You may better know Lilly Singh as IISuperwomanII, her name on YouTube. After all, Singh is one of the biggest YouTubers on the platform as well as a New York Bestselling author thanks to her book "How to Be a Bawse." She's clearly doing huge things, things that most girls only dream of.
In a tweet on February 24, Singh defined herself as "female, colored, and bisexual," later going on to say that she is "fully embracing them as [her] superpowers." As a fellow bisexual, I was blown away and immediately excited. I started calling friends who love her or who are in the LGBTQIA+ community, in tears. Despite only knowing her through her YouTube videos, I was so proud of her. After all, I know how hard it is to come out to friends and family, never mind to thousands, even millions, of people all at once, people that don't know you personally and don't always see you as a person since you're always just a face on a screen.
I was able to celebrate this amazing moment as a singular member of the LGBTQIA+ community, someone who has been in the same position before, but I also was able to view it as what it would do for the community.
For anyone who doesn't know, I'm doing an honors thesis around coming out stories in young adult literature. As such, I tend to keep myself up to date on the bigger moments for the community because I never know when something might come around that will influence the community or potentially influence my thesis writing.
After all, when writing about coming out stories and all that takes place around that experience, the writer tends to draw off of what they know, so an important way to keep yourself grounded in the work is to stay up to date and knowledgeable, especially when it comes to celebrities coming out, since they tend to influence people who are still closeted to at least consider coming out through the fact that they were able to do this big scary thing and it didn't kill them.
Lilly Singh coming out is huge in both the realm of YouTube and in the realm of the LGBTQIA+ community. I just Googled Singh while writing this article on February 27. The first three "Top Story" recommendations from Google are all about her coming out, as are the first three suggested YouTube videos. Her coming out is being covered by sources like the BBC. It's everywhere.
It also shifts dynamics on YouTube because it changes how Singh is classified in the eyes of viewers. She could now be considered an LGBTQIA+ YouTuber along with people like Ash Hardell. Or she could do what Shane Dawson did when he came out and just keep creating his normal content while having his fan-base know that he was in fact bisexual, perhaps touching on it from time to time but not having it define all of his content.
All in all, it can be seen that Lilly Singh coming out is huge for her as well as for the communities that she finds herself in. I can't wait to see what's next.
