feature: musician/actress/activist/general bad-ass amandla stenberg comes out in teen vogue

Last week, musician/actress/activist/art hoe collective co-founder Amandla Stenberg came out as bisexual during her Snapchat take-over of Teen Vogue magazine, in honor of her February 2016 cover. “As someone who identifies as a black, bisexual woman I’ve been through it, and it hurts, and it’s awkward and it’s uncomfortable… but then I realized because of Solange and Ava DuVernay and Willow and all the black girls watching this right now, that there’s absolutely nothing to change,” she said on Teen Vogue’s Snapchat.

In the video, Stenberg goes on to talk about the external pressures to squeeze oneself into a mold in which you don’t belong and the necessity of self-love and acceptance. “We cannot be suppressed. We are meant to express our joy and our love and our tears and be big and bold and definitely not easy to swallow. I definitely believe in the concept of rebellion through self-hood and rebellion just by embracing your true identity no matter what you’re being told. Here I am being myself and it’s definitely hard and vulnerable and it’s definitely a process but I’m learning and I’m growing.” Wow.

Stenberg’s profound sentiments on sexual orientation and black femalehood are elaborated in her Teen Vogue cover story, too, which is on shelves now. “I think that as a black girl you grow up internalizing all these messages that say you shouldn’t accept your hair or your skin tone or your natural features, or that you shouldn’t have a voice, or that you aren’t smart…I feel like the only way to fight that is to just be yourself on the most genuine level and to connect with other black girls who are awakening and realizing that they’ve been trying to conform, Stenberg said in her Teen Vogue cover story.

Read her interview with Solange Knowles, here!

By Erin White, AFROPUNK contributor