feature image via shutterstock
If Facebook is any indicator – oh, and I bet Mark Zuckerberg just loooves to think so – the assertion that LGBTQ people are adopting a lifestyle is as popular as ever. As if people would choose to be ostracized! Often times people who cling to this opinion that your sexuality is something you choose, offer it as a standalone thought independent of relevant conversation, like they absolutely must have you know at once about their conditional support of you.
I feel for these people because, well, it’s embarrassing to be so boldly wrong, so publicly. I want to help these people! Maybe it’s just that no one’s made the distinction for them yet. For example, someone had to recently explain to me — after seven years on Twitter — that the home button is a birdhouse and you start out with an egg avi. LIFE CAN BE A MYSTERY UNTIL IT IS NOT. So to aid in this journey to the light, here’s a list of things that are more a lifestyle than my sexuality.
1. The KonMari organizational method
2. Being in a perpetual state of growing out your bangs
3. Vegetarianism
4. Maneuvering around the ethics behind your vegetarianism on a daily basis to convince yourself it’s fine you’re not also vegan
5. Being a person that wears hats
6. A flying under the radar approach to life where you’re not so bad that people want to correct you but also not so good that people expect too much out of you
7. Refusing to watch The Wire
8. Toggling your trust in your sun or rising sign based on the better of the two horoscope readings that day/week
9. Being an adult napper
10. Composting
11. Knowing it’s not ideal for group shots but still not smiling in pictures
12. Using Dr. Bronner’s castile soap for its intended purpose (everything)
13. Knowing that people are separated into Beatles fans and Rolling Stones fans and being neither
14. Cutting your own hair
15. Never using a daily planner
16. Using the water refill stations in grocery stores and the dozens of empty gallon sized jugs dispersed throughout your kitchen that come along with it
17. Avoiding anything Taylor Swift related
18. Feeling exactly 16 hours behind on everything always
19. Value Village
20. Couponing
21. Self-care as a gateway to full on sabotage
22. Moving every few years
23. Clearing out your emails as you read them (which you do constantly)
24. Being up for any and all forms of rejection
25. Drinking coffee after 3pm
26. The mantra “choose peace, girl”
YES to the KonMari method in tandem with napping. I think that’s part of the method, too. Getting to know yourself through naps.
This is very true.
Adult napping sparks joy in my life.
Although trying to fold socks to the Konmari standard would result in the need gorgeous a nap anyway. It’s a natural cycle.
also tandem bikes
Okayyyyyy!! I may or may not have rushed to Twitter to look at the home button and realized it was a freaking birdhouse (I just clicked it and never actually looked and paid attention-I just knew it was the “Home” button!).
I also feel 9, 17, 23 and 26! <3
Yeah me too. Never noticed before
Erin, Im’m your fan
?
Team “Clearing out your emails as you read them (which you do constantly)” right here
I don’t and I have a friend who is consistently like “10,000 UNREAD EMAILS! WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH YOUR LIFE!”
having two mostly-junk email addresses, one of which people refuse to forget that I don’t use anymore, and also, nothing, go away, I’m fine.
I’m that friend–currently at 19,984
jane NO
SAVE ME FROM MYSELF
Yep. Everybody at work is jealous of my inbox.
I am gonna get number 7 tattooed on my arm, it’s such a part of me.
maybe the most important one hattie
Also- 8, 9 and 25. Erin- you know me so well.
If people just put these numbers on their okcupid profiles it’d make dating so easy.
NUMBER FOUR THOUGH
HELP
IT MEEEEE *eats some cheese*
I READ IT AND WENT AM I BEING DRAGGED? I’M BEING DRAGGED
Gonna get a bit serious here, but I would love to meet the person following lifestyle number 24. I think maybe I want to be that person?
rachel these are all me!!
choose peace, girl
ugh you girls keep me young
mom go brush your hair
I have always felt that the term lifestyle was being used to either condemn or try to sell something.
