How do You Express Your Queerness When You Go Back to Your Hometown?

So often, queer people leave their small towns for the gay meccas that exist in bigger cities like Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago.

Even if the distance isn’t that great, like a move from Ventura County to the congested streets of West Hollywood, when you arrive, you are immersed in a mosaic of queer expressions and lifestyles that, maybe, you couldn’t find before.

In time, you find your place. You find a deeper, queerer version of yourself in your new city.

Coming out is hard no matter what. Whether you grow up in a diversely queer metropolitan area or in a more homogenous region in the American heartland, coming into your queer identity is no easy feat. Deciding for yourself who you are, finding the right words to express it, telling the people you love: it’s a time caked in rebirth, misunderstanding, and bit of improv.

But if you’re from a small town that lacks champions of queer identity, the coming-of-age journey is harder to forge. Lacking references and role models, exploring and expressing your queerness is capped for the sake of social survival.

“Leaving my small town: it was like it was never an option for me to stay there,” Jazzmyne Jay tells us on a new segment of Queer Questions.

Jazzmyne Jay, a Los Angeles-based content creator and beauty influencer, is from a small Illinois farming town two hours from Chicago. If you blink a moment too long, you might just miss it as you drive past on the interstate.

Growing up there, Jay was surrounded by straight, white people with blonde hair. Jay, a mixed child with a Black father and a white mother, stood out from the start.

“I think from a young age I had to learn that I was different but that my different-ness was not something to be looked down upon,” she says.

Her parents encouraged her to be a leader, to stand up for herself and for others. In many ways, she was forced to become the role model she didn’t have—while still a child. Just by existing, she was setting a new tone for the town, expanding the definition of life there.

But when it came time to make adult decisions for herself, she decided to leave. Like so many other queer people seeking out more diverse lifestyles, off she went to Los Angeles.

Our queer expression looks different when we are surrounded by other queers. Not only are we accepted in our neighborhoods, but we are also empowered to express unique versions of ourselves the way it ‘properly’ fits our character that day. The clothes we wear, the way we speak, the people we date: these pieces of expression come alive with bolder finesse in queer-affirming communities.

But what happens when we go home? Do we take this more evolved queer expression back with us? Or do we revert to our smaller-town, family-approved selves? Is there an empowered, queer version of ourselves somewhere in between? Should we even have to think about these things?

We can’t always escape where we’re from, but we certainly shouldn’t have to relive childhood trauma after we’ve taken the time to heal. So, when Jazzmyne Jay goes home, she taps into a more thoughtful, understanding version of herself.

“I’m there experiencing my home and kind of understanding what this has done to me positively and negatively,” she says. “You’re back to a place that kind of a little bit hurt you, you know, and I’ve had to grow from that.”

And as far as expression is concerned, she doesn’t limit herself.

“I’ll wear whatever outfits that, you know, look regular in LA but back home look a little different. Like, I don’t care. You’re going to notice me anyway. That’s the thing. So why sit here and try to make myself smaller for the comfort of other people?” she goes on to say.

Queer or not, the way you talk to your friends at brunch is probably different than the way you talk to your grandparents at a family party. We all house different versions of ourselves that look a little different depending on the space we walk into. Queer expression works the same way.

Back in our hometowns, we might “tone down” our queer expression. In big cities, we might even “tone up” our queer expression to fit into the wildly more accepting communities that exist here.

But maybe queer expression doesn’t exist on a 2-dimensional spectrum at all. Maybe, like all parts of our identity, we’re forever changing our style and getting inspired by new friends, new trends, and new points of view.

So, if you’re going back to your small hometown sometime soon, choose to express yourself authentically—whatever and however that may look like on you that week in that place.