14-year-old Disney actress, Rowan Blanchard has opened up about her sexuality, and how she doesn’t want to label herself.
Blanchard, who plays lead character Riley Matthews on the Disney Channel series Girl Meets World (the sequel to sitcom Boy Meets World), took to Twitter over the weekend — and on the heels of penning the first-person piece “Sorry, Not Sorry: How I Quit Apologizing for Existing” for Rookie Magazine — the 14-year-old explained in a series of tweets how though she has “only ever liked boys,” she didn’t want to label herself as “straight gay whateva.”
https://twitter.com/rowblanchard/status/688462817310081028
https://twitter.com/rowblanchard/status/688510489962254337
The actress responded:
Would really be here for this! If not Riley- it’s vvv important to me, being queer, that there is representation on our show. & being queer to me just means not putting a label on sexuality- just existing.”
After casually dropping that titbit into conversation, Blanchard was surprised by the reaction from fans.
Responding to claims that her sexuality was “obvious”, she hit back: “literally what the hell u don’t ‘know’ someone’s sexuality”.
She subsequently wrote:
In my life – only ever liked boys. However I personally don’t wanna label myself as straight, gay or whateva so I am not gonna give myself labels to stick with—just existing;)
[I’m] open to liking any gender in future is why I identify as queer.”
Former Disney star Miley Cyrus (who played Hannah Montana) was been championing the movement to resist labelling sexuality and gender identity.
Cyrus explained the difference for her between dating men and women:
That made me feel [dating a man] like I had to be a femme-bot, which I’m not. And then when I was with a girl, I felt like, ‘Oh sh-t, she’s going to need someone to protect her, so I’m going to need to have this macho energy.’ And that didn’t feel right either.”
Girl Meets World in its first two seasons has tackled weighty topics such as gender equality and Asperger’s syndrome.