Lily-Rose Depp has clarified comments regarding her sexuality, a year after she featured in a campaign promoting sexual fluidity.
Depp, the actress, model and 16-year-old daughter of Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis, hit the headlines in August 2015 when she posed for iO Tillett Wright’s Self-Evident Truths Project, a photo series of people who aren’t “100% straight”.
She has now spoken to Nylon about the “misconstrued” reception of the campaign and said she featured in it to support not having to label sexuality.
That was really misconstrued, that whole thing. A lot of people took it as me coming out, but that’s not what I was trying to do. I was literally doing it just to say that you don’t have to label your sexuality; so many kids these days are not labeling their sexuality and I think that’s so cool, because you could think you like one thing…just like food, you could think peanut butter is your favorite food for, like, 5,000 years and then be like, ‘I actually like burgers better,’ you know?
I was just trying to say that kids and people in general don’t have to label themselves and say, ‘I’m straight’ or ‘I’m gay’ or ‘I’m whatever.’ If you like something one day then you do, and if you like something else the other day, it’s whatever. You don’t have to label yourself, because it’s not set in stone. It’s so fluid and there’s so much pressure on kids to label themselves and say ‘This is what I am, this is what I like.’ I was just trying to say that it’s unnecessary; you don’t need to label yourself. I guess it came off the wrong way, because then everyone labeled me as gay. That’s not what I was trying to say. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course! But I did that literally just to say you don’t have to label yourself, and then everyone was like, ‘Lily Rose Depp comes out as gay!’”
She also added that there’s too much pressure on kids to label themselves and that she believes sexuality is “not set in stone”.
I was just trying to say that it’s unnecessary; you don’t need to label yourself. I guess it came off the wrong way, because then everyone labelled me as gay. That’s not what I was trying to say. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course! But I did that literally just to say you don’t have to label yourself, and everyone like like, Lily-Rose Depp comes out as gay!”
She went on:
I’m saying it doesn’t matter! It’s not anybody’s business, because I am going to date whoever I’m going to date. I was just saying, kids don’t need to label their sexualities. It’s not that big of a deal.”
On why more and more people are deciding not to put a label on themselves, Depp puts it down to evolution.
People have completely different beliefs, different mindsets than they had 30 years ago-and they will have different mindsets and beliefs 30 years from now. I think life goes on, people progress and evolve, and that kind of thinking changes.”