension you claim to have, end of the day you fall somewhere on the sexuality spectrum just like the rest of us.
Donston
This post is rather unnecessarily bitter.
The “younger generation” wants to talk more about dimensions, fluidity, contradictions, etc. There’s no reason to feel resentment towards that. And being against it is futile, because it’s not going to stop. I’ve already talked a multitude of times about where I fit on the spectrum. So, it’s not like I’m trying to come off special or is trying to hide something. And it’s not about making the world more complicated. People are already complicated and individual, and everyone is driven by different sh*t. For some reason this stuff frightens and threatens people like you. I’m sorry, but people are not obliged to identify as exactly what you want them to or live their lives exactly as you wish to talk about “queer-dom” in exactly the way you wish. It’s time to get over that. Ain’t nobody hurting you. I don’t always love the direction of the conversation (particularly the more shallow and evasive aspects of the conversations) nor do I always agree with someone’s identities. But I let people live. It’s not my life or my sense of self, and it’s not yours.
jester1
I just read “ blah blah blah”
Crystix
Even more trolls
iamru2
In other words he’s a bit confused.
sfhairy
If we could only post gifs on this board, my gif would be Judge Judy rolling her eyes and calling Bullshit.
Donston
Dismissing everyone’s struggles and individualism is partly why the anti-gay agenda within the “queer community” is so strong. Everyone has their own thing going on and their own journey. There’s no reason to feel some type of way about that. Nobody is hurting you.
Brian
My go-to gif is the Tina Fey eyeroll.
Morrisson
@Donston This is the first I have heard of an anti gay agenda within the gay community. Surely the anti gay agenda (if it exists) would come from those who are gay but refuse to identify as such. Akin to those who identify as bi-sexual when the first come out but eventually reveal themselves to be gay. For some reason there is a stigma to the word gay for some reason. Additional labels for the same concepts and repeated coming outs when nothing has changed are just attention seeking devices from a narcissistic generation.
Donston
Morrisson, it seems like the “gay backlash” exists for several different reasons. And it’s definitely real, particularly in big cities. There was such a great effort to show that gay dudes can be “real men”, and a lot of effeminate guys and/or guys with some dimensions in their sense of gender feel as if they’re being hated on or dismissed as basic stereotypes when it comes to the masc-4-masc gays. Non-homosexuals (like myself) who still ultimately feel “gay”, prefer persistent romantic/sexual affections from their gender and prefer being in a relationship with someone of their gender are constantly told that they’re not “real gays”. A lot of gay-identifying people who are entirely inherently homosexual seem to have a difficult time accepting that fluidity is real for some people and a difficult time grasping the romantic, sexual, emotional, relationship spectrum. But yes, some of it is about simply viewing the word “gay” as limiting, emasculating, de-humanizing and about not feeling any genuine “pride” and self-comfort. Personally, I think anyone who has overall preferences towards people who aren’t their cis gender is ultimately “gay”. There’s just a bunch of different types of “gay”. But clearly considering all these identity we’re dealing with, everyone has their own definitions of things and many people want to separate themselves from others.
Thad
Someone’s resentful that other people may not fit their gender-normative boxes.
But they may not. When you actually meet such people I trust you’ll actually show some empathy.
We take different journeys through life. But we can accept and learn from each other.
And, Sam Smith, can you please record and release a lot more music? Your singing is my listening pleasure.
sfhairy
LOL, you are either gay, straight, bisexual, or asexual. If you’re transgender, you still fall into one of those four boxes. As mentioned above, just because you may love your fag hag, doesn’t mean your dick gets hard for her. That doesn’t make you gender queer or gender non-conforming. The same for if you decide one hour you want to be woman and the next you want to be a man, and the next minute a unicorn. You still fall into one of those four boxes.
Kangol
@sfhairy, speak for yourself. Sexuality doesn’t rigidly fall into the neat boxes you’ve drawn, and many millennia of human history underscore this. I don’t have an issue with Sam Smith’s self-definition. It doesn’t negate also being gay, and I grasp that some people may feel different ways in different contexts, even though when it comes down to it, there feel same-sexual desire and/or engage in same-sexual behavior, and/or present using various kinds of gender expression that may or may not be normative.
Brian
Thinking the concept of 50 different genders is stupid isn’t being resentful. It means you think a dumb concept is dumb.
It is also quite possible to think this, yet still be able to be perfectly polite to someone like Sam. Who is so super special, he needs two of these stupid new gender identities. It’s really not hard not to be a jerk to someone’s face.
thisisnotreal
@brian totally agree. I personally think all this constant need to go around saying “I’m a gender non conforming, sexually fluid, non human” is just utter tripe but I’m not about to go up to someone who labels themselves as those things and straight up rage In their face about it or attack them for it. In person I’d be just as polite and respectful to them as the next person would be, doesn’t mean that inside my own head I don’t think their chosen labels or descriptors are a load of hogwash, and I’m allowed to think that just like I acknowledge that they are allowed to use those descriptors if they want to. But I tend to be pragmatic about things like sexuality and gender and don’t personally believe that just because something doesn’t 100% fit the label that someone is trying to put it in doesn’t mean it isn’t that label. I call myself a gay male, I’ve been straight up in love with women in my past (not in lust or not some other confused emotion I was actually in love) and yet because women have never done anything for me sexually and I would never choose to sleep with one, I still choose to label myself as gay and no pansexual or whatever other cute labels are used these days like gender queer or whatever. The shoe doesn’t always have to fit PERFECTLY for it to still be worn.
mr guy
No, Sam. There are TWO fixed and immutable biological sexes (various intersex conditions are rare disorders of development pertaining to the two biological human sexes). FACT. And sex should not be conflated with GENDER (whatever that is) ; which it is more accurately a spectrum of gendered *expression* — which is NOT deterministicaly binary for ANYONE, but more or less dynamic, and crucially culturally and historically constructed (heels, tights, makeup and long curly wigs female? Tell that to the Restoration era!), largely arbitrary and with infinite permutations available to both biological sexes separately in parallel — which we understand as common sense observation : a more feminine or more masculine WOMAN = adult human FEMALE; a more feminine or more masculine MAN= adult human MALE.
jcoberkrom
Looks like somebody wasn’t getting the attention he wanted.
ruffmarine
I’m sorry but Sam needs some therapy. Not much has been going down in his court recently so it does not stun that he would cough up some scheme to bring out some attention.
Brian
He actually has a song moving up the charts, it just hit the top 20 this week. Maybe he’s trying to push it into the top 10.
asby
I remember the days when you just told everyone you were a bottom
dean089
Direct from the Aaron Carter School of How to Regain Relevance, it’s Sam Smith!