27. Repurposing :)
twitter is my lifestyle and i still didn’t know that shit about the birdhouse. thank you for another piece of remarkable content erin. namaste.
28. Giving the people not what they want but what they 100% need
“As if people would choose to be ostracized!”
Okay, but there are also a lot of awesome things about being LGBTQ.Like if I could choose to not be queer, I wouldn’t do it and I really hate this kind of line because I feel like it depicts all us queermos as sad victims of our biology.
Yes to all of the above. As a bisexual I choose to date women over men because women are about a million times better and more interesting, satisfying partners than men. Even with all the shit I have to put up with on account of homophobia and biphobia, dating women still feels like winning the effing lottery. So for me personally, it’s definitely a choice and a superior one at that.
I wouldnt undo it either! I just mean it doesnt make a ton of sense for someone who isn’t LGTBQ to identify with a marginalized group just bc it’s…cool? edgy? but i know a lot of people who think thats what’s happening in the LGTBQ community
Erin, I finally dropped that perpetual growing out your bangs lifestyle and it’s been SO FREEING.
Also, reading about self-care as a gateway to full-on sabotage was like having my innermost secret blasted through the speakers.
SAVE ME
If you’re still refusing to watch The Wire, then I take you 100% at your word that your sexuality is DEFINITELY not your lifestyle since The Wire has the greatest lesbian lead character in the history of television, dangit!
(Just sayin’.)
wait why has no one ever told me this; i’d have been in much more of a hurry to watch the show
SAME
Somebody has let you down! Kima Greggs is a flippin’ goddess and a force of nature. Full humanity, not defined by her sexuality nor denied it, a flawed and complex person with actual agency who often drives plot, played by an insanely stunning woman of color (but by no means Hollywood glam).
I feel like people forget to mention it enough in the context of the show because the show is the anti-soap, people’s romantic lives are rarely a major point, although we certainly do eventually learn a lot more about her personal life as it goes on. AND some hot sex thrown in for good measure.
It’s always odd to me that the LGBT representation the show seems to be most noted for is Omar and then later Snoop (who are both great!), but Kima is just so utterly un-flashy and necessary that maybe people take her for granted.
But I mean come on! http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0812308/?ref_=tt_cl_t6
(I may have strong feelings about this character. Maybe. The actress also happens to be a bad-ass activist.)
!!!!!!!!
I am very excited about her/this show now!!!
Sorry Erin
OMG the home button is a birdhouse! I feel like some kind of internet secret was just revealed to me. Unfortunately, the truth is that I just never looked very close.
Oh jeez, six is my day-to-day. I will tell you though I have been very successful at flying under the radar. Any tips?
I meant not very successful up there. Whoops.
this one has taken DECADES
Plus, if you were, say, a zombie or a vampire, it would be a deathstyle, not a lifestyle! =)
I am just going to sail on past number 21 and pretend I never read it.
bloop
@ me next time, re: value village
gon get us some stickers that say “value village… it’s a lifestyle!”
#21 though :’) Please be accepting of my lifestyle, mom.
This post speaks to me, as a nap enthusiast who cuts their own hair. :)
“21. Self-care as a gateway to full on sabotage”
Never have I heard it put this way, but it’s me wholeheartedly!
Also, in the interests of adding to this list indefinitely: “Refusing to pick my own song at karaoke, but unashamedly scream-singing along to everyone else’s, even when I’ve never heard the song before.”
I am terrible.
27. Not Having a TV so being forced to watch the Olympics on sketchy livestreams
Twenty One And Twenty Five
I know this is like….eons late…..and I probably deserve some sort of negative demerits as a girl for not knowing the answer…. BUT…….why are ” bangs” called *bangs*??
i don’t think this is the sort of people most people know–alas being a girl doesn’t come with a merit badge in linguistics. i looked it up, though, and the oxford english dictionary says it originated in the U.S. and “Etymology: = hair cut ‘bang’ off; compare bang-tail n.”
oops. *sort of thing
can confirm – no one knows this
Ha! Thanks .
Ah! Thanks.